Lidos in Space

Speaking of swimming pools, here's an illustration of what an orbiting, low-gravity swimming pool might look like.


(Space tourists frolicking in a spaceborne swimming pool in a spaceborne hotel. Illustrator unknown.)

The pool itself is a large cylindrical drum rotating slowly about its main axis. Due to this rotation, the water is pressed against the sides.

Because of the lack of natural buoyancy, terrestrially-taught swimmers might struggle a bit when trying to keep their heads above water. But at least here, starting with a hard kick, one could take off from the “bottom” and then do a slow flying series of loop-de-loops before diving into a floating water blob for a couple of laps before again reverse-diving into the “ceiling.”

This is where the sea is the sky is the sea.

(Appositionally, here also is an article from the BBC about a Muslim woman banned from swimming in a pool in France while wearing a “burkini” — one of the rarer earthbound, viscerally present-day instances where religion, fashion, Sarkozy and swimming pools intersect.)