GREENBELT, Md. — The game would be called Float Ball. It would combine elements of basketball, football and the Lionel Richie video for “Dancing on the Ceiling” into a sort of free-for-all, compelling weightless players to bounce off walls, obstacles and one another while herding weightless balls of various colors to either end of the playing space, which would be placed inside the cabin of a zero-gravity plane or, possibly, on the moon. Eventually, one day, if all went well, some sort of custom arena would be constructed. On Mars.

“There’s a bonus,” said the game’s promoter, Ken Harvey, speaking to an attentive audience of National Aeronautics and Space Administration engineers, technicians and scientists at the Goddard Space Flight Center here recently, “where you have to pick up a person holding a certain ball and throw them through a hoop as a sort of extra point.”

The football analogy seemed to come easily to mind. Ken Harvey was that Ken Harvey, No. 57 in your Washington Redskins program for much of the late 1990s. Playing linebacker during the largely highlight-free interregnum of Coach Joe Gibbs, Harvey made four appearances in the Pro Bowl.

Now 43, he has not played a down since he dropped out of training camp in 1999. This year, he took a day job in the front office, where he has been charged with serving, according to Redskins management, “as a resource and adviser in the development of responsibility initiatives.”