Golf from the Space Station
Published on Nov 25, 2006 at 4:18 pm.
1 Comment.
Filed under space station.
Cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin got to make a golf shot that many golfers might dream of this past Wednesday. Not being a golfer, though, I don’t get what was such a big deal about it. He hit a golf ball from the International Space Station.
Actually, a spacewalk, or an extravehicular actvity (EVA), as it is officially called, is a major deal. This is not something done lightly. But, the golf stunt was not the goal of the spacewalk. This spacewalk was already planned for space station support activities — the 73rd spacewalk in support of the space station, and it was the first of four spacewalks scheduled for Expedition 14, the current crew of the space station. One of the goals of the spacewalk was to deal with a malfunctioning antenna on a Progress supply module that had docked with the ISS. They were not successful in that endeavor, though. They took photos to send back to Russia for engineers to study. They then repositioned other antennae. One of the main goals of the EVA, though, was to install a neutron detector that will measure the energies of neutrons reaching low Earth orbit after solar flares.
The golf stunt was an extra activity that was paid for by Element 21 Golf Company, a Canadian firm that had paid big bucks to the Russian space agency for the publicity stunt. The Russian agency has a severe money shortage, so this sort of activity generates revenue for them. The ball was a special ball of mass only 3 grams (about 1/15 of what a normal golf ball weighs) so that if it went astray and hit a space station component, then it would not do any damage. 
It is VERY difficult to move in space suits, so even hitting the golf ball was difficult, much less aiming it! Tyurin used a special gold plated six iron to hit the ball. It is now in orbit around Earth. How long it will stay there depends upon who you ask (anywhere from two days to two years). Its eventual fate, though, is not in question: it will burn up on reentry.
There has been a lot of talk about whether this was a good idea or not. NASA originally didn’t want to do the stunt because of possible damage to the space station by the ball. Also, purposefully knocking debris into space violates NASA’s space debris mitigation policy. Of course, the astronauts also tossed overboard the covers to the neutron experiment in order to track their orbital decay. But, that is a bit different, since they were trackable — the tolf ball isn’t. Some space purists are upset that this was a paid stunt. But, as long term readers of my site know, I am all in favor of private money going into space activities. What I would object to, though, are space billboards (these have been proposed!). Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with this stunt, and it did bring a bit of publicity to the space station, and that can be good.
This isn’t the first golf shot in space, though. Alan Shepard hit a golf ball on the Moon in 1971 during the Apollo 14 mission. He clipped a golf club head onto the end of an instrument used to sample rocks, and swung it one handed to hit a golf ball. He said at the time that it went for “miles and miles,” but really probably went at most a few hundred feet.
So, we have golf in space. What will be the next sport?
(Images courtesy of NASA)
Scott on June 16, 2008 at 9:52 pm: 1
Well, it really don’t matter where you play golf, it’s fun no matter what or where you play it. HAHA!