Slashdot Mirror
Golf in Space
deeptrace writes "Tentatively scheduled for a spacewalk this summer, a Russian cosmonaut will take his trusty six iron and a special weightless-friendly tee and put a golf ball into orbit from outside the International Space Station. The golf ball has an embedded transmitter so that it can be tracked as it orbits. It is expected to orbit for 3 to 4 years before burning up on re-entry. The golf shot is the result of promotional fees paid to the Russian space agency by a Canadian golf club manufacturer."
"Four!"
is another piece of slightly-too-small-to-track, large-enough-to-annihilite-your-windshield piece of 23,000 MPH space junk to worry about.
Extra Kudos for hitting a TV Satellite during the soccer WM! I give him 5 EUR if he manages to do that.
See my blog for my free opinions.
It'll be like that Seinfeld episode where the technician reaches deep into the innards of a downed satellite, only to pull out a golf ball with a tiny antenna.
It is expected to orbit for 3 to 4 years before burning up on re-entry.
Or until it makes a hole-in-one in the tailpipe of an orbiting winnebago.
Apart from squash, I can't think of any other earth bound sports that can be easily and quickly adapted to zero gravity.
With the obvious exceptions of drawf tossing and fly fishing of course.
Send a Russian in to space on a Canadian's dollar, and you get a man playing with his little balls and tee in zero G
Cliff Claven
K.E.G. Party Chairman
Founding Leader of: Koncerned for Egalitarin Governance
This is the stupidest idea I've ever heard. We already spend a lot of time and effort tracking the junk that's floating around in orbit without putting stuff there intentionally.
Getting hit by a golf ball travelling 27,734 km/h would REALLY suck.
I bet that ball's going to go a fairway.
Sorry.
Oh no... it's the future.
So I wonder how many yards it will travel in 3 or 4 years before it burns up? This is going to be the longest drive ever.
... if he hits it off the toe and dents the ISS?
for losing your ball to an alien?
... apparently not!
Cheers,
Ian
...does he get a hole in one?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
ISS was catastrophically impacted by a golf-ball. Yep - makes for the longest drive. And in other news - a Space Caddy Help Wanted ad recently appeared in international newspapers. No experience necessary, vomit-bags supplied on demand.
Castanza: Space was angry that day, cosmic rays were crashing all around me. The alien was dying so I reached inside his tentacle and found this....
Kramer: Is that a Titalist?
Castanza: nods...
Golf Ball Tracks YOU!!!
..at least its not a promotion by the caber-tossing industry.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
until someone punches a massive hole in a communications or GPS bird.
(1) how fast can you swing IN A FREAKING SPACESUIT?
(2) the speed of the space junk will be the speed of the space station, +/- the speed of your swing (see (1))
(3) there is a very thin atmosthere at low earth orbit deteriorating the orbit of anything there, further slowing the golf ball with time
(4) due to the nature of the spin of the earth and the fact that you get a boost from it, all spacecraft are launched in the same direction.
(5) therefore any collosion with the golfball at a later time will be at a velocity SLOWER than the swing, far slower than any other piece of space junk out there, and definitely not a threat. Not to mention there is a TRANSMITTER in there. They will see it coming and wave
Not only does it contain a transmitter, but the article says it will burn up on re-entry in 3 to 4 years.
The odds of this being a problem for 'space entrepreneurs' is probably comparable to me winning powerball within the same timeframe. Space is big. Really big.
How about Racquetball?
Good point, I think that squash would be another good example.
Who cares?
...until someone's solar array is clobbered by one more little piece of pointless space junk.
Still, just about anything that might get, say, your average golfer to remember (even for a moment, once a day) that we have stuff, that we put there orbiting around the planet... that's worth it. I wonder sometimes if the occasional golfer who found his way to the new course using the GPS-enabled nav system on his new Lexus is even aware that a bunch of orbiting hardware and thousands of people working on the ground are required to make his car "know" which exit to take a half a mile from now. Of course, people don't know how potable water is made either - or what the internet actually is, what makes sunblock work, why termites want to eat their floor joists, why antibiotics won't cure their common cold, or that their beer is yeast pee, either. So, I say: more orbital golf shots, why the hell not.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I can't imagine swinging a driver in a full blown space suit is going to be easy. I would be afraid that the ball is get launched at an unexpected angle which one would think could put it into an orbit that may conflict with something else that is already out there.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
no one can hear you scream, four......
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
In Soviet Russia, we don't actually play golf in Russia
Does "burning up in the atmosphere" count as a hazard?
Would be great if just before making his shot he could repeat this quote:
"So I jump ship in Hong Kong and make my way over to Tibet, and I get on as a looper at a course over in the Himalayas. A looper, you know, a caddy, a looper, a jock. So, I tell them I'm a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama, himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald... striking. So, I'm on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one - big hitter, the Lama - long, into a ten-thousand foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga... gunga, gunga-galunga. So we finish the eighteenth and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, "Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness." So I got that goin' for me, which is nice."
Be sure to remember the Programmers Prayer
If it lands in the Sahara, that'll cost him a one stroke penalty.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Maybe he'll break Alan Shepard's record for the longest drive ever.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
Apollo 14 mission, 1971...
f ebruary/6/newsid_4093000/4093061.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/
See subject
Another great pre-space-shot quote: "What an incredible Cinderella story, this unknown comes outta no where to lead the pack, at Augusta. He's on his final hole, he's about 455 yards away - he's gonna hit about a two-iron I think. Oh he got all of that one! The crowd is standing on its feet here, the normally reserved Augusta crowd - going wild - for this young Cinderella, he's come outta no where, he's got about 350 yards left, he's gonna hit about a five-iron, don't you think? He's got a beautiful backswing - that's - Oh he got all of that one! He's gotta be pleased with that, the crowd is just on its feet here, uh - He's the Cinderella boy, uh - tears in his eyes I guess as he lines up this last shot, he's got about 195 yards left, he's got about a - its looks like he's got about an eight-iron. This crowd has gone deathly silent, the Cinderella story, outta no where, a former greenskeeper now - about to become the Masters champion. It looks like a mirac - It's in the Hole!"
Be sure to remember the Programmers Prayer
I could see a drunken John Daly matching that. A billion mile long drive... ...200 miles out of bounds, landing in a huge water hazard.
Are we the only 2 people who don't get golf?
I don't get it at all. You pay a buttload of cash for the equipment, for bad clothing, and for the privilege to play on a manicured field. And you keep paying the latter, over and over again, to avoid sucking that badly.
All this for "a good walk spoiled".
Sorry, I have an MBA, and I still don't understand the fascination. I can increase positive cash flow by opening my front door and have an unspoiled good walk for free. And that reminds me..
And what's with calling golf a sport anyway? In the past two weeks, I watched the Super Bowl, some of the Winter Olympics, college B-ball, and pro hockey -- and you know what? Those people were involved with sports. I also went to my gym, and saw plenty of weight-trainers, bodybuilders, and Tae Kwon Do students. These people participated in sports too.
Do you want to know how I know this? Not one participant was wearing slacks.
Let's get serious. Golf is not a "sport", it is a "skill". It is a highly lucrative skill for those with considerable talent, but it is a "skill" nonetheless. If you're wearing Dockers (or driving a cart, or hiring a lackey to ruck for you), it's just.. not.. a sport.
Billiards is more aerobic by comparison.
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
Seriously, if you're going to post this stuff at least get your titles to look like the Weekly World News.
Yet another piece of killer space junk to track.
Bet he would feel bad if it came back around and smacked the ISS, or a billion dollar sat..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
a Russian cosmonaut will take his trusty six iron and a special weightless-friendly.
My 12-year old just read this and asked me what weightless means. It's some bad physics.
Could he take out a satalite? Or worse yet one of the Windows of the space station?
Not as impressive as spaceship one but its nice to see private industry doing some funding..
Someone already got my Mulligan joke idea so I'll move onto my other thought. Just yesterday I researched and wrote a small program to show the projectile trajectory of an object. IANAG but I understand that golf club faces have different face angles to change the loft of the ball. Drivers have low face angles, 9 irons high.
So what intrigues me (other then why the guy needs a tee in space) is when he hits the ball, how will the face angle change or set the trajectory (orbit?). Granted, this is a shameless commercial plug for a golf company, but it can provide a good lab for young physics minds to try and calculate the orbit. I read some posts that talked about the golf ball traveling 23 or 27 thousand mph. That must be one hell of a swing. I would think the relative velocity of the ball would be similar to that on earth. If he hits it in retrograde orbit I would be more worried about the thing slamming into a working satellite.
Since they are going to have a transmitter in the ball (rendering it illegal to use in PGA tours, but making it easier to find in the rough) it will be interesting to track. The next commercial idea in space I'd like to see...solar sails. North Sails, coupled with NASA sponsor a sail ship race from Earth to the Moon. Don't give a damn if they splash Coca Cola signs all over the place if it means something other then reseach is done in space.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
This might well be the most expensive slice in golf history.
ok, from TFA:
"The ball is expected to remain in orbit for three to four years."
"The ball is expected to travel up to 2.1 billion miles before it drops back into the atmosphere and burns up."
TFA doesn't say if that distance is based on 3 or 4 years, so I'll work out both and give a max & min average velocity:
Min time in space = 3 years = 1,096 days (2*365 + 1*366: leap year in 2008) = 26,304 hours
Max time in space = 4 years = 1,461 days (3*365 + 1*366: leap year in 2008) = 35,064 hours
2.1 billion miles / 26,304 hours = 79,835.77 mph
2.1 billion miles / 35,064 hours = 59,890.49 mph
So the average speed will be between 59,890.49 mph & 79,835.77 mph!! (or 96,384.16 kph & 128,482.90 kph)
Considering the speed of sound (at sea level) is 761mph it's just as well in space nobody can here you play golf!
Haydn.
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. - Douglas Adams
Tentatively scheduled for a spacewalk this summer, a Russian cosmonaut will take his trusty six iron and a special weightless-friendly tee and put a golf ball into orbit from outside the International Space Station.
Is there any better example of the pettiness and utter pointlessness of the ISS? The program has been reduced to a carnival side show of paid stunts and celebrity guests. It won't be long until its hull is rented for advertising. I can imagine it eventually looking like a NASCAR racer. The political goal of moderation of Russia, set by Clinton, has failed. The program cost and responsibility for launching and assembly is disproportately born by the US. In the US we have wasted 30 years of the future on this. Support project Constellation.
an ill wind that blows no good
Nice stunt, but why? There are thousands of useless objects orbiting our world, each a danger for anything sharing their orbits... Why add another....
In space no-one can hear you yell FOOOOOOOOOOUR!
nt means no text
-- Boycott Shell
Well I am sure glad we got all that world hunger and the hole in the ozone layer fixed... otherwise this might seem like a waste of time.
...they really take this "free market" philosophy way too seriously ;-) hehehe it's all kind of ironic that the Russians are the guys who are funding their space program through space tourism, commercial tie-ups, etc, and the Americans are the ones who don't like the idea of private money in space? Who'd have thought it 20 years ago?
You'll put your eye out with that golf ball!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Why doesn't he use a driver?
Even more space trash. Just what we need. A nice golf ball at whatever nice speed can come in pretty hard...
It is expected to orbit for 3 to 4 years before burning up on re-entry.
I can't hit a golf ball 30 feet. This is impressive. I would like to think that it would either burn up or move from the planet faster. I always felt that keeping something in orbit was a bit harder than basically hitting it with a stick.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
LDEF taught us a lot about impact damage from space junk, since it was up there for a long time, and was retrieved.
m pact.html
"With a relative impact velocity of 10 km/s, a piece of aluminum debris which is ~0.7 mm in diameter can penetrate through a typical 2.5 mm thick aluminum satellite wall. During its 5.75 year exposure, LDEF saw one (1) impact of this size per 7 [square meters] of exposed surface area in the RAM direction. In addition to this, LDEF experienced ~1 impact [per square meter], on ram-exposed surfaces, which could have penetrated a typical 1.5 mm thick aluminum electronics box."
-http://setas-www.larc.nasa.gov/LDEF/MET_DEB/md_i
1 impact per square meter over 6 years in orbit. So, you need to make your spacecraft really small, or really thick, or you need to go up for very short periods of time and cross your fingers. And that's without golf balls whizzing past.
Also; if you and the golf-ball are in very similar orbits, this means the golf ball will have a speed very close to yours, relatively speaking. ISS is in a very low orbit, going around 7700 m/s. If you and the ball are both travelling 7700 m/s though, having your orbit be off by only 1 degree relative to each other means a 134 m/s impact, or 482 km/h, which is still going to leave a nasty bruise.
If he does, he'll have to stamp it back down with his foot really hard. ;-)
Teach him to ignore Sir Issac.
What?
ISS loses about 2 KM of altitude per month if it doesn't use it's engines to gain some altitude (it's in a rather low orbit, so it does go through a tiny bit of our atmosphere, and this does slow it down) and if they ever did fail to gain altitude every few months, this drop would accelerate greatly as it got down more into our atmosphere. As a consequence of the square-cube law, smaller objects will generally drop even faster (because the ratio of surface area/mass increases as you get smaller, and so your deacceleration due to drag increases similarly.) Suitsat is probably a good deal less dense than a golf ball, and irregularly shaped, so it will certainly be much more draggy, and even though it's more massive I'd expect it to stay up for a shorter period of time, but even so ... a factor of 30 difference in how long they stay up seems awfully high.
Three to four years sounds like about how long the ISS would stay up without any thrust, but maybe it's longer than that. And a golf ball is pretty good at slipping through the air (that's what the dimples are all about) so maybe it's will stay up so long just because of that.
Or maybe Pavel Vinogradov has one hell of a swinging arm ...
And, hey, we owe the Russians a little slack. Without them to give U.S. astronauts a ride, the ISS would have to be abandoned.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
. . . than the estimated 2.1 billon miles he hits the ball.
What?
(5) therefore any collosion with the golfball at a later time will be at a velocity SLOWER than the swing, far slower than any other piece of space junk out there, and definitely not a threat. Not to mention there is a TRANSMITTER in there. They will see it coming and wave
ISS orbits inclined at 56 deg. A satellite orbiting in polar or equatorial orbit will be hit at a relative cos(i - 56). That can be a lot, like ~8000mph. It is a pretty irresponsible act given that space debris is already a serious problem.
an ill wind that blows no good
From the highest point of the ISS orbit (354.2 km), a regulation size golf ball (at least 42.67cm diameter and at most 45.93 grams), the orbit would decay in about 177 days, according to the program in this paper (and assuming no space weather): Satellite Orbital Decay Calculations.
The inputs to that program are:
0.04593 kg satellite mass
0.00143 m^2 satellite (frontal) area
354.2 km satellite orbit
(no space weather)
Even if the golf ball's effective area (well, the "frontal area", which is what we're concerned with) is reduced by half, the golf ball won't be up for even a year (354 days).
And this is assuming that the cosmonaut will be able to hit the ball in a roughly circular orbit! In other words, the ball must be higher than regulation mass (probably would have to be 200-300 grams, at least) in order to stay up that long (and probably to get the transmitter inside).
In other words, no real records for regulation golf balls will be broken (assuming it will be up there for at least a year).
I'll bet he slices it and it travels 1/18th of a revolution, the ball goes OB, and he tries to take a mulligan...
I'd worry less about the golf ball and more about the embarrassed cosmonaut who's trying to push the divot he just made back in to the ISS with the toe of his spacesuit before anyone notices.
BTW, I meant to write 42.67mm, not 42.67cm for the regulation diameter.
Advertising exec: "We'll call it 'The Tee Shot Hear 'Round The World."
College Advertising Intern: "But sir, there's no sound in space."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Couldn't they find a sponsor for the ball?
Maybe it's more than just a golf ball. Maybe it's some super secrete Russian spy satellite and not really a golf ball at all.
--
Q
That is the stupidest thing I have ever read. First of all, why do the Russians think that hitting a golf ball will put it in a perfect orbit? I mean, come on.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
Well, I'm an aerospace engineer also. The difference is that I happen to know a bit about orbit geometry, space debris, and most importantly relative motion.
This is a stupid "experiment". That transmitter will likely last days at best. In any case, the USAF which maintains the most complete and widely used space catalog does not & cannot use that transmitter to track the object. They rely exclusively on radar & optical observations to maintain the catalog. And this object is to small to be reliably tracked by the existing sensors unless they've stuck some dipoles on it as they have with other microsat experiments - and even then it's something of a crapshoot. Didn't sound like it from the article. Even if you could track it, most stuff up there doesn't have the ability to manuever to get out of the way even if they did see it coming. And almost nobody would see it coming because almost nobody does any form of collision avoidance analysis.
So, back to orbits. First, there are some retrograde satellites. Israel in particular doesn't have much of a launch azimuth beyond almost due west down the mediteranean. So you end up with stuff like OFEQ 5 (27434, 2002-025A) with an inclination of about 144 degrees.
But you don't need to pick out oddballs OFEQ 5 and a handful of other to see the problem. For the moment, we'll ignore eccentricity and right ascension of ascending node and focus on inclination only (ie. the collision occurs at the equator), since that's the most intuitive point to illustrate here.
ISS (25544, 1998-067A) has an inclination of 51.6 degrees. We'll assume the inclination of "GolfSat" is about the same, since it takes *alot* of energy to change the orbital plane significantly. A quick search of the catalog shows there are 344 objects crossing the orbit of ISS with inclinations ranging from 0.55 degrees (28645, 2005-015B, BLOCK DM-SL R/B) to 97 degrees (27551, 2002-049B, CZ-4B R/B).
So the inclination difference between ISS and 27551 is about 51 degrees. Let's call the velocity of each object 7 Km/second to keep it simple. The relative velocity of a collision between these objects would be approximately 6 Km/second. I'll leave the trig as an exercise for the reader.
By comparison, the muzzle velocity of a rifle bullet tops out around 1 Km/second. Taking that as the lower bound of risk, that gives us a inclination difference of just 8 degrees to give GolfSat a relative velocity equal to that of a rifle bullet.
Of course, inclination isn't the only thing playing as I mentioned before. It's not hard to arrange the orbit geometry such that the angle of incidence at collision is significantly > 90 degrees - ie. getting toward head on.
So, in short, you don't need anything like "reciprocal orbits" to end up with enormously high relative velocities.
KSR, Author of the ever-popular Red, Green, Blue Mars trilogy of novels as well as a host of other extra- and neo-terrestrial adventures had a good one in his novella collection Icehenge http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312866097/qid=11 41145898/sr=1-27/ref=sr_1_27/104-7802270-0079101?s =books&v=glance&n=283155
I believe it's in this one that one of the side stories is about a "space golf" tournament in an astroid field that involves lobbing a small clump of rocket propelled debris at a "hole" astroid and using gravity of others to bend the path of the ball. In a humours take, the whole event is VERY dull, anti-climatic and ends in a draw for lack of time/recalculation by both "participants".
Almost like the original sport is without debauchery... 8^)
priceless,
l8r,
Levendis47
--==[ AOL YIM ICQ : Levendis47 : levendis47@yahoo.com ]==--
Astronaut Alan Shepard hit three drives on the moon on Feb 6, 1971 during his Apollo 14 lunar walk. (Remember when the US had a manned space program?)
first those freaking muppets end up in space and now golf balls?
I'm hoping the swing will be filmed. Hope he strikes it true, rather than having it bounce off the ISS and drift slowly away just out of reach.
I'd disagree with you on Baseball. I find it only slightly less boring than golf, at least at the major leagues. Watching a minor league game is still fun, because the players still care. And as for football, I assume George Carlin was talking about American football. *spits* Maybe half of the game is actually spent playing. The rest is abitrating rules.
But then again, it's all a matter of opinion. Some people would go on for hours about the skill and technique, the bodily conditioning even, required for a good round of golf. Anything which requires skill rather than just luck is, to me, a sport. It may not be something I like, but I'm willing to give it the label of sport. Football, even American football, can be considered a sport. FPS contests can be considered a sport. Tiddlywinks is a sport. Craps and playing War (the card game) aren't. Roulette isn't. Poker and blackjack are borderline in that there's skill involved, but I'd say that the element of chance plays a greater role than that of skill there.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
This is the same poster that has previously demonstrated his difficulties with numbers. You'd think inability to count would be a handicap for an aerospace engineer, but apparently not.
I think it orbit the Earth for FORE years!
*groan*
As long as he doesn't accidentally take a divot out of the space station or slice it and put it thorugh a solar panel ..
If the ball is hit in the opposite direction from the station's travel, it will instead descend to a perigee and rise back up to meet the station's orbit, but will be ahead of the station.
Now try to think about what will happen if the ball is hit directly towards the earth, or away from the earth.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
Russian cosmonaut will take his trusty six iron ..
sounds pretty much like
American astronaut will take his trusty balalajka and play few of his favourite tunes
ie - completely out of space.
PS For those loonies who put this news bit together - 90% of Russians don't even *know* what the golf is.
3.243F6A8885A308D313
It would be really funny to see him whiff. Or just barely tick the ball, so it slowly but surely dribbled just out of reach... Then maybe he'll throw his club in frustration. "Whoops, now I've damaged the reentry insulation! !@#@%$#%#$^&&*%!"
No no no. More fun than hitting the ball - chuck the club at the earth! Set up a target in an Illinois cornfield, and see how close you can get!
Any satellite not inserted into orbit within a few degrees and a few hundred mph of it's intended trajectory is likely to burn up long before it's intended time.
Since the golf ball has no propulsion ability itself, and they hauled 6 of them up there, are they going to simply wail off 6 shots and hope one actually goes into a reasonable orbit?
One would assume that they are firing it behind the space station (ie, it will go dozens of mph slower than the space station) so it'll have a better chance of deorbiting, but this information isn't given in the article.
Going to be a very low power transmitter to last 5 or more years (just in case they miss and it orbits longer), and survive the impact of a golf club. I suppose amateur radio enthusiasts are going to have to look pretty hard to listen to it themselves.
-Adam
This is why you shouldn't let Canadian Club sponsor your aerospace program.
Badass Resumes
Welcome to H.S. physics. Do you really think that any collision this thing might have - at Km/second closure rates - will be anything close to elastic?
Quite right ... and interestingly, golf balls are engineered to maximize the length of their flight, subject to PGA rules. Most likely, that engineering assumes "normal" atmospheric conditions, so I don't know whether the ball will in practice have extended flight in the relatively rarified conditions around the ISS. It might depend on the configuration of the radio antenna as well.
Also of interest: PGA rules say, "... if you damage or cut your ball, you may change the ball after first asking your opponent or fellow competitor." and "If you hit a tee shot into the woods and suspect that it might be either lost or out-of-bounds, the Rules of Golf allow you to play a second or provisional ball"
Query: does burning up in the atmosphere count under either rule?
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
Screw the transmitter, send him up there with a camera & an exploding golfball. :)
Nobody I know who plays golf wants to hear about the same damn golfball for 3-4 friggin years.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
He hit a golf ball a few lightyears.
So after the ball burns up on re-entry: Does he have to declare the ball lost and take stroke and distance? - or - Does he get to declare the ball damaged and get to play his next as near as practical to the placed when the ball (would have?) come to rest? These are important questions for scientists (well, the golf playing ones at least)
Squirrel!
...in orbit. What BS.
I just had a vision of the Cosmonaut hitting the ball, then watching it recede into the distance...
but as he basks in the congratulations of the crews, the ball hits him in the back of the head.
Yes, I know that this could only occur if he were not in orbit but you must admit it is a nice thought...
I am not a manual I am a human being! - The distress call of the TechSupport Badger
Fire the bb gun at earth every 5 second then sit back and watch the light show as they burn up on reentry.
It will melt and distort itself then freeze and shatter.
does he have to buy everyone on earth a drink?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
... when they do bowling in space. That'll be worth watching when it hits another satellite.
That is all.
"A "launch platform" was developed along with a spring-like space tee that would hold a golf ball in weightlessness yet release it when struck, Hearn said." Am I the only one that thinks they are over-designing this? Is there any reason why they can't velcro the ball to the side of the station? I highly doubt velcro would cause a problem for anyone in this case.
What goes around, comes around.
Watch out.
Ignoring resitance due to the earth's atmosphere (which we really should not do at LEO), yes, it will pass through the exact same point that it was struck.
However, the ISS will not be there when it returns.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
If it goes faster than escape velocity it never comes back to earth. More accurately, it won't orbit earth, but by coincidence its orbit around the sun may bring it back to earth (I'm wonky with the orbital mechanics with multiple gravity sources, but that's probably right).
seems as though there are many posts regarding the golf ball hitting something... but i think we should be more worried about something hitting the golf ball! now THAT'S something to worry about!
fact: microsoft > linux
I figure there are two likely explanations for the recent outbreak of trailer park science in orbit.
1) They're trying to make the best of a very bad situation, and improvising experiments with what little they have on hand or that can be fit into a supply capsule without displacing too much necessary cargo (food, etc).
2) They're trying to embarrass NASA and the Congress into raising their funding.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
Yes, it would.