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+--- Thread: Golfing in SPAAAACE! (/showthread.php?tid=3580)
Golfing in SPAAAACE! - Dark Jaguar - 6th March 2006
It seems that the Russian space program has cut a deal with some golf club company to have a cosmonaut golf a ball and bounce it off the international space station.
Sounds safe enough, until one remembers the lack of anything to slow down a flying golf ball. That thing will fly away from the space station at a fixed speed, and once the ball settles into orbit, it will be travelling, relative to the station, at something likely faster than the speed of sound. What happens when the golf ball travels around and comes back towards the station from the other direction?
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=1093
We've all seen those videos of tunnels where scientists fire small pellets at really high speed at some giant granite slab right? The ISS isn't granite...
This is why even paint is considered too dangerous on a space mission. A few flecks of anything becomes a very overpowered projectile when orbitting at low altitude...
Golfing in SPAAAACE! - Great Rumbler - 6th March 2006
Just aim it towards the Earth.
Golfing in SPAAAACE! - Dark Jaguar - 6th March 2006
They are aiming it at the space station, and there's no way to tell which way it will bounce, because it will be a cosmonaut hitting a spheroid with a cudgel, not some super accurate calculated thing!
I suggest they DO NOT do this.