Apollo astronaut really did hit lunar golf ball for miles and miles and miles

Apollo 14 cosmonaut Alan Shepard famously took a golf musket ball along with him to the Moon , making him the first person to play golf on another world . But just how far did his shot travel ? One physicist has the reply .

After taking his second crack , Shepard detect the ball seemed to travel for “ miles and miles and mil . ” Theoretical astrophysicist and ScienceBlogs writer Ethan Siegel put this title to the trial , calculating just how far you could send a golf clump flying in the airless , reduced gravitational attraction surroundings of the Moon .

He found that , put on the golfing astronaut live how to adjust his approach to properly take vantage of the Moon ’s environment , he could easily hit the formal 2.5 miles . Perhaps even more astonishingly , the ball would probably continue in the melodic phrase for about 70 irregular before finally coming to a sleep . Shepard ’s shot likely was n’t quite perfect enough to make it that far , but he likely was right in his initial reflection that the ball run low over a Swedish mile into the distance .

Indeed , considering Earth ’s long golf game shot was belike Mike Austin ’s 515 yard drive in 1974 , Shepard almost certainly holds the unofficial phonograph record for longest drive in human account . Here ’s an ESPN commercial message featuring the footage of Shepard ’s golf shot , complete with some rather funny interplay between Shepard and Mission Control :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCOOgRxqzmw

[ ScienceBlogs ]

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