Golf Stunt Back On Track
Space station lined up for golf promotion, AP
“Russian flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin will show off his swing to promote a Toronto golf club manufacturer during a spacewalk Nov. 23. NASA safety officers have cleared the stunt, saying it poses no threat to the space station or the crew since the golf ball weighs only three grams and will return to Earth’s atmosphere in three days.”
Reader note: I guess it’s not a real golf ball. Regulation golf balls have a mass of 45.9 grams, not 3. (For a while I thought it was just another English to metric error but this is 1.62 ounces not 3 oz..) If it weighs 3 grams and will reenter in 3 days, it must be a hollow plastic ball. On second thought, even a hollow ball wouldn’t deorbit from 350 km in three days. Could it be that they are just trying to ignore it?
