NY Times: Golf Shot Postponed

The New York Times
May 31, 2006
Golf Shot in Space Is Postponed by Russians
By WARREN E. LEARY

WASHINGTON, May 30 — Russian and American astronauts on the International Space
Station ran through a dress rehearsal on Tuesday of the five-and-a-half-hour
spacewalk planned for Thursday.

The mission will not include a previously planned attempt to whack a golf ball into
orbit for the longest drive in history.

During a televised news conference on Tuesday from the Johnson Space Center in
Houston, NASA officials said everything was ready for the station crew to don
Russian Orlan spacesuits and exit the Pirs airlock on the Russian side of the
station on the scheduled 65th spacewalk to build and maintain the orbiting
laboratory.

Kirk Shireman, NASA's deputy manager for the station program, said the venture
outside the station was unusual in that part of it would be managed from mission
control in Houston while most of it would be orchestrated by the Russian control
center near Moscow.

During the spacewalk, Pavel V. Vinogradov, the Russian station commander, and Col.
Jeffrey N. Williams of the Army, the mission flight engineer and NASA science
officer, will install a new hydrogen vent valve on the hull of the Zvezda Service
Module that is part of the Russian Elektron oxygen-generation system.

The spacewalkers will also recover a thruster rocket residue collector and retrieve
a contamination-monitoring device and a package of biology experiments.

Afterward, American controllers are to take control of the excursion as Mr.
Vinogradov and Colonel Williams head for the American side of the station, where
they are to replace a malfunctioning camera on the Mobile Base System rail car that
moves up and down the truss that supports the complex.

Holly Ridings, spacewalk director for the mission, said Russian and American
officials added the camera replacement task to the schedule several weeks ago after
the Russians had decided to delay a commercial golf stunt planned by a Canadian
company.

Russian officials had cleared Mr. Vinogradov to use golf equipment carried to the
station on earlier cargo flights to drive a special ball into orbit.

The Element 21 Golf Company in Toronto had paid Russia an unspecified amount for
its Golf Shot in Space project, in which a special radio-transmitting ball would be
smacked into a three-year orbit of Earth. The company said the promotion was to
celebrate the 35th anniversary of Alan B. Shepard Jr.'s famous golf shot on the
Moon on the Apollo 14 mission.

Ms. Ridings said the Russians did not specify why they delayed the golf stunt,
which had raised some early concerns about the swinging club or the ball possibly
endangering the station. An American safety review of the proposal is about done,
she said, and the venture will probably go ahead, perhaps on a Russian-controlled
spacewalk scheduled this fall.

On Tue, 30 May 2006 22:33:04 -0700, in a place far, far away, Dale
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to
indicate that:

The New York Times
May 31, 2006
Golf Shot in Space Is Postponed by Russians
By WARREN E. LEARY

WASHINGTON, May 30 — Russian and American astronauts on the International Space
Station ran through a dress rehearsal on Tuesday of the five-and-a-half-hour
spacewalk planned for Thursday.

The mission will not include a previously planned attempt to whack a golf ball into
orbit for the longest drive in history.

It's already in orbit. More technological illiteracy from the Gray
Lady.

The New York Times
The mission will not include a previously planned attempt to whack
a golf ball into orbit for the longest drive in history.

It's already in orbit. More technological illiteracy from the Gray
Lady.

Well, the Times has to take the blame for publishing it, or not, but I
would assume that it is the golf company sponsoring this which came up
with that way of characterizing the shot. "Whack a golf ball into
orbit" sounds more impressive than "Slightly modify a golf ball's
orbit".

But my first reaction was that the whole thing seemed somehow
emblematic of an aging and cautious agency. On the moon, the
astronaut acting alone smuggles a golf head in his spacesuit pocket,
and waits for a lax moment in the schedule for his shot:

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a14/a14.clsout2.html

(Not that this source really spells out who knew about this golf shot
before the mission, and whether there was some kind of tacit/informal
approval, or even something more official).

On ISS, a committee has to go over the shot in great detail, analyzing
all the risks, the benefits. And all for something which is backward
looking - trying to pay homage to the glory days of past space
missions, rather than come up with something of their own.

Is that an unfair comparison? Almost surely. But somehow it seems
evocative nonetheless.

Jim Kingdon wrote in
news
But my first reaction was that the whole thing seemed somehow
emblematic of an aging and cautious agency.

Yes, the Russians are getting overly cautious in their old age.

(No, NASA had nothing to do with delaying this stunt. Yes, if you meant to
imply they did, you were being presumptuous and unfair.)

--
JRF

Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.

(No, NASA had nothing to do with delaying this stunt.

I'm not sure how to read the following (from the Times article which
was posted, which was my only source for information). "About done"
wouldn't seem to mean "done" although it might be "would have been
done in time for the spacewalk if not for the delay which was
unrelated".

An American safety review of the proposal is about done, she said, and
the venture will probably go ahead, perhaps on a Russian-controlled
spacewalk scheduled this fall.

Yes, if you meant to imply they did, you were being presumptuous and
unfair.)

Well, I wasn't reacting to the delay, rather to the stunt itself.

But of course the whole analogy/reaction breaks down if you start
thinking about NASA vs. the Russians vs. the golf company (or in any
number of other ways - in my previous post I said "Is that an unfair
comparison? Almost surely.").