He wrote the short story “Arena” which has been made into a zillion science fiction shows (including an original Trek). “What Mad Universe” is a fun book, and his hard-bitten 1940s detective novels are a lot of fun.

I was thinking of this same story, too. But for some reason, I thought the product they were hawking turned out to be laundry soap.

I think they are counting on drag causing enough delta-V that the ball never intersects the ISS again. Plus the ISS can maneuver/reboost. (Don’t know if it did.)

I just hope it’s gone by Dec 7 (when the Shuttle goes up again).

I’m waiting.

Ivan. (Go cricket – 1 down, 4 to go),(I couldn’t resist either).

For the record & the lazy here’s the BA’s comments cut’n'pasted over. (Hope that’s okay netiquette ~wise)

The Bad Astronomer Says: March 6th, 2006 at 7:57 pm

Bad Albert, no, this is totally different. For one, Shephard knew he couldn’t hit the ball very far. It only went a few yards. Second, he was away from equipment and aimed the ball away from the LM and equipment. There was no possible way he could have damaged the LM.

On the ISS it’s totally different. In orbit, the ball will continue to move, while on the Moon the gravity and friction stopped the ball. Also, the ball will go into a separate orbit, which can intersect some other satellite or even the Shuttle.

——————————-

My response to that? ..Well Shepherd’s stunt still strikes me as being almost as unnecessary and has a not inconsiderable element of needless risk* plus I think they did sorta work out in advance what direction they were hitting the golf ball and they’ seem to have worked out that it will lose enegy and reenter the atmosphere burning up later

.. Still I see your point(s)..

* Eg. what if it had somehow richotted back on him or skewed off and hit the LEM or the other astronaut? What if he’d fallen over trying it and cracked his visor with his club? etc..)

What we really need is a proper lunar sports facility (pref. a cricket oval but more likely a soccer [football] stadium ..) or same in Low Earth orbit or space generally specially constructed to allow this sort of low-grav fun in safe(r) confines.

BTW. How do we know that the suggestion someone made didn’t actually happen here – that the golf shot was faked and we were only told that it happened in reality rather than sim /CGI??? If everyone is sworn to secrecy and the money was paid for, well not exactly nothing but something a lot safer than the alternative, could the stunt all be a white lie?

Finally, one good reason all space exploration & sports fans should seek a Lunar cricket match – it’ll needs at least 24 people up there – 11 per team and (at least) two umpires!

Yes, no doubt we’ll be seeing the advertising men in space before too long, boldly billboarding where no billboarder has billboarded before (or something along those lines).

To paraphrase Ogden Nash (who in turn paraphrased some other obscure poet):

I still can’t see as I gaze afar,
A billboard lovely as a star.
Indeed now that the billboards reign
I’ll never see a star again!
(© 2006 Elwood Herring)

Was that any better?

Personally, I don’t know what the big deal is with golf -now if itwas a lunar cricket match now _THAT_ would be worthwhile!

(BTW. Australia leading in the first Ashes test by a mere 355 runs having set the Poms a target of 648 runs and England down to its last few wickets witha day still to play! Sorry, can’t help rubbing it in!)

Alien* – races are fighting for market share -Earth sells the rights to use Jupiter as an interstellar billboard to the hyper-advanced Mizzarett* species
…but with a punchline that we’ve outwitted them because they failed to take up – and their rival Lamberj species will now be desperate to pay for advertising rights over Saturn with its rings!

*Very alien these (definitely the Mizarett & by implication, also theLamberj) occupies the coronal haloes of O-type stars in a brilliant throw-away line at the start.

Who’d have thought at the height of the Cold War that it would be the _Russian’s_ desperately trying to make money by stupid stunts in space and the Americans criticising them for their cash over all else ideology!

Oh & ‘Lab Lemming’ a better option for the ISS I’d suggest – fit it with rocket boosters and transform it from a station to a spaceship .. We could have a manned spaceship ready to head to Mars there that just needs a propulsion system!

As for the F=ma stuff, you’re right that if they hit the ball with the same force then a more massive ball would just move slower and therefore impart the same amount of force (damage) if it hits something else. Except that… the station (and the golf ball) are already moving pretty fast. So imagine if it hits a satellite head on, or even slams into the side of it. Though a 45 gram ball would be going slower by that little bit that the golf club affected it, the impact velocity would still be almost as great as that of the 3 gram ball. But the 3 gram ball would have a lot less force due to it’s lower mass. Though, if that happened, that satellite’s probably not going to be able to tell the difference anyway. It’s like: would you rather be hit by a 79 ton train or an 80 ton train?

There was another SF short story I read a long time ago (can’t remember who wrote it) about a worldwide panic when scientists start noticing that certain stars were moving in unpredictable directions. Eventually fter a day or two they all coalesced into the Coca-Cola logo (it’s always them, isn’t it?), and the stunt turned out to be some kind of trick with mirrors. Some trick!

GAry 7

Many, many years ago I read a short sf story (I think it was by Clarke but it could have been Asimov) that ended with the logo of a well known soft drink company being projected onto the surface of the moon & being visible to the naked eye from Earth.

Back then, when admitting to reading science fiction stories, I used to get comments along the lines of “What are you reading that rubbish for?” Many of the ideas propounded in those stories are now science fact! I’ve also recently been told that many of the stories WERE rubbish from a literary point of view but to me that’s not the point, as it was the ideas that were important.

Anyway, the point here is that space advertising was proposed at least 40 years ago.

Not that it would affect other countries, but then again, what goes up must come down, or is it what goes up must be shot down, yeah, it’s the second one.

Any faster would violate conservation of energy, unless the club had loaded springs on it that are triggered by the collision, or something like that (ie unless the ball can draw on some energy source other than the kinetic energy of the club).

Also, if the lighter ball was actually moving at a speed that increased directly proportionately as its mass decreased (and I can’t reason out whether or not this is the case), wouldn’t it drop into a much lower orbit if it were shot straight backward off the back of the ISS than the more massive ball would? The more massive ball would after all have a much lower speed, and thus it would be in a higher orbit.

Rob P.

1. How would these affect non-visual telescopy? Such as radiotelescopes?
2. How wouls these affect amateur astronomy, setting up your 4 incher in the backyard? I don’t think that will ever be replaced by scopes on the moon, barring colonists.
3. Think how many more UFO sightings we can have, what with lots of flashing objects swooping around in the sky. Hey, if the Moon can be mistaken for a UFO, why not a falshing McDonalds logo?

Ezelite said:
> Perhaps the money wasted on parabolic flights and golf balls shjould be spent on developing a space elevator, but thats another can of worms.

That is actively in work, by another commercial venture.

One Eyed Jack said:
>Forgive the poor physics understanding of a Chemist, but how is the mass of the ball a factor? F=ma. The force imparted from the club will be the same regardless of the ball’s mass. The result from striking a lighter ball would be a faster moving ball, but a ball that still contains the same kinetic energy as a standard ball. Wouldn’t the force imparted if the ball later strikes the station be the same regardless of the ball’s mass?

Presumably a lighter ball will be slowed by drag faster, so the eventual impact will have less momentum and less kinetic energy.

>Is this lower mass possibly also the reason for the unexpected short lifespan before the ball’s orbit decays? If a standard ball will be hit at 10 m/s (as has been suggested by BA), will a ball with 1/15 of the mass be hit at 150 m/s?

Yes, but not for velocity, but rather atmospheric drag. Yes, there is still atmosphere – very thin, but enough to drag ojects, decay their orbits, and cause them to fall. That’s why the ISS has booster thrusters. Drag is affected by cross-sectional area and surface factors. Assuming the same surface and same diameter, an object that is lighter will have less momentum, so the same amount of drag force will slow it down quicker, making it fall sooner.