playing golf on the moon (with David Bowie)

Post-Playtime moongolfing action

Here's a copy of the email I sent out yesterday that shows how the PlayTime event has taken the golfonthemoon mission to another level:

My fellow MoonGolfers

The time has come to act!! The space race is back on! The Russians are golfing!! In space!! Follow up our fabulous PlayTime event, with the latest set of training missions:

AN IPOD SHUFFLE GOES TO THE CREATOR OF THE BEST MOON/GOLF/BOWIE IMAGE SUBMITTED BY XMAS

We've already started simulating stages the mission using photographs taken here on Earth (see http://timwright.typepad.com/main/2006/10/first_moongolf_.html).

As fellow moongolfer Rob Bevan  has already commented "Simulation = Solution". Contribute your own manipulated images by emailing them to competition[at]xpt[dot]com and win an iPod shuffle loaded with Bowie tunes.

ASTRONAUT TRAINING: teach Tim how to talk and walk like an astronaut http://timwright.typepad.com/main/2006/10/astronaut_train.html

MISSION SCENARIOS: turn your photos into essential moongolf media http://www.xpt.com/uk/news/create-a-moongolfbowie-image-before-xmas-and-win-an-ipod-shuffle/

ROCKET MODULE DESIGN: develop Lego prototypes of key transport components
http://timwright.typepad.com/main/2006/11/rocket_scientis.html

‘ACTION’ TIM SETUP: turn Tim & Rob into your playthings, using Action Man dolls
http://timwright.typepad.com/main/2006/10/becoming_an_act.html

BOWIE SIMULATION: share videos of short-burst Bowie karaoke (full Bowie outfits and make-up preferred) http://timwright.typepad.com/main/2006/10/bowie_on_youtub.html

LUNAR GOLF PRACTISE: join a moment of Flashmob madness as we attempt a par three on the streets of Soho http://timwright.typepad.com/main/2006/10/the_first_hole.html

Remember - don’t leave space to the professionals!

Neville, neville

A great email from Paul Conneally:

Tim - here's a bowie based foootball chant that manchester untited fans sang when both young neville brothers were playing in defence - and yes their dad's first name is...Neville

it's sung to the tune of rebel rebel:

'Neville Neville, they're in defence,
Neville Neville , their future's immense.
Neville Neville , they ain't half bad,
Neville Neville, the name of their dad.'

maybe we could come up with some golf chants/songs based on bowie stuff... you could sing them together on the way back from the moon ... on the back seat... like on the way back from the seaside trips organised by the working mens clubs for us when i was a boy.. to cleethorpes, mablethorpe, skegness... at the end of the trip we'd rush the coach to take the backseat and sing all the way home... at first football songs... and then led by the grandads and grandmas further up the coach all the old songs... my old man said follow the van and don't dilly dally on the way...daisy daisy give me your answer do i'm half crazy all for the love of you and more and more till w'ed pile off at the club for a film show of woody pecker cartoons and a brown paper bag of fruit to take home

imagine the party when you return from the moon... what cartoon film would you like (we'd have to ask david too) and would you want to take home with you in your brown paper bag? all that's best, paul

The Russians play golf in space

Thank you to all of you who alerted me to the momentous event that took place in space this week. It seems that the world is slowly but surely going my way:

A Russian cosmonaut has made golfing history by firing a tee shot from a precarious perch outside the International Space Station (ISS). Flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin stood on a ladder by the docking port and hit a light-weight ball using a gold-plated six-iron club.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6164988.stm

There it goes!" Tyurin said after making the one-handed shot . "It went pretty far. It was an excellent shot. I can still see it as a little dot that's moving away from us."

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/061123_eva17.html

Fellow moongolfer Joanne alerted me to the Guardian coverage. See http://static.flickr.com/106/304883653_06fbf8018a.jpg?v=0. However, it was Marina Hyde's sniffy article about how pointless the whole stunt was that prompted most comment amongst the growing band of people who are helping me with my own peculiar brand of spacegolf. It seems there's a certain hunger amongst you to know what the point of my mission might be. If only I knew. if only I knew...

For those who need to know BTW how  - in nerdy detail - how the Rusky pitch was achieved, there's a terrific NASA video with technical commentary here.

Note how the mission is entitled 'the golf experiment', that the astronauts 'egress' through the hatch and 'address the ball with a putting-type motion'. This is exacty the kind of language I'd like to learn as part of my astronaut training.

Meanwhile, the Russian  Federal Space Agency  maintains a stony silence on its english language (?) web site.  They do though know how to keep track of the Space Station. Something to consider for my own mission - how to keep track of mine and DB's position at all times?

Paul on the Space Centre at Leicester

Dear Tim,

I live approximately 10 miles from The National Space Centre in Leicester. http://www.spacecentre.co.uk/home/ Have you been? I haven't.

It strikes me that a useful partnership might be made between 'Playing Golf on the Moon (with David Bowie)' and the centre. I'm sure that you could pick up many essential tips as you prepare for the mission and they too might gain insights through engagement with the mission. They are currently showing a fulldome presentation of a trip into space from inside an astronaut's body with Ewan McGregor - here's a trailer: http://www.spacecentre.co.uk/astronaut/trailer/high.htm and here's a fuller page about it: http://www.spacecentre.co.uk/astronaut/

All that's best, Paul

they're called pumpkin suits...

One of the great joys of getting an Arts Council grant for the PlayTime event - and at a stroke turning golf on the moon with David Bowie into a *serious* project rather than a rambling blog, oh yes - was that I could justify the purchase of a NASA-approved space suit. I look good in it, no?

Now I learn that the official colour of this outfit is pumpkin-orange:

"For all seven crewmembers - and especially the five first-time fliers - the real thrill came on Thursday when, dressed in pumpkin-orange spacesuits, they scrambled into their seats aboard the shuttle for the final few hours of a practice launch countdown.

"It's much more immediate when you come here and see the vehicle stacked on the launch pad as it is now," said Discovery astronaut Nicholas Patrick, a North Yorkshire-born, University of Cambridge-educated pilot and mechanical engineer who joined Nasa's astronaut corps in 1998. "It really looks like we're about to take off in it," he said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6159434.stm

 

Here come the Swedes. (He's 49)

In the thick of a complicated series of tasks to rewire the International Space Station - hopefully without serious interruption to the resident crew aboard - will be Sweden's first astronaut, Christer Fuglesang.

He is a 49-year-old particle physicist who joined the European Space Agency (Esa) astronaut corps 14 years ago. "I can put this exact date [in my mind] when I decided to at least try to become an astronaut," Fuglesang said. "Esa were announcing that they were looking for astronauts. "It was kind of like a classified ad in the newspaper. A friend of mine found it and he told me, 'Hey, I've found a new job for you'. "And I thought he was joking - I didn't really have a clear picture of becoming an astronaut, but I wanted to go to space if I could. So I made a pretty quick decision, 'Ja, of course I'm going to apply'."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6138282.stm

Tip from Gavin S about the timing of our golf trip

Some thing to think about when planning your trip! http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/07/nasa_computer/

we're going to need a bigger rocket

we're going to need a bigger rocket,
originally uploaded by Golfer On The Moon.

Here's a picture I knocked out using images created at the PlayTime conference. Amazing how just one day of playing and talking can turn something that at first looked completely impossible into something you can really start to believe in. I guess this was what I was always trying to do as a kid when first noodling around with Action Man, Lego, golf balls etc. I was trying to make myself believe in my future as a grown-up...