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?
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