How far did Alan Sheperd's lunar golf shot actually go?
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Although Shepard fired off those two golf balls in moon gravity which is about one-sixth of earth's (moon fact sheet), they did not go miles and miles and miles. Shepard later appended his estimate to drive distances in the 200 to 400 yard range. Still, not bad with one hand and encumbered by a suit that prevented a good pivot on the swing. See the golf ball hit by Astronaut Alan B. Shepard, and the javelin tossed by Edgar D. Mitchell.
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I'm not sure if an offical record of this is kept but Johnny Rep scored from around 40 yards for Holland against Scotland in the 1978 World Cup. Can't remember seeing a goal from further out.
394711
What does this have to do with Golf?
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Hmm-m. Interesting question...\n\nI thought about this for a while and see no\nreason why this math would not be correct.\nAssuming that the bullet did explode when\nstruck by the firing pin, and the bullet left \nthe end of the barrel of the gun at say \n2000 feet per second velocity...\n\n2000 fps = 1800 Mph\n\nThe Moon is 239,000 miles from Earth.\nLet's say you were 10 miles up in the sky\nwhen you fired the gun.  Distance = 238,990 Miles.\n\nSo, 238,990 / 1800 = 132.7 hours \n\nSince there is no atmosphere in space to slow down the \nbullet as it traveled, we can estimate that the bullet would \ncontinue traveling at 1800 mph for the entire trip. The \ngravitational pull of the Moon would influence the bullet's\nvelocity somewhat towards the end of its flight, but my\nfigures show that with 1/6 the gravity of Earth, the Moon\nwould not significantly change the time of flight.\n\nAnswer: 132 Hours.   or   5.5 Days.\n\nNow, I have two questions for you:\n\n#1.)  If the rifle did fire off in space, would you see any smoke?\n\n#2.)  If you were 10 miles up in the atmosphere - say 50,000 ft.,\nhow fast must you be going, to be able to remain at that altitude,\nand in which direction?\n\nYour question makes reference to the Space Station as the point of firing the gun. In my answer above I did not use that as the platform from which the gun was fired because I do not have at my finger tips the approximate altitude of the Space Station though I know it is much more than 50,000 Ft. I also did not take into account the thin atmosphere which exists at 50,000 feet, or the pull backwards on the bullet by the gravity of Earth. These omissions were made simply to run the numbers and see what I came up with since I thought this was an interesting question. Now, having dispensed with the mundane aspects of my quick math, let's discuss the real problem with this question...\n\nThe Earth is spinning. The Moon is orbiting the Earth at a certain velocity, hence it is a moving target. The moving target is being shot at from a moving platform. If you have any hope of hitting the Moon with your bullet, you would have to fire at the place where the Moon will be 5.5 days from the time of firing your gun, not at where the Moon is now. To do that requires more math than a few simple divisions of distance and velocity. For example, the moon swings completely around the Earth at a radius of 238,900 miles in 27.3 Earth days. The circumfrence of that circle is Pi x D = 1,500,292 miles (assuming the orbit is a circle, which it is not). So, the velocity that the Moon is moving away from its present spot right this minute is 2,290 miles per hour.  Since the Moon rises and sets on our horizon each night, you can see that in our calculation, the Moon would have passed overhead at least 5 times in 5.5 days. So your rifle would have to be pointed at the place you calculate the Moon should be at in 5.5 days.        \nRegards,\nZah
113169
The standardization of 18 holes for a round of golf can be credited to St. Andrews golf course in Scotland.\n\nPrior to the mid-1760s - and right up until the early 1900s - it was common to find golf courses that were comprised of 12 holes, or 19, or 23, or 15, or any other number.\n\nThen, around 1764, St. Andrews converted from 22 holes to 18 holes. The reason? Well, everyone knows 18 holes are easier to take care of than 22!
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20 July 1969 UT 20:17:40 (04:17:40 p.m. EDT)\n\nNeil A. Armstrong, commander\nMichael Collins, command module pilot\nEdwin E. Aldrin, Jr., lunar module pilot\n\nPS: the mission launched July 16th
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On a 6200 yard course, that's about 3.5 miles.  Factor in walking between greens and tees and let's add another 60 yards a hole so that's about .6 miles, so we're up to 4.1 miles.  Now consider that courses are measured in a straight line from mid tee to front of green and consider I hit the damn ball all over the place, let's take that 4.1 miles and multiply it by a factor of 1.3, so we're up to 5.3 miles.  And consider that often balls are oddly hit in the woods or whatever danger lurks around the fairway and you need to tromp back and forth, back and forth, avoiding snakes and other hostile creatures and that's another .5 miles.  So we're up to 5.8 miles.  And finally imagine that since you have other obstacles like lakes and creeks that require you to veer from the straight and narrow and you have to wander around the green pretending you have a clue which way the putt will break, let's add another .3 miles.  So we're up to 6.1 miles.  And just for good measure, let's assume you have to walk to and from the car to the clubhouse then out to the first tee and let's call that .15 miles.  So I guess about 6.25 miles.  Since you ought to play that in about 4 hours, that's pretty good aerobic exercise.
870186
Tiger woods is not the longest hitter on earth. He is not even in the top 50 I'm sure. Tiger woods's longest drive if he really killed it would be around 330 meters.\n\nThere are long drive champions.. 6foot 7 giants.. with muscles like Arnold... they can routinely outdrive Tiger with a 3 wood. They can blast a five iron 250 meters.. that's how long they are! But of course, they can't beat Tiger on the PGA tour.. they just have that raw power...
7693
The question is about the lunar sidereal period.  It is 27.32166 days, as a casual web search reveals.
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LOS ANGELES (AP) - Mike Austin, whose 515-yard drive in 1974 stands as the longest ever in a professional golf tournament, died Tuesday, his wife Tanya said. He was 95.\nAustin was 64 years old when he hit the soaring drive in the U.S. National Seniors Open Championship in Las Vegas. With help from a 27-mph tail wind, the ball ran well clear of the green 450 yards away.\nThe record has held up for more than two decades despite advances in ball and driver technology. Austin used a standard persimmon wood club with a steel shaft.\nSecond on the list is a 476-yard drive hit in 2004 by Davis Love III.\nAustin was born in 1910 on Guernsey, one of Britain's Channel Islands, and moved to Los Angeles in 1939. He had a brief career as a professional golfer, but never had the short game to match his distance off the tee.\nHe became one of the area's best-known golf teachers, voted Southern California Golf Professional of the Year in 1984 and named among the top 50 golf instructors in the United States in 1991.\nAustin was left partially paralyzed by a stroke in 1989, but continued to give lessons until about two weeks before his death, his wife said.\nConstance Cummings
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Since the moon's orbit is eliptical, at times it is either a bit closer or a bit further away from the Earth.  Here are those distances...\n\nPerigee:    363,300 km \nMean:       384,400 km \nApogee:     405,500 km
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Ling Hongling of Lanzhou University suggests that golf may have originated in China at least 500 years before it was first mentioned in Scotland. Archives called the Dongzuan Records from the Song Dynasty describe a game called chuiwan and also include drawings. It was played with 10 clubs including a cuanbang, pubang, and shaobang, which are comparable to a driver, two-wood, and three-wood. The archive also includes references to a Nan Tang Dynasty magistrate who asked his daughter to make "holes" for him to play, and describes his "tee" as being jewel-encrusted. There were further descriptions of clubs being inlaid with jade and gold, suggesting golf was for the wealthy. Hongling suggested golf may have been exported to Europe and then Scotland by Mongolian travellers in the late Middle Ages. [4] [5] [6] [7]\n\nGolf was usually regarded as a Scottish invention, as the game was mentioned in two 15th-century laws prohibiting the playing of the game of "gowf". Some scholars, however, suggest that this refers to another game which is much akin to shinty or hurling, or to modern field hockey. They point out that a game of putting a small ball in a hole in the ground using golf clubs was played in 17th-century Netherlands. Primatively, the action of using a stick with a boxed attachment to hit stones close to a marked target, similar to that of bocce, originated in Italy. The term golf is believed to have originated from a Germanic word for "club". It has been hypothesised that golf is actually an acronym for gentlemen only; ladies forbidden, but this is believed to be an urban legend.\n\nIt is an urban legend that golf courses contain 18 holes because that was the number of shots it took to polish off a fifth of scotch. According to the USGA however, this is incorrect. The links at St. Andrews occupy a narrow strip of land along the sea. As early as the 15th century, golfers at St. Andrews established a customary route through the undulating terrain, playing to holes whose locations were dictated by topography. The course that emerged featured eleven holes, laid out end to end from the clubhouse to the far end of the property. One played the holes out, turned around, and played the holes in, for a total of 22 holes. In 1764, several of the holes were deemed too short, and were therefore combined. The number was thereby reduced from 11 to nine, so that a complete round of the links comprised 18 holes.\n\nThe oldest playing golf course in the world is The Old Links at Musselburgh. Evidence has shown that golf was played on Musselburgh Links in 1672 although Mary Queen of Scots reputedly played there in 1567. The major changes in equipment since the 19th century have been better mowers, especially for the greens, better golf ball designs, using rubber and man-made materials since about 1900, and the introduction of the metal shaft beginning in the 1930s. Also in the 1930s the wooden golf tee was invented. In the 1970s the use of metal to replace wood heads began, and shafts made of graphite composite materials were introduced in the 1980s.\n\nSocial aspects of golf\nIn the United States, golf is the unofficial game of the business world. It is often said, in fact, that board meetings merely confirm decisions that are actually made on the golf course. For this reason, the successful conduct of business golf (which extends beyond merely knowing the game) is considered a useful business skill; various schools, including prestigious universities such as Stanford University, have started both undergraduate and graduate-level courses that teach "business golf." The PGA of America, an organization separate from the PGA Tour, helps to sponsor these programs at universities nationwide.\n\nGolf is not inherently an expensive activity; the cost of an average round of golf is USD $36 [8], and the game is regularly enjoyed by over 26 million Americans and many more world-wide. In fact, most regio
21709
The link below is to a moonbow in epod (earth picture of the day).\n\nEnjoy!
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Highest I have done is 16,000 ft but ... \n\n"Kittinger performed three extreme altitude jumps during August 1960 as part of the USAF research project ‘Excelsior’ – a precursor to the US space race and intended to test human survivability on the edge of space. \n\nExcelsior III was the climax of the operation. \nLeaping from the open gondola of a 200ft diameter helium balloon with 99% of the earth's atmosphere below him, Kittinger spent four minutes thirty-six seconds in freefall. As he passed through 90,000ft his speed reached an incredible 614mph – almost the speed of sound in thin freezing air of the upper atmosphere. At 18,000ft his multi-stage parachute, operating on timers and barometric triggers, finally deployed his ‘main’.\n\nThis historic jump set an altitude record that still stands today."
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Not surprisingly, all of the great true distance hitters have also been the source of the greatest exaggerations. Despite his extraordinary accomplishments, Babe Ruth is not immune. His tremendous blow to right-center field in Detroit on June 8, 1926, has often been reported as traveling over 600 feet. Certainly, this drive was propelled somewhere around 500 feet in the air, which makes it legitimately historic, but proof that it traveled 600 feet cannot be found. When Mickey Mantle cleared the left-center-field bleachers at Clark Griffith Stadium in Washington on April 17, 1953, the entire baseball world was lead to believe the ball had traveled 565 feet from home plate to the point where it landed. In truth, that figure derived from the distance from home plate to the place where a neighborhood child retrieved the ball. Since this home run was the only one that ever cleared those bleachers during decades of major league and Negro League competition, it is genuinely deserving of recognition. However, the actual distance in the air was probably about 510 feet. The same process was at work for Mantle on September 10, 1960, in Detroit, where his right-center-field rooftopper was reported to have traveled more than 600 feet. From interviews with the surviving source of the original data, it is readily apparent once again that the all had bounced several times before it reached the estimated distance. Included among the other great exaggerations in the history of tape measure home runs are Dave Nicholson's Comiskey Park rooftopper on May 6, 1964, and Dave Kingman's Wrigley Field blast on April 14, 1976. In the case of Nicholson, who was a powerful man, as was Kingman, the figure of 573 feet was provided by "White Sox mathematicians." These unidentified individuals based their calculations on the assumption that the ball traveled completely over the left-center-field roof. however, subsequent investigation indicated that the ball landed on the back of the roof before bouncing into the night. When Kingman launched his wind-aided blow in Chicago, The New York Times somehow concluded that it had flown 630 feet. It has been confirmed that the ball struck against the third house beyond Waveland Avenue, which is situated about 530 feet from home plate. Yet again, we have an example of a genuinely epic home run that has been grievously overstated.\n\n\nOne other aspect of misrepresentation should be explored. Again, the vast talents of Herculean Mickey Mantle have been comprised by individuals who have unwittingly perpetrated a hoax. Let it be emphasized that the mighty Mick was undoubtedly one of baseball's all time longest hitters. He was an honest, sometimes even self-effacing individual, who was never known to overstate his accomplishments. It is due to his immense popularity and constant involvement in the tape measure process that he is often thrust into the muddle of misrepresentation. By his own account he hit the longest home run of his career on May 22, 1963 at Yankee Stadium. The ball struck the facade on the right-field roof approximately 370 feet from home plate and 115 feet above field level. Almost everyone in attendance believed that the ball was still rising when it was interrupted in midflight by the roof structure. Based upon that belief, this drive has commonly been estimated at about 620 feet if left unimpeded. However, the reality is that the ball was already on its way down, and those reporting the trajectory were victimized by a common optical illusion. It is a scientific fact that if Mantle, or anyone else, had sufficient strength to hit a ball that was still traveling upward when it met the towering facade, he would also have enough strength to clear that same facade by a distance of at least 100 feet. In order for the ball to be rising at roof level, it would have to have been traveling at a lower angle than that which produces maximum distance. If Mantle had provided the same power or velo
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Hi.\n\nI'm 14 years old with a 12 handicap and two weeks ago I hit that kind of a shot. I'm used to hitting perfect shots as I am a pretty good and consistent golfer. But the other day was the best. On the 155 yard Par-3 at my course, I hit a 6-iron. It was so perfect that it didn't kame any noise as I struck it and I didn't feel anything at all in my hands at contact. It went high and dead straight. It stopped dead, 3 feet away from the hole. I then proceeded to make the birdie putt.
1143948
Agreed.  There is no standard distance for a club, it all depends on who is swinging it.  For example, put a 9 iron in my hands, and I'll hit the ball about 115 yards, but put it in Tiger's hands and he'll hit it 150 or so.  \n\nThe best thing to do is go to your local driving range and hit all of your clubs - try to get a sense for how far you hit each club on average and use that as your guide.  Bear in mind the distance you are hitting each club today will change as you progress, so adust accordingly.\n\nHave fun!