ONE SMALL SWING FOR MAN
Moon astronaut’s golf ball found after 50 years – not ‘miles and miles’ away as he claimed, but 40 yards!
GOLFERS, like anglers, are prone to exaggeration.
So when astronaut Alan Shepard claimed his six-iron shot had travelled ‘miles and miles’ in the Moon’s low gravity, many were sceptical.
And the doubters were right, it turns out. Shepard’s famous blow, 50 years ago today, really was one e small swing for man, sending the e ball a mere 40 yards.
That is about a quarter of the average distance of a decent sixiron shot on Earth, where gravity is six times higher and there is air resistance. In defence of the Apollo 14 commander, then 47, he was wearing a cumbersome spacesuit so had to swing with one heavilygloved hand. And he was using a makeshift club fashioned from a six-iron head he had sneaked aboard and attached to a tool designed to gather rock samples.
It was his second attempt, after he sliced his first ball. The fate of Shepard’s two shots was discovered by Cheshire-based Apollo enthusiast and imaging specialist Andy Saunders. He digitally enhanced and stitched together high-resolution images of the mission recently released by Nasa.
Mr Saunders, also a keen golfer, said: ‘On Earth, 40 yards may not sound like much, but Alan Shepard will not have been able to feel the golf club in his hand, and he used a one-handed short swing as he was restricted by his bulky spacesuit. The fact he made contact with the golf ball, let alone got it off the ground, is amazing.’
The first shot – ‘more dirt than ball’ – ending up in a crater 24 yards away. Mr Saunders, who will soon publish a book called Apollo Remastered, estimates that a shot by one of today’s biggest-hitting professional golfers, such as US Open champion Bryson DeChambeau, could theoretically fly 3.4 miles on the Moon.
David Rothery, professor of planetary geosciences at the Open University, said: ‘The Moon’s lack of atmosphere means there would be no air resistance to slow down the ball’s forward speed. However, Alan Shepard was wearing a bulky space suit that greatly restricted his mobility. He could scarcely pivot at the waist.’
Shepard, the only man to play golf on the Moon, had already entered the record books a decade earlier. In 1961 he became the first American in space.
One of the original US astronauts in the pioneer Mercury Seven project, he was played by Scott Glenn in 1983 film The Right Stuff. He died in 1998 aged 74.