Russian cosmonauts are hoping to hit a golf ball into Earth's orbit from the International Space Station, setting a record for the longest drive ever made. If Nasa gives the go-ahead, the attempt will take place during one of three spacewalks planned for 2006. The ball will be hit with a gold-plated golf club, made of the same scandium alloy used to build the station, and is expected to orbit Earth for four years. Some experts warn a mishap could cause "catastrophic" damage to the station. The ball is expected to travel millions of miles - its progress tracked using global positioning transmitters as it gradually loses altitude through atmospheric drag. "It will come back through the atmosphere, heat up, melt away and never be seen again," said Bill Alior, director of the Center for Orbital and Re-entry Debris Studies in the US. Nasa is currently studying the risks of the commercial deal, brokered by Russia with the Canadian golf company, Element 21. The stunt depends on the ball being hit out of the space station's orbital plane. Mr Alior said there was a "small risk" the ball could fall back onto the station or collide with it during a subsequent orbit. The extent of the damage would depend on factors such as the impact angle and the speed of collision. "The drive will have to be made in a certain direction to minimise that possibility. "But the trick will be hitting the ball wearing a spacesuit.

It's probably not going to be too easy," he said. In a worst-case scenario, the ball would remain at the same altitude long enough for its orbital plane to shift so it could hit the station side-on. An orbital debris expert at Nasa's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, told New Scientist magazine that it would be like a head-on collision with an impact speed of about 9.4km (5.8 miles) per second - equivalent to a 6.5-tonne truck moving at nearly 100km (62 miles) per hour. If the astro-golf attempt is approved, Element 21 plans to donate the gold-plated golf club to a charity back on Earth.

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haha, can anyone say "they have f**k all to do" ?

It sounds funny, like taking a break on the job. But the risks seem to be pretty intense. I would loose all hope in Nasa if the risk actually happened.

I'm confused. The ball will have only the momentum relative to the station that the astronaut can give it with the club. How will it somehow gain energy while coasting unpowered through the very thin atmosphere? It will lose energy, not gain it. Worst case will be the same as the astronaut standing on one part of the station and smacking the ball straight into another part.

Because of gravitational pull it would accelerate quicker and if thats not true then why do meteories not fall at the spped of there space travel

anyway i can imagine it now 4 yrs from now someone is gonna die from a golf ball from space


" Mutant Golf BAlls From SPACE "

Sounds funny but what if they miss... a whole meteor explosion crater in the center of a golffield...

Something the size of a golf ball can't possibly survive reentry. The golf ball would burn to vapor in the high atmosphere. There's not the slightest threat to Earth. It takes something huge and heavy to keep enough kinetic energy to significantly damage the surface. Most meteors slow to terminal velocity (the speed where drag due to wind resistance equals the pull due to gravity) in the upper atmosphere and then they fall at relatively slow speeds. Terminal velocity for a human falling out of a high plane without a parachute is about 120 mph (190 kph). An iron/nickel meteorite is more dense than a human (who is about the density of water), but still slows down greatly from wind resistance. Almost all meteorites that strike the surface are very cold from the time they spent falling slowly through the bitterly cold upper atmosphere, not blazing hot as giant meteors would be after slamming through the whole atmosphere in seconds without slowing down much. A very dense meteorite smaller than a small mountain, such as a typical large iron/nickle metorite, would hit the ground no harder than if it had been dropped out of a jetliner. I wouldn't want one of those to hit my car but they cause nothing like the damage of truly huge meteorites such as the ones that caused the Chicxulub crater:
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/SIC/impact_crat...hicx_title.html
or the Tunguska event:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event
Those events were caused by enormous chunks of space-rock.

Earth absorbs thousands of small hits daily. Those small pebbles and flakes of ice burn up in the upper atmosphere without notice. Our home is tough. It takes a really big, nasty space-rock to threaten us. It can happen. It has happened in the past...and it may happen in the future, but I'm not losing sleep over it. I'm in far, far more danger from a drunk driver swerving off the road and slamming into my bedroom as I sleep than I am from a falling space-mountain.