interesting things i learned

"Even a golf club swing unbalanced an astronaut,"

What unbalanced Alan Shepherd was more the bulkiness of the space suit making it impossible for him to get a proper golfing stance.

Just found a discussion about the golf shot, and if Shepherd could have hit it just right, the ball could have traveled as far as 2.5 miles over 70 seconds.

In reality, though, neither one traveled anywhere near that far.
 
if Shepherd could have hit it just right, the ball could have traveled as far as 2.5 miles over 70 seconds. In reality, though, neither one traveled anywhere near that far.
Click to expand...

Looking at the videos again, I'm pretty sure he lifted his head.
 
Maybe, but he'd be wearing the same (or a similar suit) to do anything else on the moon. Maybe not with plaid pants, but you get the idea!:D

The point was more about being unexpectedly having to react to input in an unfamiliar environment. Weight differs, mass & inertia stay coupled so the instinctive reaction would be a false, but instinctive correction, even if there wasn't enough "raw power" to knock him down.
 
"Maybe, but he'd be wearing the same (or a similar suit) to do anything else on the moon. Maybe not with plaid pants, but you get the idea!"

Very true, but there's one critical difference between firing a gun and swinging a golf club...

Swinging a golf club requires CONTINUOUS movement and rebalancing of almost your entire body, something that's made far harder by the bulk of the suit.

In firing a rifle, you can bring it to your shoulder, take as long as you want to set your feet and get your grip, and from there the only thing you should move is your index finger.

Huge difference.
 
interesting things

ok guys you can call me down,i can't dispute what you say.You are talking way over my head,i was just passing along so of my conversation with him.I'm going to tell him he better go back to math school because my other friends say you ain't hitting on diddly.That rail gun must be really something ,I would like to see something like that in action.
 
did the us astronauts carry guns on the moon-mission? they were all military/airforce personel right?

atleast the russians did iirc... more to use if they crashlanded in siberia from what I have read

and why on earth (pun intended) did they play golf and not baseball?
 
So, without going into formulas, what can we safely assume?

You can fire a gun in space. (I don't know why some think it needs oxygen, it fires under water, too, doesn't it?)

The recoil energy is going to be the same.

The velocity might be different by a measurable, but not a practical amount.

in moon gravity, trajectory will be different. Also, at 1/6 the weight, your body's instinctive reactions (balance etc) will be affected.

Mercury, on the sun side is hot enough to melt lead. By comparison, Venus is much cooler. But only by comparison. Also the atmosphere of Venus is highly corrosive. That might be your biggest problem.

I recall one of the old sci-fi stories (written decades before the moon landing). Seems both sides (east & west) had bases on the moon. And of course, there was a war.

A short war, essentially one exchange of fire. The main character goes to the moon afterwards, and in the dome, he is being told about what happened. Until an alarm goes off and everyone hits the floor. A few bullets hit the dome, and then its over, until an hr or so later when the alarm goes off again...

Seems that while the shooting stopped a long time before, orbiting bullets from both sides were a regular danger.

Maybe that's not really possible, but it made a nice story.
 
No, US astronaut kit didn't include firearms. US returns were always water landings.

The Soviet returns were always over land, some of it rugged and quite remote. Including a rifle would be more logical for them.


"Also the atmosphere of Venus is highly corrosive. That might be your biggest problem."

That could likely be dealt by proper selection of alloys.

Don't for a moment, though, think that Venus is "cool."

Surface temperatures approach 900 deg. F, or more than enough to melt lead, and hotter than Mercury.

Surface atmospheric pressure is roughly 1,350 PSI, roughly equal to 900 feet below the surface of the sea on earth.

The combination of temperature and pressure are why probes dropped into the Venusian atmosphere generally crap out after only a few hours.
 
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