The shot heard around the world

The shot heard around the world 

Golf on the moon!

To truly learn about these two subjects let us explore.

In the time that has passed in space exploration, since the first artificial satellite in 1957, astronauts have traveled to the moon and back, probes have explored the solar system, and instruments in space have discovered thousands of planets.

 Sputnik 1 A Elementary Satellite was the first artificial earth satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into lower earth orbit on 4 October 1957. It orbited for three weeks before its batteries died and then orbited silently for two months before it fell back into the earth’s atmosphere.

The duration of its orbit made its flight path cover virtually the entire inhabited Earth.

The satellite's unanticipated success precipitated the American Sputnik crisis and triggered the Space race, part of the Cold War, The launch was the beginning of a new era of political, military, technological, and scientific developments. The word "sputnik" is Russian for satellite when interpreted has many meanings one is a spouse or traveling companion.

Tracking and studying Sputnik 1 from Earth provided scientists with valuable information. The density of the upper atmosphere could be deduced from its drag on the orbit, and the propagation of its radio signals gave data about the ionosphere.

Sputnik 1 traveled at about 18,000 miles per hour taking 96.2 minutes to complete each orbit. 

It was transmitted on 20.005 and 40.002 MHz which were monitored by radio operators throughout the world. The signals continued for 21 days until the transmitter batteries ran out on 26 October 1957. Sputnik 1 burned up on 4 January 1958 while Reentry into earth's atmosphere after three months, 1440 completed orbits of the Earth, and a distance traveled of about 43 million miles.

On  April 12 1961 Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man in space,

Aboard the spacecraft Vostok 1, Yuri becomes the first human being to travel into space. The 27-year-old test pilot became the first man to orbit the earth, a feat accomplished by his space capsule in 89 minutes.

 Vostok 1 orbited Earth at an altitude around 187 miles and was guided entirely by an automatic control systems.

After his historic feat was announced, the attractive and unassuming Yuri Gagarin became an instant worldwide celebrity. He was awarded the Order of Lenin and given the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

The triumph of the Soviet space program in putting the first man into space was a great blow to the United States, which had scheduled its first space flight for May 1961. Moreover, Gagarin had orbited Earth, a feat that eluded the U.S. space program until February 1962, when astronaut John Glenn made three orbits in Friendship 7. By that time, the Soviet Union had already made another leap ahead in the “space race” with the August 1961 flight of cosmonaut Gherman Titov in Vostok 2. Titov made 17 orbits and spent more than 25 hours in space.

To Soviet propagandists, the Soviet conquest of space was evidence of the supremacy of communism over capitalism. However, to those who worked on the Vostok program and earlier on Sputnik (which launched the first satellite into space in 1957), the successes were attributable chiefly to the brilliance of one man: Sergei Pavlovich Korolev. Because of his controversial past, Chief Designer Korolev was unknown in the West and to all but insiders in the USSR until he died in 1966.

Born in Ukraine in 1906, Korolev was part of a scientific team that launched the first Soviet liquid-fueled rocket in 1933. In 1938, his military sponsor fell prey to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s purges, and Korolev and his colleagues were also put on trial. Convicted of treason and sabotage, Korolev was sentenced to 10 years in a labor camp. The Soviet authorities came to fear German rocket advances, however, and after only a year Korolev was put in charge of a prison design bureau and ordered to continue his rocketry work.

In 1945, Korolev was sent to Germany to learn about the V-2 rocket, which had been used to devastating effect by the Nazis against the British. The Americans had captured the rocket’s designer, Wernher von Braun, who later became head of the U.S. space program, but the Soviets acquired a fair amount of V-2 resources, including rockets, launch facilities, blueprints, and a few German V-2 technicians. By employing this technology and his considerable engineering talents, by 1954 Korolev had built a rocket that could carry a five-ton nuclear warhead and in 1957 launched the first intercontinental ballistic missile.

That year, Korolev’s plan to launch a satellite into space was approved, and on October 4, 1957, Sputnik 1 was fired into Earth’s orbit. It was the first Soviet victory of the space race, and Korolev, still technically a prisoner, was officially rehabilitated. The Soviet space program under Korolev would go on to numerous space firsts in the late 1950s and early ’60s: the first animal in orbit, first large scientific satellite, first man, first woman, first three men, first spacewalk, first spacecraft to impact the moon, first to orbit the moon, first to impact Venus, and first craft to soft-land on the moon. Throughout this time, Korolev remained anonymous, known only as of the “Chief Designer.” His dream of sending cosmonauts to the moon eventually failed, primarily because the Soviet lunar program received just one-tenth of the funding allocated to America’s successful Apollo lunar landing.

April 12 1961 cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space,

Only a month later Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space. twenty years before the launch of the first shuttle mission. 

Alan B. Shepard Jr. born November 18, 1923, was an American astronaut, and businessman. In 1961, he became the first American to travel into space, and in 1971, he walked on the Moon.

A graduate of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Shepard saw action with the surface navy during World War II. He became a naval aviator in 1946, and a test pilot in 1950. He was selected as one of the original NASA Mercury Seven astronauts in 1959, and in May 1961 he made the first crewed Project Mercury flight, in a spacecraft he named Freedom 7. His craft entered space but was not capable of achieving orbit. He became the second person, and the first American, to travel into space, and the first space traveler to manually control the orientation of his craft. In the final stages of Project Mercury.

In 1971, Shepard commanded the Apollo 14 mission’s, piloting the Apollo lunar module Antares. At age 47, he became the fifth, and the oldest, person to walk on the moon, and the only one of the Mercury Seven astronauts to do so. During the mission, he hit two golf balls on the lunar surface.

Shepard was promoted to rear admiral on August 25, 1971, the first astronaut to reach that rank.

 Still, wounding how the game of golf got to space?

Commander Alan Shepard Jr. kept his plan quiet. The mission came first.

Apollo 14, Shepard’s second space flight as commander, was planned for Jan. 31 to Feb. 9, 1971. Two years after humans first landed on the moon, Shepard wouldn’t be the first astronaut in space or the first person to walk on the moon on this trip, but he secretly planned to create a first of his own 238,900 miles from home.

A lover of golf who spent the later years of his life near Pebble Beach, California, Shepard brought two golf balls folded in a sock and a unique 6-iron of his engineering to space hoping to become the first person to hit a golf ball on the moon.

Some say the idea came to Shepard as he was determining the best way to demonstrate to non-scientists the differences between the atmospheres on Earth and the atmosphere on the moon. One previous idea to demonstrate the differences in atmospheres, Shepard wanted a more relatable, visual aid to demonstrate the differences.

The idea to use golf as the visual hit Shepard when famed comedian Bob Hope visited NASA before the mission. During the tour led by Shepard, Hope carried around an old driver and eventually used it for balance when he entered the moonwalker, simulating conditions on the moon.

To make his plan fit into the mission as seamlessly as possible, Shepard decided the best way to bring a golf club on board was to make it useful to the mission and compact. He used a retractable telescopic aluminum and Teflon shaft, which usually attaches to an instrument that collects rock and dust samples on the lunar surface, as the shaft of the golf club with the idea of crafting an attachable clubhead he would fasten to the end when he finished collecting the sample for his experiment. 

Shepard knew this iron wouldn’t be the best like we use today. He had played golf courses in his day but the moon would be the Ultimate Sand trap. 

The modern game of golf has been played since the 15th century in Scotland. And from the humble, rolling sheep-grazing spaces of the early courses of the British Isles, through the grand venues of the Open rota and similar, to the wide-ranging masterpieces in the U.S., there is no shortage of brilliant golf courses to choose from.

Pebble Beach Golf Links – Carmel, California

Manele Golf Course – Lanai, Hawaii

The Old Course – St. Andrews, Scotland

Cabot Cliffs Cape Breton – Inverness, Nova Scotia

Royal Birkdale Golf Club – Southport, England

Royal Melbourne Golf Club – Black Rock, Australia

Royal County Down – Newcastle County Down, Northern Ireland

Honorable Mention: Stoke Park – Buckinghamshire, England

The most widely watched golf shoot in history heard around the heavens did not occur in a tournament. our even in the PGA. It did not take place on this planet. And its distance has been embellished by legend.

With a converted Wilson Staff 6-iron clubhead adapted to an aluminum moon rock sample scooper by the fifth man on the moon Alan Shepard.

With his converted 6-iron, Shepard hit two golf balls on live television at the end of the Apollo 14 moonwalk. Because of the portable TV camera focused on Shepard, exactly how far the balls went.

The second one might’ve gone for “miles and miles” Shepard suggested.

The Moon Club, a specially crafted 6-iron clubhead, weighing 16.5 ounces. With the help of Jack Harden, head golf pro at River Oaks Country Club in Houston, Texas, Shepard crafted a modified Wilson 6-iron clubhead.

The modified club fit in a small bag, folded along its five breaks, connected by a piece of string. With a pull of the internal string, all five sections of the shaft were reconnected and with the tying of a knot, the shaft became solid. With the addition of the Wilson clubhead, which snaps in the thinnest end of the shaft, NASA’s first golf club was assembled.

“Shepard thought this would be a great way to demonstrate … a scientific experiment that would communicate the differences to the people watching below.”

“In my left hand, I have a little white pellet that’s familiar to millions of Americans. I’ll drop it down. Unfortunately, the suit is so stiff, I can’t do this with two hands, but I’m going to try a little sand-trap shot here.”

With one hand, Shepard swung and missed the ball. This prompted banter from fellow astronauts.

In conclusion: 50 years later Shepard’s moon golf balls were found. The first shoot went 24 yards. The second was not in fact “ miles and miles” but a mere 40 yards.

 You can say what you want about space. 

Shepard will always be remembered as the man that played golf on the moon.