Golf trip to moon out of this world

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/11/2018 (2848 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Before we get to today’s topic — which is my intense personal desire to go to the moon — I need to issue a fun and festive holiday reminder.

What I want you to know is there is still time for you to book an appointment to have a heartwarming photo taken of your beloved pet with Santa, as portrayed by me, a slightly overweight and reasonably jolly newspaper columnist.

This Sunday, for the 12th straight year, I will be sweltering inside a red velvet suit and having my photo taken with hundreds of jittery dogs and cats (and the odd snake) at the first of two Pet Pics with Santa Paws fundraisers in support of the Winnipeg Humane Society.

It’s being held from noon to 4 p.m. at the Winnipeg Free Press, 1355 Mountain Ave. Before coming, make sure to book an appointment at adamyorkphotography.com. Click on “pet pics” and scroll down to the register button.

There’s a second Pet Pics event, with an entirely different Santa Paws, on Grey Cup Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. at Petland, located at 2355 McGillivray Blvd.

Which somehow brings us to today’s topic, which, if you recall the first paragraph, is about how I am dying to visit the moon, which is something Canadians may be doing in the near future, but we’ll get to that part in a minute.

There are a couple of key reasons I am so keen to go to the moon, namely (1) I am a patriotic, science-minded Canadian; and (2) I am a really lousy golfer. Now that I think about it, it’s mostly that second thing.

Whenever I get the chance to pull out my clubs at charity golf tournaments, something hugely embarrassing always happens. Despite being the size of a major kitchen appliance, when I step on the tee and take a mighty swing, I either miss the ball entirely or hit it so poorly that it basically dribbles forward like a wounded rabbit before scuttling into the bushes.

The problem, as I see it, is gravity, which is common on golf courses and has an annoying tendency to suck golf balls into sand traps or water hazards or the medically sensitive areas of other golfers in my immediate vicinity.

Without gravity, or with much less of it, golf would be a fun and carefree activity. This makes perfect scientific sense. After several minutes of randomly Googling things online, I have determined that, on the moon, which has an airless, reduced-gravity environment, I could smack a golf ball literally for miles.

I know this is true because it’s been done before. On Feb. 6, 1971, American astronaut Alan Shepard famously pulled out a makeshift six-iron he smuggled on board Apollo 14 and whacked two golf balls on the lunar surface, becoming the first — and only — person to play golf anywhere other than Earth.

For the record, I have played golf on some earthly courses that had more craters than the lunar surface, but that’s not the point.

The point is the Apollo 14 commander used his club — a six-iron head connected to the shaft of a piece of rock-collecting equipment — to hit two balls, the first of which he shanked, but the second he estimated travelled “for miles and miles and miles.” The exciting thing is astrophysicists say that’s most likely what would happen.

On the moon, which has one-sixth of our gravity and no air resistance, a reasonably well-hit golf ball could potentially travel up to 2.5 miles (about four kilometres) and stay in the air for about 70 seconds. That would truly be an out-of-this-world experience, and it might just be possible.

Which is why I got pumped up earlier this week after reading news reports in which the head of the U.S. space agency said he wants to see Canadian astronauts walking on the moon in the near future.

On a two-day trip to Ottawa, Jim Bridenstine, the administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), said he would love to see Canadian involvement in Lunar Gateway, a space station NASA is planning to send into orbit around the moon starting in 2021.

“If Canadians want to be involved in missions to the surface of the moon with astronauts, we welcome that. We want to see that day materialize,” the NASA chief told a small group of reporters in Ottawa ahead of his keynote speech to the Aerospace Industries Association of Canada.

“We think it would be fantastic for the world to see people on the surface of the moon that are not just wearing the American flag, but wearing the flags of other nations.”

The bad news is that the Canadian government appears to be somewhat lukewarm on the American invitation to land hosers on the moon, with Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains telling journalists the government is still working on a long-awaited space policy that has many dimensions and will be made public before next fall’s federal election.

“At this stage, we would not take anything off the table,” Bains said about the possibility of contributing astronauts to moon missions. “We demonstrated very clearly we want to work with NASA. We want to work with other allies as well.”

So I am sorry to report that the odds of me personally being able to pack my clubs and toddle off to the moon for a quick 18 holes of lunar links followed by a few cold space brews are looking pretty grim.

Not that I am complaining, because from what I hear the moon is basically one gigantic sand trap, which would do nothing to improve my lousy putting.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca