Museum Of Flight Pranks Moon Golf Shot

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A press release from The Museum of Flight in Seattle invites members of the public to come see the golf ball Alan Shepard hit from the surface of the moon on Feb. 6, 1971. “He shanked the ball so hard that it left lunar orbit and entered a Trans-Earth trajectory. It’s likely that ball simply kept orbiting the Earth in an unstable orbit until it finally collided with the atmosphere. Scientists are still a bit unclear about its exact time of re-entry.” The space travelling golf ball is purported to have been discovered by an oyster farmer in Grays Harbor, Washington. According to the press release, “Oyster farmer Elliott Swift found the unusual object several months ago. ‘It was late October or early November. I think. I was out on the reef handling a few clusters, and when I broke one of them apart, I found something that looked and felt very different from the other oysters I harvested. I took it to our local fish and game authorities who took samples and said, indeed it was unlike anything they had ever seen in our waters. After months of further inquiry, and subsequently testing, a committee of aerospace researchers proved it to be this extremely rare artifact.'”

NASA lists the escape velocity of the moon as approximately 5000 miles per hour. A golf ball shortly after striking the club face is travelling at a speed of approximately 200 miles per hour. That’s a significant energy deficit even for an astronaut. As of press time, staff for the Museum of Flight had not provided AVweb with a theory as to how the golf ball survived re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere. For the profoundly gullible, “the ball will be on display in the main lobby this weekend only, April 1 and 2.”

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