Mar 10, 2006, 22:57 GMT
Los Angeles - A marketing stunt in which a Russian cosmonaut will whack a gold-plated golf ball into orbit from a makeshift tee outside the International Space Station has critics worried that it could down the 53-billion-dollar structure, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.
The stunt was dreamed up by Canadian company Element 21 Golf to draw attention to its clubs made of an alloy of scandium. The plan calls for the cosmonaut to blast the ball into space at over 27,000 kilometres per hour, sending it 3.36 billion kilometres into orbit before it burns up in the earth's atmosphere in four years' time.
But critics claim that a sliced shot could punch a hole in the yet-to-be completed space station and send the wrong message about the commercialization of science. The golf ball also could become an incoming missile in a later orbit, posing a danger to future space missions.
'Is this the right message to be sending to taxpayers in America, Russia, Europe and Japan that it's OK to do a stunt like this?' said Keith Cowing of NASAWatch. com, a Web site that frequently challenges NASA policies.
Officials at NASA and at the Russian Federal Space Agency deny the stunt poses a threat to spacecraft or cheapens the scientific mission of the space station, but the report said that NASA has yet to complete its safety analysis.
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