Cosmonaut to hit golf ball for promotion

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- In space, nobody can hear you scream 'Fore!'
Then again, "fore" isn't something Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin is likely to shout out today when he strikes a lightweight golf ball with a special 6-iron from outside the international space station in a promotional stunt for a Canadian golf club manufacturer.
Tyurin will be too busy trying to keep his balance during the one-handed swing in his bulky spacesuit. He'll have one foot wedged in between the hand rails of a ladder on the outside of the space lab. Fortunately, he'll be tethered, as astronauts are for all spacewalks.
Taping the stunt
And if you're disappointed over the lack of sound, sorry ... you won't be able to see Tyurin's golf swing either -- at least not in real time.
The cameras aren't in position for it, although his crewmate will be filming it for the golf club maker, E21 Golf, to use later.
The golf stunt is the first task for Tyurin and U.S. astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria during a six-hour spacewalk. Their other jobs are more like real work -- fixing a space station antenna and retrieving science experiments.
The golf stunt was supposed to take place earlier this year, but the U.S. space agency wanted more time to be sure the stunt would have little chance of damaging the space station, NASA officials said.
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