How many yards could you drive a golf ball on the surface of the moon?

Answer 1

There's both lower gravity and no atmosphere to speak of.

The gravity alone should let you go at least another 6x as far.

The air resistance would not be there, but a golf ball uses the air with its spin to get extra lift.

Basically the spin of the ball on earth helps you get the rotational energy of hte ball transfered to lift energy (fighting gravity). You wouldn't have that advantage on the moon.

I'm guessin the ball has a rotation inertia of about 0.00001 kg-m^2 and spins at 1000 radians per second. It has rotation energy of say around a couple Joules in which case the height you'd lose is about say (1 joule)/(100 g)/(9.8 m/s^2), assuming a 100 g golf ball.

That's about 1 m lower on earth's gravity, which lets guess you'd lose about 5% of your drive because of that.

Wild guess - you'd hit it 0.95*6 times as far on the moon!

Of course, there's all that heavy space gear f'in up your backswing.

Answer 2

The moon's gravity is 1/6 of Earth's gravity, so the ball would stay in the air 6x as long, so it would go 6x farther.

Answer 3

Moon/Earth Comparison

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Bulk parameters
Moon Earth Ratio (Moon/Earth)
Mass (1024 kg) 0.07349 5.9736 0.0123
Volume (1010 km3) 2.1958 108.321 0.0203
Equatorial radius (km) 1738.1 6378.1 0.2725
Polar radius (km) 1736.0 6356.8 0.2731
Volumetric mean radius (km) 1737.1 6371.0 0.2727
Ellipticity (Flattening) 0.0012 0.00335 0.36
Mean density (kg/m3) 3350 5515 0.607
Surface gravity (m/s2) 1.62 9.80 0.165
Surface acceleration (m/s2) 1.62 9.78 0.166
Escape velocity (km/s) 2.38 11.2 0.213
GM (x 106 km3/s2) 0.0049 0.3986 0.0123
Bond albedo 0.11 0.306 0.360
Visual geometric albedo 0.12 0.367 0.330
Visual magnitude V(1,0) +0.21 -3.86 -
Solar irradiance (W/m2) 1367.6 1367.6 1.000
Black-body temperature (K) 274.5 254.3 1.079
Topographic range (km) 16 20 0.800
Moment of inertia (I/MR2) 0.394 0.3308 1.191
J2 (x 10-6) 202.7 1082.63 0.187


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From these facts multiply driving distance on Earth times 6
So I could probaly drive the ball 1500 yards

Answer 4

'Miles and miles and miles' - Alan B. Shepard, Apollo 14

Answer 5

However far you can go in that lunar rover until it runs out of fuel. could be miles.

Answer 6

forever