[X] My Assistant

[karolp]

Well not with a real ball but with a football-sized rock. I remember a movie showing an astronaut doing that on one of the later missions. I kind of need to find it again because a Polish friend of mine argues with me that this never happened. I also get the impression they were playing golf there as well. Apollo 16? Apollo 17? Any clues on that?

[dvandorn]

OK -- the Apollo 17 exercise was to try and roll a rock down a slope, both to sample the soil underneath and to abserve the dynamics of the rolling rock. And to observe the trail it left in the dust -- on Apollo 17, the crew visited several rocks which had rolled down the sides of the massifs, which had left trails of their own in the dust. They wanted to observe tracks being formed, in order to better understand the dynamics of the much larger trails.

In the event you cite, Jack Schmitt was trying to get a rock to roll down the hill, and was having little luck. He was talking to the rock, telling it "Roll! Why don't you roll down this slope?! I would!" Cernan came over and tried to help Schmitt kick the rock over so that it would start to roll. They never got it to roll for more than about one turn... but the two of them trying to kick the rock down the hill could, I suppose, look a little like they were playing football with it.

Again, though, that wasn't the intent. There were several demontrations that various lunar crews planned -- the golf shot on Apollo 14, the hammer-and-feather "proof" on Apollo 15, the Lunar Olympics on Apollo 16 (which they ended up not doing)... these were planned to demonstrate the kinds of things you could do while moving in a low-G field.

In the unplanned category, there are things like Cernan on Apollo 17 loping down a slope and, realizing he was shifting his hips like a skier, started making "schussing" sounds. But, again, I don't think anyone would seriously allege that Cernan went skiing on the Moon.

-the other Doug