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Space, the final frontier

Marina Hyde

It is a troubling symbol of humanity's aspiration: the latest instalment in our great space quest saw an astronaut tee off.

THE INSPIRATION for Tom Stoppard's play Jumpers was the playwright's thought that landing on the moon would be a psychologically destabilising event for humankind, that it would be "an act of destruction." What would be destroyed was the age-old existence of the moon as a romantic trope.

What Stoppard also feared was that the moon landings would undermine human values and philosophies, plunging the world into a relativistic crisis, a kind of planetary nervous breakdown.

It might seem melodramatic to be bandying about the words "new low," but this week something happened on the final frontier which appeared to symbolise simultaneously the zenith of humanity's achievement and the nadir of its aspiration. To wit, early on Thursday morning, Russian astronaut Mikhail Tyurin boldly went out through the hatch of the International Space Station. And teed off.

Yes, in a collaborative stunt between the Russian Space Agency and a Canadian golf equipment firm, Tyurin took up a gold-plated club and struck a ball into outer darkness. Who says dreams are dead?

Even by the standards of the Russian Space Agency's insistence on coming up with lucrative initiatives — do you recall the rocket decked out in Pizza Hut logo which delivered pizza to the space station, or the giant Pepsi can which they permitted to float outside it? — the golf stunt seems to mark a watershed moment.

For all the fact that one of the Apollo 14 crew hit a couple of shots on the moon back in 1971, the sheer grasping fatuity of this latest mission forces the question: where now for space?

Since the end of the space race, the cynics have waxed with sarcastic enthusiasm about the many benefits in stay-dry clothing and desiccated fruit technology which trillions of dollars of investment have bought us (space exploration's role in the creation of Teflon pan coating is, unfortunately, just a myth). These days space's chief draw seems to be that of a somewhat unethically reached future holiday destination for Richard Branson and selected millionaire friends.

With many inhabitants of the planet working off scientific knowledge gleaned largely from movies, we are given to understand that in space, no one can hear you scream.

But if there were any intelligent life forms — presumably rather more intelligent than us — watching Tyurin tee off on Thursday, one hopes rather desperately that they might understand many earthlings were very, very seriously embarrassed by it all. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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