Oh for the Lord's sake. We are bending over backwards to keep from ejecting things from our satellite, and now these assholes are going to throw a GOD-DAMN GOLF BALL out into the SAME ORBIT AS THE SPACE STATION.

"Which begs the question, why waste time on golf clubs when you can make important stuff out of it? You know... bicycles!"

They do. Look up "titanium bicycle frame" on Google, but be sure to put all your credit cards away in a safe place first.

To be fair, the golf ball won't be moving much faster or slower than the ISS, so it likely poses no real threat.

Titanium is so last decade for young Mr. Johnson. He's all about the hand-crafted carbon-nanotubule and spider silk bikes out there.

Carbon frame bikes are even lighter and stronger than titanium ones, and a bit less expensive. There's only one problem, though... they break rather than bend, and once broken, there's no way to fix them properly that's less expensive than buying a new frame. Superglue and duct tape will only last until the next time you get on the bike and pedal up to 20 mph, and then come apart most spectacularly.

Plus, they're often vulnerable to stress failure. Racing cyclists get new carbon frames for every leg of their races, but the average Joe Schmoe can't afford that.

I know both Trek and Giant offer lifetime warranties on their carbon bike frames, and I *think* most other manu's offer the same. It's a limited warranty, but since road bikes don't go dumping down cliff faces it should be plenty should anything go wrong with the frame.

As for the golf ball... have you seen what stray golf balls can do to cars? And those are balls that have been slowed by 100+ yards of air resistance. If that ball ever decides to pay a visit to the satellite it was launched from, it could dent it bad enough to make it lose pressure... and the astronauts don't have escape pods.

But that air resistance effect your speaking off isn't quite a linear thing in that you've got not only the launch speed to contend with, but you've also got the pull of gravity also getting into the mix - and then the elasticity of the ball when/if it hits a hard surface.

Assuming they hit the ball on the axis of rotation, they'd have to hit it hard enough for it to beat them around orbit (after enough passes and time have elapsed, even a slight change in velocity would have the two meet again, assuming they're on the exact same path) without having lost too much altitude for it to hit with any amount of force. Toss in that they'll be hitting the thing with a space suit on and I think they're very, very safe.

But that's just me...