moon shot

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See also: moonshot

English

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WOTD – 20 July 2017

Pronunciation

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American astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission on 20 July 1969, photographed by fellow astronaut Neil Armstrong

Noun

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moon shot (plural moon shots)

  1. The launching of a spacecraft or an object to orbit or land on the Moon.
    • 1959 December, Dan Q. Posin, “An Eye on Space”, in Roderick M. Grant, editor, Popular Mechanics, volume 112, number 6, Chicago, Ill.: Popular Mechanics Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 70:
      There will be many shots at the moon. Our nearest neighbor in the heavens patiently revolves around the earth, waiting for us to learn its secrets. What kind of moon shots can we use to find the answers to those secrets?
    • 1960 April, “Letters to the Editor”, in Trains Illustrated, page 256:
      Hand across the sea: Sir, Heartiest congratulations on your new 50,000-plus circulation. I regard your feat as comparable to the Russian moon shot. David P. Morgan, Editor, "Trains", Milwaukee, U.S.A.
    • 1971, “Inner City Blues”, in What's Going On, performed by Marvin Gaye:
      Rockets, moon shots / Spend it on the have-not's
    • 2007, Michael D’Antonio, A Ball, a Dog, and a Monkey: 1957, the Space Race Begins, New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN:
      The first Air Force Moon shot would be attempted in August [1958] with Thor-Able, carrying a satellite called Pioneer 0, which was rigged to send infrared photos and radiation readings back to Earth.
    • 2017 February 27, Samantha Masunaga, Russ Mitchell, “SpaceX plans to send two private astronauts to circle the moon – on their own dime”, in Los Angeles Times‎[1], archived from the original on 6 April 2017:
      The weeklong moon shot would make a close flyby of the moon's surface, "go quite a bit further out into deep space" and then loop back to Earth, [Elon] Musk said. The spacecraft will not try to land on the surface of the moon.
  2. (sports) An act of throwing or hitting a ball with a high trajectory.
    • 1998, David S. Nuttall, “Coming of Age”, in Mickey Mantle’s Greatest Hits, New York, N.Y.: S.P.I. Books, →ISBN, page 66:
      [Mickey] Mantle pounds out a moon shot in this night contest when he slams the [base]ball against the left-center facing of the second deck at Comiskey Park.
    • 2003, Alan Eisenstock, “Injured Reserve”, in Ten on Sunday: The Secret Life of Men, New York, N.Y.: Atria Books, →ISBN, page 220:
      I launch a moon shot. The [basket]ball sails up toward the hoop in slow motion. After what feels like an hour, the ball arcs downward and swishes in. The guys turn to me and applaud.
  3. (figuratively) An expensive, hard, or unlikely task of great potential impact.
    • 2016, Lisa Goldman, Kate Purmal, Anne Janzer, “Preface”, in The Moonshot Effect: Disrupting Business as Usual, [Austin, Tx.]: Wynnefield Business Press, →ISBN:
      We defined a moonshot as a complex, large-scale objective that can be accomplished only when teams abandon "business as usual." Moonshots require significant breakthroughs in attitude, innovation, leadership, processes, management, and technology. They demand extraordinary execution and are often marked by seemingly unrealistic time lines. […] My first real moonshot was in the 1990s with the creation of the PalmPilot—the precursor to the smartphone. Lisa's most memorable moonshot was Nokia's MOSH, the first big mobile social sharing platform, which swelled to 13 million users in its debut year.
    • 2016 July 28, Nicky Woolf, “Alphabet’s revenue up to $21.5bn off the back of mobile and video ads”, in The Guardian‎[2], London, archived from the original on 1 March 2017:
      Revenue at Alphabet's Other Bets division – which includes broadband business Google Fiber, home automation products Nest, self-driving cars and X, the research facility that works on "moon shot" ventures – rose 150% to $185m, while operating losses widened to $859m.
    • 2016 October 10, “Editorial October 11 2016”, in Illawarra Mercury‎[3], Wollongong, N.S.W., archived from the original on 13 December 2016:
      In the US, Vice President Joe Biden has been labelled as the "Cancer Advocate in Chief", charged in that country by President [Barack] Obama with leading the fight to find a cure after losing his son to brain cancer last year. Biden has related the fight to find a cure to the quest to land man on the moon. "I believe that we need a moon shot in this country to cure cancer," he said.

Alternative forms

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Further reading

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