moon shot

plural moon shots · alternative moonshot

1. The launching of a spacecraft or an object to orbit or land on the Moon.

   Rockets, moon shots / Spend it on the have-not's

   1971, “Inner City Blues”, in What's Going On, performed by Marvin Gaye

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   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?

   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

   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.

   1960 April, “Letters to the Editor”, in Trains Illustrated, page 256

   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.

   2007, Michael D’Antonio, A Ball, a Dog, and a Monkey: 1957, the Space Race Begins, New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN

   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.

   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, archived from the original on 06 Apr 2017

2. hobbiesAn act of throwing or hitting a ball with a high trajectory.

   [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.

   1998, David S. Nuttall, “Coming of Age”, in Mickey Mantle’s Greatest Hits, New York, N.Y.: S.P.I. Books, →ISBN, page 66

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   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.

   2003, Alan Eisenstock, “Injured Reserve”, in Ten on Sunday: The Secret Life of Men, New York, N.Y.: Atria Books, →ISBN, page 220

3. figurativelyAn expensive, hard, or unlikely task of great potential impact.

   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 July 28, Nicky Woolf, “Alphabet’s revenue up to $21.5bn off the back of mobile and video ads”, in The Guardian, London, archived from the original on 01 Mar 2017

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   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, Lisa Goldman, Kate Purmal, Anne Janzer, “Preface”, in The Moonshot Effect: Disrupting Business as Usual, [Austin, Tx.]: Wynnefield Business Press, →ISBN

   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.

   2016 October 10, “Editorial October 11 2016”, in Illawarra Mercury, Wollongong, N.S.W., archived from the original on 13 Dec 2016