How do I prevent my original projectile object from being destroyed?

I have a script for a projectile but there are two problems.

  1. After the Destroy Timer ends, the actual game object in the scene gets destroyed and I can no longer spawn the item. The thing is, I had a previous projectile script which is exactly the same but for some reason, in the other project which is an older version of Unity, doesn’t have the prefab displayed as a game-object so the projectile works fine. Here, I cannot get the game-object to be removed from the hierarchy so it doesn’t get destroyed as one.

  2. When I fire the projectile before it gets removed from reality, it simply flashes in and out of existence at the spawn point but doesn’t actually move.

Here is the code:

using UnityEngine;

public class Projectile : MonoBehaviour
{
    public float speed = 2f;

    //This is our timer until destruction
    public float DestroyTimer = 4f;

    // Update is called once per frame
    void Update()
    {
        transform.Translate(new Vector3(0f, 0f, speed));

        DestroyTimer -= Time.deltaTime;
        if (DestroyTimer <= 0f)
        {
            Destroy(gameObject);
        }
    }
}

This is the code for my PlayerController, which the Projectile script is connected to. The projectile segment is the last one, at the very bottom.

using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using UnityEngine;
using UnityEngine.SceneManagement;
using UnityEngine.UI;

public class PlayerControl : MonoBehaviour
{

    //We will need to have access to our player itself. 
   
    public Transform Player;
    public Text ScoreCounter;
    public Text HealthCounter;
    public AudioSource healthSound;

    //Ball Projectile
    public GameObject ShotgunPellet;

    //Spawn Location of the ball
    public GameObject PelletSpawn;

    //Let's also create some publically accessible movement values while we're here. 
    public float rotationSpeed = .1f;
    public float movementSpeed = .2f;
    public float jumpForce = 10f;
    public Image PlayerHealth;

 

    int score = 0;

    
    public void AddScore()
    {
        score++;
        ScoreCounter.text = "Score: " + score;

        if (score > PlayerPrefs.GetInt("HighScore"))
        {
            PlayerPrefs.SetInt("HighScore", score);
        }

    }
    // Use this for initialization
    void Start()
    {
        Cursor.lockState = CursorLockMode.Locked;
        HealthCounter.text = "Health: " + startingHealth;
    }

    int health = 5;
    int startingHealth = 5;

    

    void changePlayerHealthBar()
    {
        PlayerHealth.transform.localScale = new
            Vector2((float)((float)health / (float)startingHealth), 1f);
    }
    void OnCollisionEnter(Collision collision)
    {
        if (collision.collider.gameObject.tag == "Health")
        {
            AudioSource sound = Instantiate(healthSound, transform.parent);
            sound.Play();
            health ++;
            HealthCounter.text = "Health: " + health;
            
            
        }
            if (collision.collider.gameObject.tag == "Enemy")
        {
          
            health--;
            HealthCounter.text = "Health: " + health;
            changePlayerHealthBar();
        }
        if (health <= 0)
        {
            Debug.Log("You lose");
            ExitToMenu();
        }
    }
    void ExitToMenu()
    {
        SceneManager.LoadScene("Menu");
    }
    // Update is called once per frame
    void Update()
    {

       
        //Just to get an intro to how this works, we will start by just rotating the player around so they can see more of the screen
        //Since we just want to rotate around while standing straight up, we want to only rotate in the Y-Axis
        //Player.Rotate(0f, rotationSpeed, 0f);
        if (Input.GetKey(KeyCode.W))
        {
            //Move us one movementSpeed into the forward direction
            Player.Translate(0f, 0f, movementSpeed);
        }
        if (Input.GetKey(KeyCode.A))
        {
            //Move us one movementSpeed into the left direction
            Player.Translate(-movementSpeed, 0f, 0f);
        }
        if (Input.GetKey(KeyCode.S))
        {
            //Move us one movementSpeed into the backward direction
            Player.Translate(0f, 0f, -movementSpeed);
        }
        if (Input.GetKey(KeyCode.D))
        {
            //Move us one movementSpeed into the right direction
            Player.Translate(movementSpeed, 0f, 0f);
        }
        if (Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.Space) && GetComponent<Rigidbody>().velocity.y > -.3f && GetComponent<Rigidbody>().velocity.y < .3f)
        {
            //This will give us a RigidBody component that is assigned to the same object as this script
            Rigidbody PlayerRigidBody = GetComponent<Rigidbody>();
            PlayerRigidBody.AddForce(0f, jumpForce, 0f);
        }
        Player.Rotate(0f, Input.GetAxis("Mouse X") * rotationSpeed, 0f);

        //GetMouseButtonUp means the left click was released on this frame. This is what we want for a "click" 
        if (Input.GetMouseButtonUp(0))
        {
            //GameObject.Instantiate creates a new "Instance" of the object we pass it, in this case that's our ball
            //By overriding Instantiate we can assign a parent transform for our ball
            GameObject newShotgunPellet = GameObject.Instantiate(ShotgunPellet, PelletSpawn.transform);
            newShotgunPellet.transform.localPosition = Vector3.zero;
            newShotgunPellet.transform.SetParent(transform.parent);
        }
    }
}

Apologies for the massive code wall.

Obligatory: The coding headers were kept in the text wall instead of the code tab for some reason.

Hi! What game object is it referencing? If you have the projectile listed as a prefab, try referencing that instead of the projectile in scene! I hope this makes sense.