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Subscribe to RSS"Sunrise Number 1" by Stormy Mondays was the top vote-getter in NASA's song contest.
"Sunrise Number 1" and "The Dreams You Give" have earned spots on the highest-flying music program in existence: NASA's wakeup music for the crew of the space shuttle Endeavour.
These tunes aren't Billboard mega-sellers ... yet. They're original songs that were entered over the past few months in the space agency's "Space Rock" contest. More than 1.5 million votes were registered. "Sunrise Number 1" by the group Stormy Mondays garnered almost half of those votes. "The Dreams You Give," performed by Brian Plunkett and his family, came in second.
Their reward? "Dreams You Give" will be played for Endeavour's crew at 6:56 p.m. ET on May 30, and "Sunrise Number 1" will air at 5:56 p.m. ET on May 31 to kick off the astronauts' last scheduled workday in space. Those may sound like ungodly hours for wakeup music, but that's just because of the mission's topsy-turvy, graveyard-shift schedule.
The latest contest follows up on an earlier poll for previously recorded hits. This time around, the entries had to be original works, composed around a spaceflight theme and submitted by the authors. Both of the top songs are bouncy, good-time tunes well-suited to get the astronauts out of their zero-G sleeping bags.
Stormy Mondays' lyrics declare that "we don't care 'bout rain or shine, when you're in space the weather's fine." The Plunkett kids tell the astronauts, "Thank you for showing us the journey from the pillow fort to the shuttle bay." Not a bad way to wake up ...
"Dreams You Give" is the Plunkett family's tribute to NASA astronauts and the shuttle program.
More on space music:
- Shuttle Discovery gets a 'Star Trek' send-off
- Wake up like an astronaut
- A heroic space flute duet
- Space flutist hits high note
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Reminds me of when I used to want to be an astronaught and still do. The only difference is my bucket never had the see through portion of the bucket cut out. Must have been the reason why I ran into the walls all of the time.
Crazy stuff. I can't believe it's 40 years past Apollo, and we still design a unique mission patch for each launch and make a big deal out of what music is chosen to wake the astronauts up. No wonder space travel is still so expensive! These are just the most obvious symptoms of a deeply ingrained attitude that space is more expensive and dangerous than it really needs to be. Thank goodness entrepreneurs are finally stepping up.
It's deeply ingrained because it is a fact. Maybe a little more routine and affordable than it used to be, but indeed getting to low-earth orbit (heck, even sub-orbital space flight) is very dangerous and very expensive. NASA, the US Air Force, and now a few commercial providers like SpaceX, just make it LOOK easy. In NASA's case it is even more difficult due to the need to "man-rate" (i.e., to meet the safety requirements for manned space flight).
Joe Strout, it's kind of funny to equate the music choice for each morning as having anything to do with the cost of "space travel". Many times one of the astronaut's family will choose the music that the station or shuttle crew will wake up to. It's not like they sit around for a month spending thousands of dollars analyzing the song or the state of mind it will put the crew in. It's just as easy as it sounds, they choose a song for the astronauts to wake up to and that's all there is to it. There will be another one tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that...
And the mission patches are also very inexpensive to create. Thinking that adds any significant amount to a mission is ridiculous. Mission patches are very similar to the shoulder patches of those in the military, and (according to wikipedia) Gordon Cooper (an astronaut and air force pilot) was the first to introduce the idea (of astronauts wearing mission patches) back in 1965. Think about it, one person could make 7 patches in no time, how much do you really think that is going to drive up the cost of "space travel"?
I'm not sure what you mean about a "deeply ingrained attitude that space is more.. dangerous than it.. needs to be". Do you mean that you think NASA takes too many precautions? Do you think they are too focused on safety? Well, Joe, there is a reason for that. After each of the two space shuttle tragedies there were intense investigations and procedures were changed and/or created and implemented to create a safer circumstance for the shuttle and her crew. Space travel IS dangerous and it should be treated as such.
Joe, being atop any rocket is akin to sitting on a slow burning bomb. Then when you are in space, you are in an environment that can kill you in about 3 seconds..... What part of that do you think ISN'T dangerous??