Sound Beat

During their pioneering voyage Michael Collins made note of the “strange electronic-sounding music” Neil Armstrong played on cassette. You’re on the Sound Beat.

So, wherever you are right now, you’re listening to the same song Armstrong played in the command module between Earth and Luna. You’re listening to Moon Moods by Les Baxter, featuring the theremin playing of Dr. Samuel Hoffman. They’re from the appropriately-titled album Music out of the Moon, a 1947 album of six songs on three 78s.

Considering the intensity of the Space Race, it was certainly an interesting selection. The theremin is an electronic instrument, and a Russian one, named for inventor Leon Theremin. It evolved as a product of government research into proximity sensors shortly before the outbreak of the Russian Civil War in 1919. It’s so Russian Lenin took lessons on it (that’s Vladimir Ilyich, of course, not Yoko’s husband).

In total, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stayed on the moon for about 22 hours, and got only about 2 hours outside the lunar lander. After that, it was all aboard for the trip back home.

You’re on the Sound Beat.

You’re listening to Flying Home, recorded by the Benny Goodman Sextet. Much like the Apollo crew, the Sextet was made up of pioneers in their field: Goodman, of course, Charlie Christian, Arthur Bernstein, Fletcher Henderson, Nick Fatool, and Lionel Hampton.

The lunar module rendezvoused with Collins, who’d been orbiting the moon while the others had their fun, on the 21st of July, 1969. On the 22nd they started flying home in earnest, and would reenter Earth’s gravity (and it’s Pacific ocean) on July 24th.

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Story’s Texas Moon

Most anyone alive during the first lunar landing can tell you exactly where they were. For Dr. Story Musgrave it was a very special room in Houston.

You’re on the Sound Beat.

“I was assigned to a mission already but I was in Mission Control in the back of the room and just by luck, just by total luck, I am standing next to a person called Lewellyn Evans, Lewellyn but he went by Lew. Now this man is the CEO of Grumman. And so I am standing next to the CEO of the company that built this thing that just landed on the moon. So I said to Lew “Sir, let’s go out to the parking lot.” And we’re just walking around the parking lot and suddenly his peripheral vision catches the Moon up there and he looks up at the Moon and he says “Story Musgrave, do you understand that there are humans up on that thing up there?” I said “I understand that Lew, now we can go back to Mission Control.”  

You’ve been listening to Under a Texas Moon by Ted Fiorito and his Orchestra, a Victor 78 from 1929.

Story was an NASA astronaut for over 30 years and flew on six spaceflights. He performed the first shuttle spacewalk on Challenger’s first flight, was a pilot on an astronomy mission, conducted two classified DOD missions, was the lead spacewalker on the Hubble Telescope repair mission and on his last flight, he operated an electronic chip manufacturing satellite on Columbia. Listen to our interview with him here

50 years ago the Moon was the destination. Soon it could be just the jumping off point. You’re listening to former NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe and you’re on the Sound Beat.

You’ve been listening to Destination Moon featuring Bob Crosby and Connie Haines with the Bobcats, a Coral 78 from 1951.

Listen to more of the interview with Sean O’Keefe right here.

Man’s ancient dream realized.

You’re on the Sound Beat.

Only 65 years separated the flights of the Wright Brothers and the Apollo 11 crew. 65 years, with all the achievements in the interim and the names associated with them, Goddard, Lindbergh, Earhart, Yeager, Gagarin, Glenn, all coming down to the one moment when Armstrong left the lunar lander and stepped for the first time onto the surface of the moon. And when he did, he brought a remembrance of home with him: remnants of the propeller and fabric of the original Wright Flyer.

You’ve been listening to the Airborne Symphony, composed by Marc Blitzstein. This RCA Victor 78 features the New York City Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Leonard Bernstein, recorded in 1946.

You’re on the Sound Beat.

When astronomer Simon Marius discovered that Jupiter had 4 moons, (he did so about a month before Galileo) he took his friend Johannes Kepler’s advice and gave them rather cheeky names. If you’re not up on your Roman mythology Jupiter was basically God of gods. His marriage to Juno was a rocky one, mainly because Jupiter took his share of lovers. Kepler’s suggestion: name the moons after Jupiter’s main lovers. That’s Io, Callisto, Ganymede and Europa. And it was a pretty good joke as it was, for four centuries. But when NASA sent a probe to check up on Jupiter and his lovers in 2011, it was named after his wife Juno: the planetary punchline we didn’t know we needed.

You’ve been listening to Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 in C major, also known as the Jupiter symphony. It’s the last symphony that he composed and it’s on the short list of the greatest in the history of classical music.

Image:

Jupiter and Juno – Frans Christoph Janneck

The USSR takes the first major step forward in the Space Race.

You’re on the Sound Beat.

Sputnik, the first man-made satellite, was launched into orbit on October 4th, 1957. Once up there, or…more correctly, out there, the satellite hurtled along at 18,000 miles per hour, taking just under 100 minutes to circle the earth. But by the time it came back around, everything had changed: humanity had entered the Space Age, and the US/USSR Space Race had begun in earnest.  You’re listening to Underneath The Russian Moon by Belle Baker, a Brunswick 78.

Homer Hickam, (who wrote Rocket Boys, basis for the 1999 film October Sky) watched Sputnik fly over his small town of Coalwood, West Virginia. In his words, “If it had been God in his chariot that had flown over, I could not have been more impressed.”

Click through for more about Sputnik, the Space Race and Homer Hickam,

You heard the man. Better get aboard.

You’re on the Sound Beat.

You’re listening to By Rocket To the Moon, a Young People’s Record from 1950. The music was composed by Raymond Scott, Ralph Comargo is the narrator and while no credit is given for the lyrics of the accompanying songs, they were sung by the Gene Lowell chorus.

The first lunar orbit would take place 18 years after this recording. In December of 1968, Frank Borman, William Anders and James Lovell Jr completed ten revolutions around the moon and returned home all in under a week.

Listen to the whole recording here.

Image Credit: NASA “A new chapter in space flight began in July 1950 with the launch of the first rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla: the Bumper 2, an ambitious two-stage rocket program that topped a V-2 missile base with a Corporal rocket. The upper stage was able to reach then-record altitudes of almost 250 miles, higher than the International Space Station’s orbit.

Launched under the direction of the General Electric Company, Bumper 2 was used primarily for testing rocket systems and for research on the upper atmosphere. The rockets carried small payloads that allowed them to measure attributes including air temperature and cosmic ray impacts. Seven years later, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I and Sputnik II, the first satellites into Earth orbit.”