Wake Up Songs

[rhodan]

Hmm...I was wondering about this for a while now. The TV news reported here during Discovery's recent adventures that the astronauts aboard the ISS and the shuttle get a wake-up call from mission control through a song they play (rather loud I assume) every morning. During the Discovery mission mission control opted for 'Come on Eileen' by those dreadful Dexy's Midnight Runners ( <img src="/images/icons/tongue.gif" /> ) for obvious reasons. Is this standard practice? Do astronauts get a wake up song every morning, or was the reporter making things up? And who gets to pick the music? I thought they pretty much worked 24/7 on those missions, in shifts I assumed. But do they adhere to a day-night rythm like we have on Earth? And more importantly; how do I get to pick the wake up song??? <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" />

 

[bpcooper]

Astronauts have been awoken by a song ever day of every mission since, if I remember correctly, the mid-Gemini era. It's tradition, and each day's song is picked usually by a family member or by one astronaut to another. I don't beleive they do it every day on the ISS, however.<br /><br />Counting 113 Shuttle missions and many before that, that's a lot of song picks ;-) <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>-Ben</p> </div>

 

[bpcooper]

Oh, and as for 24.7 shifts...no, not on all missions. On Shuttle-ISS flights, they are on the same shift which is 16 hours awake and 8 'sleeping.'<br /><br />On past missions, including STS-107, for example, and STS-99, where they are conducting science experiments or something similar (STS-99 was constant radar mapping of earth) that have to be monitored 24/7, they went in shifts; Red Team / Blue Team. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p>-Ben</p> </div>

 

[rhodan]

Excellent! Thanks for the info Ben.

 

[kane007]

Maybe Wham's "Wake up be you go go" would have been better?<br /><br /><i><font color="yellow">"keep it simple, stupid!"</font></i>/safety_wrapper>

 

[shuttle_rtf]

Vegas had a good choice with U2's Vertigo on Flight Day 3 or 4.<br /><br />The most emotional one for me is Willie McCool's on FD15 of Columbia's final mission.<br /><br />What he said was utterly amazing....and even more so considering he was not long for this world.<br /><br />You may want to watch this:<br />http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=375&posts=8

 

[rhodan]

Quite inspirational, thanks for that video. <br /><br />It reminds me of what Dr Sagan wrote in Contact: <ul type="square">‘At a few hundred kilometres altitude, the Earth fills half your sky, and the band of blue that stretches from Mindanao to Bombay, which your eye encompasses in a single glance, can break your heart with its beauty. Home, you think. Home. This is my world. This is where I come from. Everyone I know, everyone I ever heard of, grew up down there, under that relentless and exquisite blue…<br /><br />…You can see a volcanic eruption in Kamchatka, a Saharan sandstorm approaching Brazil, unseasonably frigid weather in New Zealand. You get to thinking of the Earth as an organism, a living thing. You get to worry about it, care for it, wish it well. National boundaries are as invisible as meridians or longitude, or the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. The boundaries are arbitrary. The planet is real.<br /><br />Spaceflight, therefore, is subversive. If they are fortunate enough to find themselves in Earth orbit, most people, after a little meditation, have similar thoughts. The nations that had instituted spaceflight had done so largely for nationalistic reasons; it was a small irony that almost everyone who entered space received a startling glimpse of a transnational perspective, of the Earth as one world.’</ul><img src="/images/icons/cool.gif" />

 

[grooble]

Does music sound different in zero g?

 

[rhodan]

No, gravity doesn't affect sound waves. The medium a sound wave travels through is affected by gravity, but I assume air pressure inside the ISS and the shuttles is almost similar to the air pressure on Earth's surface; the air pressure on Earth's surface is a consequence of Earth's gravity.

 

[Leovinus]

Now there's an interesting question. I bet gravity would effect sound waves.<br /><br />Imagine a very high gravity field. A pinpoint sound source fires off. The medium in the "down" direction would be more compressed and would transmit the sound faster and probably farther than the medium in the "up" direction. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[rhodan]

Yes, gravity affects the medium a sound wave needs to propagate. However, in zero g, sound is dependent on air pressure. As long as the air pressure doesn't change, the sound wave will not change.

 

[shuttle_rtf]

>Quite inspirational, thanks for that video. <<br /><br />I'm not ashamed to say that it got to me big time. The four parts actually are very emotion driven.

 

[juliemac]

Sheesh, just after watching that, a few others came into my cube for a discussion. As they left, one guy told me that my makeup had run.<br />Ok. So I struggled and lost.<br />Very well done. even if off thread.

 

[shuttle_rtf]

Luckily I'm staying away from eyeline this week <img src="/images/icons/wink.gif" /><br /><br />Best to watch parts 1 and 4 for a more positive light on things.<br /><br />Part 1<br />http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=369&start=1<br /><br />Part 4<br />http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=377&start=1<br /><br />

 

[earth_bound_misfit]

Wow nice video Shuttle_RTF,very nice, shame though that someone tampered with the song. Those extra drum parts mixed into "Imagine" were terrible. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p> </p><p>----------------------------------------------------------------- </p><p>Wanna see this site looking like the old SDC uplink?</p><p>Go here to see how: <strong>SDC Eye saver </strong>  </p> </div>