What Space Geeks listen to...

Tonight, while working on fellowship reviews and email discussions of Space Grant submissions, I was listening to...  Mission Control.

Yes, internet radio station Soma.FM  has a "channel," called Mission Control, which plays ambient music all the time, with background recordings of NASA mission control logs.  During live Space Shuttle missions, they actually play the audio of the NASA TV Public Affairs (PAO) console, with additional input of the Flight Director's (FLIGHT) voice "channel" (loop) and the space crew (A/G) loop that connects the Mission Control folks at Johnson Space Center in Houston to the astronauts on board the Shuttle and International Space Station.  Listening to these voice communications loops was the sort of work I did during my research with NASA on distributed team coordination in Mission Control.  I miss that work, so it's not surprising that I can find it relaxing and fun (even comprehensible) listening to conversations about reading back good words on the updates of the muxers and the cryo temps that the MPSRs wanted.

By the way, congratulations to Gary Payton, former NASA astronaut; and Wayne Hale, former NASA flight director, who were both inducted as the Purdue Distinguished Engineering Alumni last week.  (Wayne was one of my gracious hosts and experts while I was doing the Mission Control work.)  And in a trivia note... Today, Astronaut Alvin Drew became the 200th human to have conducted a space walk with his work to help repair one of the Space Station cryogenic pumps.  Congratulations, Al.

Back to work, off to bed, off to Washington on Wednesday for some Space Grant national meeting work.