Space Oddity

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9dan ... e=youtu.be

Published on 12 May 2013
A revised version of David Bowie's Space Oddity, recorded by Commander Chris Hadfield on board the International Space Station.


COOOOOL

Very awesome.

100% agreed

I'll go one further and say that this is probably the single most important thing he's done on the ISS in his six-month stay. Of course there's a lot of interesting and important science being done at the ISS, but this thing has seven million YouTube views, and it made the national news here and I imagine in many other countries. It's going to inspire countless kids to study science and technology, and will be a reminder to lots of others that our whole society is built on these things, and that rationality trumps superstition. Furthermore, it brings home the point that astronauts are ordinary people like you and me, with families and hobbies. They're not the superstars they once were (nobody is anymore in the Internet Age), and therefore anyone can succeed at something technical.

Also, as amateur music productions go, I'd watch and listen to this even if he wasn't an astronaut on the ISS. It's pretty darn impressive!

The astronaut selection process is still quite rigorous, you have to be pretty extraordinary and dedicated in several ways to make it to a flight assignment.

I don't think singing ability is one of them. Yet. Might be after this.

Oh of course, astronauts are still very very good scientists and engineers. But with all the modern communication, with them tweeting and blogging from the ISS, it's become so much more accessible. Astronauts used to be top fighter pilots with nerves of steel and lots of bravery whose incredible feats would be written about by journalists and shown on TV. They were a separate kind of being from the rest of humanity, people that you spoke of, not with. Today's astronauts (André Kuipers' flight had similar effects in The Netherlands as Hadfield's) feel much more like representatives of all of us, sent out into space to explore, and sharing their experiences and discoveries with all of us.

I think it's the Global Village that people used to talk about coming into existence, rather than anything specifically to do with today's astronauts, but it's still awesome and potentially a very powerful positive force towards our survival as a species...