Just a reminder
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Why is this so important?
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I have a longstanding pattern with this type of story where major news organizations decide that its really important the song thats played to wake up the astronauts, by both playing it and creating a backstory for its meaning in some minor way to what the crew could be doing or not. This type of story gets cycled back like everytime somebody goes up in orbit.
When a Doctor operates they don’t have the news cameras reporting that the Hospital is playing that “doctor doctor…give me the news”…song, when hes about to take out a defective heart.
When they have a news story about illegal aliens they don’t play “born in the USA” or that song by Genesis.
I wonder if anybody else notices this pattern?
here is the latest version of the story…
http://www.floridatoday.com/content/blogs/space/2009/03/live-in-orbit-discovery-free-bird.shtml
PS: its not something i hate so don’t go there, but it just seems like filler news
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It is feel good fluff so people can pretend, they feel like an astronaut.
The MSM (main stream media) quit being about actual news or at least useful facts a long time ago.
They can’t let the shuttle go uncovered but were they to do any other sort of story the newscasters might be required to learn something about science. And since most Americans don’t really know anything about science anyway you get pablum.
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I agree they need to cover all space activities because thats our future eventually.
But the problem is perhaps not that the media uses the song thats played to wake up the astronauts, but WHY is it such a big deal for NASA to it seems plan out what will be played to wake them up and waste time even dealing with choosing the song so it has some meaning. Its not even vaguely amusing, but they (the new media) often have a scene of the people in the command center really enjoying the song and bobbing their head…etc… It just seems like a big deal for nothing.
I found out thats its a tradition since 1965. I guess its just a dumb tradition.
I also found this:
http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/audio/shuttle/sts-107/html/ndxpage1.html -
It is likely important to the ground staff because they don’t really have all that much to do once the bird is in orbit. I suppose it breaks the tension for them?
It is a seriously large group of science geeks and what they find amusing is bound to be strange to most of the rest of us.
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yep i guess thats it. Playing these songs could also be like a wish for good luck in a traditional way for NASA like an act of superstition like they never say “good luck” to people who about to perform in a play, but instead say “break a leg”. NASA plays these songs as a tradition do that nothing goes wrong. I didn’t see that before so i guess its less crazy to have people getting paid to think about the song they will play the next day and post it and provide a link to download it. Must be an easy job :-D
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They can’t let the shuttle go uncovered but were they to do any other sort of story the newscasters might be required to learn something about science. And since most Americans don’t really know anything about science anyway you get pablum.
Could be this.
But I think more it has to do with slow news day (i.e. the filler possibility), or my best reason - a writing device to catch the reader’s attention and relate to it.
Space news isn’t exciting anymore, it seems. Not everyone is an astronaut or interested in the technicalities of the mission or launch. Put something about Free Bird in the title and it sparks some interest.
Looking at the article only a few sentences even talk about the song. The rest is about the astronauts and mission.
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