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Mission Control Words and music by Carmino Ravosa

Space Travel

It was included in the World of Music Gd. 2 series from SilverBurdett. The book is now out of print.

Mission Control do you read me?
Will you please save me a place?
Mission Control do you need me
On the next rocket in space?

Vs. 1

Maybe I'm small but I'm growing.
Watch and one day you will see.
Space is wide open and waiting for me.

REFRAIN
So, Mission Control do you read me?
I really don't take too much room.
Mission Control do you need me
On the next trip to the moon.

Vs. 2

I want to study the planets.
I want to study the stars.
I want to go up to Venus or Mars.

REFRAIN

Vs. 3

I'm working hard and I'm certain
An astronaut's what I will be.
The sky is the limit for someone like me.

REFRAIN

(Spoken) Mission Control, do you read me?
I'll be seeing you in about twenty years.
Until then, over and out.

 

Tom Rapp's (Thomas Rapp, Esq.) band Pearls Before Swine made an albaum called "The Use of Ashes" which contained the song "Rocket Man," written the day Neil Armstrong landed on the moon.

My father was a rocket man

He often went to Jupiter or Mercury, to Venus or to Mars . . .

Tears are jewel-like

My mother's went unnoticed by my father, for his jewels were the stars . . .

One day they told us the sun had flared and taken him inside.

Years ago, Bernie Taupin was interviewed in Billboard about a song he wrote for Elton John. It was called "Rocket Man." Taupin was asked about whether he and John had stolen it from David Bowie. Indignantly, he denied this. "We stole it from Tom Rapp and a band called Pearls Before Swine," he said.
Well, not really. Elton John's "Rocket Man" was a different song, a wan song by comparison. It was all turned around, written from the point of view of the astronaut, who by gosh missed his wife and kids. Death did not intrude.

NASA History of Space Flight Motion Pictures
Over 70 years ago, the National Archives was founded to preserve American historical documents, as well as the moments and events that could be saved in still photos, films, and audio recordings. Today the Archives is home to everything from rare historical footage (newsreels and government documentaries from the 1930s) to the 1969 moon landing. Now Google is launching a pilot program to digitize its video content and offer it to everyone in the world for free, and you can watch a growing selection on Google Video.

John Glenn Movie

Star Spangled Banner

The Challenger Center http://www.challenger.org/
Challenger Center for Space Science Education shares a deep sense of loss with the crew of STS-107. Joe Allen, Chairman of the Board for Challenger Center, said: "We at Challenger Center hold the crew of Columbia and their families in our hearts and prayers during this difficult time, and we ask that the citizens of America and the world do the same. As people throughout the nation try to come to grips with the sad news about STS-107, we urge people to heed the words of the family members of the Columbia crew: 'Although we grieve deeply, as do the families of Apollo I and Challenger before us, the bold exploration of space must go on. Once the root cause of this tragedy is found and corrected, the legacy of Columbia must carry on for the benefit of our children and yours.'"

Ground Control To Major Tom

Mission Control Download Music and video for this song has been donated to the public domain.

The families of the astronauts who died in 2003's space shuttle Columbia disaster received $26.6 million from NASA, according to documents. The documents do not show how much each family received, however the husband of one deceased astronaut said parents, children and spouses were all compensated, and families of astronauts with doctoral degrees received a bit more than those with master's degrees.

 

From Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot

This except goes with a picture taken by Voyager 2, looking back from near the edge of the solar system, about 3.7 billion miles away.
The picture shows a streak of light across space and a small, pale blue dot. A second, shorter except from the book's conclusion follows.
Because of the reflection of sunlight off the spacecraft, the Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light, as if there were some special significance to this small world. But it's just an accident of geometry and optics. The Sun emits its radiation equitably in all directions. Had the picture been taken a little earlier or a little later, there would have been no sunbeam highlighting the Earth.
And why that cerulean color? The blue comes partly from the sea, partly from the sky. While water in a glass is transparent, it absorbs slightly more red light than blue. If you have tens of meters of the stuff or more, the red light is absorbed out and what gets reflected back to space is mainly blue. In the same way, a short line of sight through air seems perfectly transparent.
Nevertheless - something Leonardo da Vinci excelled at portraying - the more distant the object, the bluer it seems. Why? Because the air scatters blue light around much better than it does red. So the bluish cast of this dot comes from its thick but transparent atmosphere and its deep oceans of liquid water.
And the white? The Earth on an average day is about half covered with white water clouds. We can explain the wan blueness of this little world because we know it well. Whether an alien scientist newly arrived at the outskirts of our solar system could reliably deduce oceans and clouds and a thickish atmosphere is less certain.
Neptune, for instance, is blue, but chiefly for different reasons. From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different.

Look again at that dot.

That's here.

That's home.

That's us.

On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

New Flexible Plastic Solar Panels Are Inexpensive And Easy To Make
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070719011151.htm