NASA's unexplained files: Apollo 10 astronauts talk about weird music heard in space

[editor]

Interesting piece here (albeit with a ludicrously stentorian voice-over)

Declassified audio of the Apollo 10 mission has brought attention to a moment when NASA astronauts heard strange "outer spacey" music during their trip around the Moon. While transcripts of these exchanges were released back in 2008, some of the new audio has made it into an upcoming episode of NASA's Unexplained Files, a show on the Science Channel that features dramatized stories from the US space agency.

Unexplained Files is a bit like a space-themed version of Unsolved Mysteries. It takes small details pulled from agency documents or stories told by NASA astronauts and extrapolates them out into big, overreaching "what if?" kinds of stories. Also like Unsolved Mysteries, those stories should be taken with humongous grains of salt.

The story in question here seems to stem from an incident that did happen. Apollo 10 was the last mission before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon during Apollo 11. One of its main objectives was to practice the separation and re-docking of the lunar module (the Moon lander) and the command module (the orbiter). During the hours that the two craft were separated, all three astronauts intermittently discussed the sounds. "Boy, that sure is weird music," lunar module pilot Eugene Cernan says at one point. "We're going to have to find out about that," command module pilot John Young responds
‘Outer spacey' music in newly declassified NASA audio confused Apollo 10 astronauts

 

[xes]

Got to be something to do with the radio equiptment and space weather or something. That or moon mermaids.

 

[purves grundy]

Richey Edwards

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Did they get Rickrolled by alienz?

 

[wtfftw]

Got to be something to do with the radio equiptment and space weather or something. That or moon mermaids.

Star sirens.

 

[DotCommunist]

it was the music of the spheres obvs

 

[IC3D]

case solved

 

[Hocus Eye.]

The constant repetition of the phrase "backside of the moon" was a bit strange. I know the moon has a far side but have never heard it called a backside before. Perhaps the sounds were the moon farting.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Was it...

 

[gosub]

Got to be something to do with the radio equiptment and space weather or something. That or moon mermaids.

Feedback from the radar they were testing for Apollo 11 that got picked up the radio. Known, identified at the time and sorted ahead of the moon landing

 

[2hats]

Feedback from the radar they were testing for Apollo 11 that got picked up the radio. Known, identified at the time and sorted ahead of the moon landing

Actually interference arising out of the fact that they were using the VHF radios in the lunar and command modules, not only for communication, but also for range finding (in order to save weight).

 

[butchersapron]

Fucking lib-dems.

 

[Virtual Blue]

from checking out that youtube vid, i am now watching this.

fuckers.

 

[2hats]

Original audio and relevant transcript (available since 1973) - 'music' is first mentioned at 102:13:02 GET (2m50s into the audio excerpt) and again at 102:17:58 (7m43s) when Young pretty much guesses the source. Cernan goes on to refer to it again several more times (at 103:32:53, 103:37:56 and 103:40:51).

GET = Ground Elapsed Time HH:MM:SS.

 

[existentialist]

Interesting piece here (albeit with a ludicrously stentorian voice-over)

The stentorian voiceover is amusing, but I really do get fed up with the manufactured drama that TV goes in for - it's in everything from documentaries about moon music to those bloody awful Channel 5 things about huge buildings: "But there is a problem: the team only have 4½ hours to get ONE THOUSAND TONNES of steel on the top of the building before the deadline...because the kettle goes on at 11, and the tea will have been made by 11:03. They have to finish the job, or the consequences are unthinkable..."

With this one, there was the phrase "...and when they emerge, everything seems to be all right". As if the mere fact that everything appeared to be all right was merely some illusion.

It's all just so...manipulative!

Anyway, rant over. I solve the problem by not watching programmes like this. Which rules out quite a lot of TV