The space agency has uploaded almost 60 clips on its new SoundCloud account, including “the eagle has landed.”
NASA commented, “you can hear the roar of a space shuttle launch or Neil Armstrong‘s ‘One small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind’ every time you get a phone call if you make our sounds your ringtone.”
A new frontier for NASA
No one had predicted that NASA would suddenly develop an interest in the musical sphere, and the agency has thrown another curve ball by announcing that certain quotes from President Kennedy will also form a part of its media library.
Suggestions for uses of the clips include “Houston, we’ve had a problem”, as an error message for your computer.
The sounds are free to use, all that NASA asks is that it is cited as a source in any future projects which make use of the clips. Surely it’s only a matter of time until we see remixes popping up all over YouTube, or indeed SoundCloud itself.
Why the new account?
The opening of an account on an increasingly popular website is presumably an attempt to drum up interest in the agency among the younger generation, who did not live through the golden age of space exploration such as the moon landings. Developments in space exploration have become less attention-grabbing, with more focus on technological development than breaking new frontiers with manned missions.
“You can hear the roar of a space shuttle launch or Neil Armstrong’s ‘one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind’ every time you get a phone call, if you make our sounds your ringtone,” the NASA Soundcloud profile says.
Comments have been disabled on the account, in an attempt to prevent trolling. NASA is obviously hoping to avoid any controversy and provoke an uptick in interest in its projects, which incidentally are becoming more interesting of late, with loose plans for a manned lunar mission with a view to using a potential moon base as a launchpad for a mission to Mars.
