This sound archive has been collected by Chris Chafe, Greg Niemeyer and Anne Walsh for the anticipated need of auditory research in outer space, concretelty exploring the parameters of the once mythical concept of "Sphärenmusik". Greg Niemeyer provided coordinates to locating these rare sounds. Misson Composer Chris Chafe acquired these sounds under extreme duress, barring no effort to capture the essence of each rare sound event listed, contending with the strange behavior of sound in orbital and zero-g space. Anne Walsh painstakingly cataloged the sounds based on Chafe's logbook entries, reconciling space information with social information, which Chafe collected in separate directories.
To download a rare sound, just select 'save as source' from the menu at the far right triangle of the quicktime window for each sound. All sounds are playable on this site. The sounds loop, so you have to click the pause button to stop a sound from playing. If you hear a clicking sound during playback, copy the sound to your hard disk and play it back locally. You can play more than one sound at a time. Download time for the complete archive is substantial, because all sounds are at full 320 kBps in mp4. Any lesser compression would corrupt the subtlety of these rare sounds.
Currently, Chafe, Niemeyer and Walsh are working on in-flight entertainment concepts for anticipated manned journeys to Mars.
The team would especially like to thank the Sputnik program, the Skylab, Chandra and Scaled Composites for providing early inspiration and support for the rare sound project.
