Military Notes: Space exploration music alternatives

From PNJ.com:  Military Notes: Space exploration music alternatives

Alternative space music for the unveiling of the lunar landing module replica, the National Naval Aviation Museum’s LEM model could eventually take to the air, and complete blueprints to the original space vehicle couldn’t be found.

Space oddity

If you attended the unveiling of the National Naval Aviation Museum’s new replica of the Apollo 17 lunar excursion module last weekend and think you heard a different tune when the curtain went up than the music playing on our website’s video recording of the moment, you’re right.
At the event, 550 guests heard “Telstar,” a recording by the British group The Tornados, which was a hit on U.S. pop charts in 1962. And while the instrumental is certainly stirring, the Pensacola News Journal’s videographer Ron Stallcup decided to dub in music he thinks is more rousing and a better fit.
So those who tuned into pnj.com’s video of the unveiling on Sunday heard the theme from the 1968 Stanley Kubrick movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
Neither melody is from 1972, the year that Apollo 17 landed on the moon. Stallcup and the museum could have revived a hit song about space that was actually from 1972: “Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going to Be a Long, Long Time),” composed by Bernie Taupin and Elton John.

LEM trivia

Here are some more tidbits about the museum’s new LEM replica, which is 23 feet fall, made of steel and aluminum and weighs 4,500 pounds. For all that bulk, the manufacturer, Digital Design LLC in Phoenix, constructed the life-size model so that while it now rests on the floor of Hangar Bay 1, curators could eventually hang it from the ceiling — perhaps to dramatize the presentation and clear the way for another exhibit.
Another bit of LEM trivia, the museum’s replica, even though it’s made to sell at retail price of $180,000, is a bargain compared with the ones made for NASA’s Apollo program by Grumman. Those cost about $17 million apiece. Of course they were working space vehicles, while the museum’s replica is an empty shell.

Winging it

Grumman didn’t save complete blueprints of the original LEMs, according to Jaime Johnston, general manager of Digital Design. He said his company’s engineers and designers had to visit museums that contain four of the surviving real LEMs, none of which went into space, to make accurate drawings on which to base their replica.
Johnston said that if Grumman wanted to build another real-life LEM today, “They would have to grab one of the existing ones and take it apart.”