As awesome as it would be to go into space, I can see that orbit-life would have a number of downsides. You live in a tiny container - somewhat like being in prison, you have to poo in zero gravity and there's a real prospect of some piece of stray spacejunk crashing into your home at any point and rather ruining your day.
Why then would you send up an mp3 player containing 10 songs for them to listen to, chosen by a contest winning 14 year old Norwegian girl. (Not that 14 year old Norwegian girls couldn't choose good songs - just not this one)
Here's the list:
Here Comes The Sun - Beatles
Come Fly With Me - Frank Sinatra
Rocket Man - Elton John
Up Where We Belong - Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes
Imagine - John Lennon
Flashdance - What A Feeling - Irene Cara
Walk of Life - Dire Straits
Fly - Celine Dion
Rockin' All Over The World - Status Quo
I Believe I Can Fly - R Kelly
Now I'm going to assume that there are more songs than this on the mp3 player and that the whole song-list competition thing is largely a handy hook to get media attention and spark debate because, admit it, who doesn't like a good top 10 list discussion. (Clearly I do)
That said though, there is no mention anywhere on the European Space Agency website about any other songs at all being included.
So worse case scenario - this is it - the ten songs you have to listen to over and over again while dealing with the aforementioned astronaut deprivations. Memories of my time working as a Santa photographer in a toy department come to mind at this point - looped Disney character sung Christmas carols all day. (Preceded by the like clockwork 8.55am juice-up-the-staff Tina Turner Simply the Best song playing of course)
Sure, individually there are some good songs on the list - but isn't the flying/space thing just a tad overdone. Do these people really need to be reminded that they are up in the sky - we're talking some fairly well educated scientist types here.
And where is Walking on Sunshine and the Bowie classics Space Oddity/Ashes to Ashes?
I guess it could be worse - if you were feeling mean you could have gone with a BadgerBadgerBadger, Crazy Frog and Bananaphone medley.
