Daily Archives: May 31, 2021

Image Credit:Guitar photographer/Shutterstock.com

3D printing an additive manufacturing (AM) technique is increasingly used for large industrial purposes. It is often much cheaper than traditional industrial manufacturing methods, especially in bespoke or low-volume applications. Now, 3D printing is increasingly becoming adopted in the space sector.

NASA, the US space agency, is a pioneer in 3D printing exploration, providing funding for many new technologies. These projects are 3D printing objects and parts for space travel, putting 3D printers onto spacecraft for maintenance and research, and even growing habitats for life with 3D printing technology.

NASAs enthusiastic adoption of 3D printing is largely due to cost. Creating bespoke molds and formworks necessary to manufacture many parts of a spacecraft is incredibly costly and leads to slower iteration and development of engineering and design.

Modern 3D printing technology, on the other hand, is capable of building custom parts and objects on demand. It costs no more to print a completely different design on the next print job, and more complex designs do not result in higher manufacturing costs.

With the latest industrial 3D printers now capable of producing very large, lightweight, and strong objects with complex shapes, the benefits of 3D printing can apply to large-scale industrial and manufacturing projects.

This is what makes industrial 3D printing increasingly appealing to engineers at the space agency. It provides the low production volumes, high degrees of design freedom, and low cost that their missions require.

Astronauts benefit from 3D printing with devices aboard spacecraft and stations that help to sustain long missions in space between resupplying. Since 2014, the International Space Station has used a 3D printer to develop custom tools, spare parts, and new equipment for research at the cutting edge of space exploration.

The latest generation of 3D printers is increasingly versatile, with more methods appearing all the time. Now, more materials can be used to make more complex shapes and structures with more resolution than ever before.

However, 3D printers all require feedstock to print anything, and this is a space- and weight-consuming resource. One NASA project is researching a potential means to reduce the need for transporting feedstock to 3D printers in space. The Refabricator will repurpose materials from used objects and waste for new 3D printer feedstocks for the 3D printing system onboard the ISS.

The Refabricator can be used to repeatedly complete the recycling loop for objects on the ISS. Tools and parts can be returned to the system to be remade more than once, without significantly degrading the material quality of the part. It is also designed to be able to repurpose foam and plastic packaging material used for delivering supplies to the space station.

In the future, large-scale 3D printers may be used to create landing pads, launch sites, and entire habitats capable of supporting life in space. In construction, AM technology is already selected for extreme conditions, such as in environmental disaster relief. 3D printers can build shelter and other structures quickly, constructing round-the-clock, and without risking human life. These qualities make them excellent candidates to be the builders of future infrastructure projects in space.

How 3D Printing in Space Could Revolutionize ManufacturingPlay

Video Credit: Seeker/YouTube.com

3D printing is already disrupting many industrial, engineering, and construction industries. It is also already widely adopted by NASA engineers and astronauts in space. As it continues to develop and its capabilities increase, the cost savings of 3D printing technology will continue to help make space exploration less expensive.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.01.003

Betz, Eri (2021). Space is Expensive: Can 3D Printing and On-Orbit Construction Drive Down the Cost. Astronomy.com. [Online] https://astronomy.com/news/2021/05/can-3d-printing-and-on-orbit-construction-make-space-more-accessible

Goldstein, Phil (2018). NASA Turns to 3D Printing to Help Astronauts Aboard the International Space Station. FedTech. [Online] https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2018/10/nasa-turns-3d-printing-help-astronauts-aboard-international-space-station.

Gress, Douglas R. and Ronald V. Kalafsky (2015). Geographies of Production in 3D: Theoretical and Research Implications Stemming from Additive Manufacturing. Geoforum. [Online] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.01.003.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are those of the author expressed in their private capacity and do not necessarily represent the views of AZoM.com Limited T/A AZoNetwork the owner and operator of this website. This disclaimer forms part of the Terms and conditions of use of this website.

Read the rest here:

Could 3D Printing Drive Down the Cost of Space Exploration? - AZoM

TAIPEI, TAIWAN - Chinas military may be examining its decades-old space program for ways to improve data collection and disrupt the satellites of other countries if needed, analysts said this week following a Mars landing and a debris crash into the Indian Ocean.

Earlier this month China placed a rover on Mars, the official Xinhua News Agency reported, becoming the second nation after the United States to make the landing. A little more than two years ago, China sent its robotic spacecraft Change 4 to a basin on the far side of the moon. A Chinese orbital space biology lab is due for completion by 2025, the Beijing-based Global Times news website said in March.

China Lands Spacecraft on Mars

Plans call for rover to stay in lander for few days of diagnostic tests before rolling down ramp to explore icy area of Mars, Utopia Planitia

Along with its achievements, Chinas fast-growing space program has caused some alarm. Earlier this month, there was real concern about possible casualties as debris from one of its rockets fell to earth, landing in the Indian Ocean west of the Maldives and south of India.

Although none of Chinas space missions has an express military motive, analysts believe the Peoples Liberation Army is monitoring this ever-deeper exploration for opportunities, such as new ways to collect intelligence or blind satellites from other countries during any conflict.

Now that they have a very modern launch vehicle fleet, they want to probe as much as they can, and if theres something thats attractive for industry or for military purposes, then theyll proceed, said Marco Cceres, director of space studies with the market analysis firm Teal Group Corp. in the United States.

Decades of space exploration

China launched its first satellite in 1970 and put its first man in space in 2003, becoming the worlds third nation, after Russia and the United States, to do so. Chinese officials have said they are using space exploration peacefully and have spoken at the U.N. Conference on Disarmament against the militarization of earths outer atmosphere.

Some of its scores of satellites are for military or dual-purpose use, the SpaceRef industry news website says. Western countries believe two in particular to be for express military use, it says.

The U.S. Department of Defense has said in reports on the Chinese armed forces that the manned space launch could help China militarily and that the country may be developing a direct-ascent anti-satellite weapon to jam U.S. navigation satellite signals.

'Dazzle'and gather data

The Chinese military could be looking for ways now to use direct energy beams to dazzle or disrupt other countries gear operating in low orbits, said Derek Grossman, senior analyst with the U.S.-based Rand Corp. research organization.

Its satellites might eventually gather information in a way that protects that data from adversarial interference, he added.

To target a foreign satellite would mean mutually assured destruction, said Carl Thayer, an Asia-specialized emeritus professor from the University of New South Wales in Australia.

China is not capable of militarizing the moon or Mars, said Alexander Huang, a strategic studies professor at Taiwans Tamkang University in Taiwan.

China Space Agency: Lunar Probe Successfully Lands on Moon

Probe is expected to gather lunar soil and rock samples and return them to Earth

Showing strength on earth

But missions to the far reaches of space let China flex muscle on earth, Thayer said.

The larger [agenda]is demonstrating technological prowess, advanced technology to convince the rest of the world youre on a losing wicket if youre going to stick to the U.S., that Chinas growing more and more powerful, Thayer said. Many smaller Asian governments consider Washington to be a military ally as Chinas navy becomes stronger in the region.

Chinas space program is catching up to the United States, currently the worlds top space power in terms of resources, Grossman said. Few other countries have programs that come even close. Their space program is second in the world, he said. They are catching up to us rapidly and will probably overtake us if we dont invest in the coming years.

China is anxious to compete especially so it can impress its own citizens around events such as the 100-year anniversary this year of the Communist Partys founding, Huang said. Its looking at space for scientific knowledge too, he said.

China needs one or two leading programs that can give more No. 1 stickers to China when they celebrate the centennial and continue to celebrate whatsoever, Huang said.

Steady progress, no agenda

China still lacks a specific agenda save to expand its presence in space as other countries do, Caceres said. But all along, he said, Chinas military will have the biggest role of any government department, even in multi-use endeavors.

The country with the world's third strongest armed forces after the United States and Russia is exploring space in a methodical way, without the shifts that the U.S. space agency, NASA, experiences when new presidents take office in Washingtonton, he said.

But overall, he said, theyre just kind of seeing whats possible."

Read the rest here:

China Seen Expanding Military Capability in Space, but not Yet on Mars or the Moon - VOA Asia

John F. Kennedy had not even taken the oath of office when the battle began. In December 1960, with the inauguration a month away, the U.S. Air Force launched a first strikenot against a foreign enemy but against NASA, the civilian space agency. In a letter to commanders, the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force expressed confidence that the president-elect understood the imperative of military supremacy in space and would, therefore, grant the Air Force the primary role. Making sure that Kennedy got the point, the Air Force leaked its letter.

Space Fight, cheered Aviation Week. Yet this was more than a turf war. At stake was the very purpose of the U.S. space program. Would the nation stay committed to space for peace, the policy of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the outgoing president? Or would the new administration see space as the Air Force did: an arena of the Cold War, a battlefront on which armed conflict might be inevitable? The decision was Kennedys to makethough it would come to depend, as events unfolded, on an astronaut named John Glenn.

To the Air Force top brass, the existence of NASA was an affront. The Space Act of 1958, which created NASA and gave it control over human spaceflight, was a rebuke to every military planner with fantasies of orbital fighter planes or space stations teeming with missiles. At a time when the Soviet Union was achieving one first after anotherthe first satellite, the first animal in orbit, the first unmanned craft to reach the lunar surfaceEisenhower held to his view that space exploration served no national security interest. As a concession, he allowed the Air Force to continue development of the X-20, a high-altitude bomber, but the man-in-space program, Project Mercury , was NASAs domain.

Kennedys election gave the generals cause for hope. If the Soviets control space, he had said during the campaign, they can control earth. In the eyes of the world, he argued, second in space meant second in science and technology, second in military power, second in the struggle between freedom and totalitarian rule. In late 1960, a classified U.S. Information Agency reportwhich caused a stir when it leakedrevealed that Soviet superiority in space was eroding global confidence in the U.S. Satellite pessimism, analysts called it. Pressure was building for a show of strength in space.

And NASA held a weakening hand. The astronauts were popular with the public, but the manned program was well behind schedule and marred by failure. Rockets exploded on the launchpad; payloads ended up in the sea. Rumors circulated that Kennedy would transfer Mercury to the military or cancel it altogethera course that his science adviser, Jerome Wiesner, preferred.

Follow this link:

JFK, John Glenn and the Fight for Space for Peace - The Wall Street Journal

Bill NelsonClarence (Bill) William NelsonDemings raises Democrats' hopes in uphill fight to defeat Rubio Stephanie Murphy won't run for Senate seat in Florida next year China fires back after NASA criticism of rocket debris reentry MORE, the administrator of NASA, attended a hearing of the House Appropriations Subcommittee for Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies on the subject of the space agencys fiscal 2022 budget recently. His testimony was a master class on how sausage making is going to take America back to the moon. It also demonstrated the wisdom of once again naming a politician as the chief of NASA.

German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck once famously said that one should not look too closely at how laws or sausages are made. However, a look at how the subcommittee hearings proceeded is a master class on the unseemly side of how laws, in this case NASA funding, are made.

Much of the hearings consisted of various members of the subcommittee complaining about how SpaceX got the sole contract for the lunar Human Landing System (HLS) that will take the first Americans to the lunar surface in over 50 years. The theory is that, just as with the Commercial Crew program, two providers are better for the redundancy they provide. Nelson, several times, had to explain that the reason NASA was not able to contract for two lunar landers was that the previous Congress was excessively stingy in funding the HLS, granting just $850 million for the current fiscal year instead of the $3.4 billion that NASA had requested.

Fortunately, as Space News reported, Nelson offered a way for Congress to correct its mistake. He noted that the Biden administration and Congress are debating the content and scope of an infrastructure bill, which Nelson and members of the committee were careful to call a jobs bill. The NASA chief suggested that it would be a good idea if Congress could give the space agency about $11.6 billion of that bill.

Over $5 billion would go for the follow-on selection for the lunar HLS, presumably giving companies such as Blue Origin a second shot at the prize. Another $5.4 billion would pay for repairs and infrastructure upgrades at various NASA centers. Two hundred million dollars would pay for developing new space suits for lunar explorers, and $585 million would help to develop a nuclear thermal rocket system to take astronauts to Mars. The money would presumably be paid out over several years.

Nelsons plan depends a lot on there being an infrastructure or a jobs bill. As Hot Air reports, the back-and-forth between the Biden administration and Senate Republicans over how much the bill will cost, how it will get paid for and what will be included is still ongoing as of this writing.

Nelson was also quick to show an image taken from the Chinese Zhurong rover of the surface of Mars. While he was careful to congratulate the Chinese for their space feat, he also took pains to note that it represented a burgeoning capability in space that could prove to be a challenge to the United States. The Chinese are planning to land their taikonauts on the moon, he stated. The implication was clear The United States had better get moving with the Artemis return to the moon program lest it get shown up by China.

Nelson did not spend much time going over the wonky arguments for funding NASA, the science, how it facilitates commerce, or even how it inspires Americas youth. He concentrated on two primal motivators that everyone, especially members of Congress, experience: greed and fear.

Funding NASA, even out of the grab bag infrastructure or, if one prefers, jobs bill, means money for campaign contributors and employment for voters. Failing to fund NASA might mean having to watch Chinese taikonauts on the moon doing the one small step and one giant leap routine on live streaming video with Americans nowhere to be seen. The humiliation would be exquisite. Politicians who let it happen might not be in office for very long.

Its all sausage making. NASA ought not to be a jobs program. NASA is supposed to be about exploring the universe. However, Nelson knows that the unseemly stuff like jobs in the district and not being shown up by one of the worlds least favorite countries motivates politicians more than the glories of pushing back the final frontier.

One can only hope that the unquestioned benefits of space exploration, the science, the commerce and the soft political power will follow resulting from all that money that Nelson seeks to extract from his fellow politicians and that not too much of it will be wasted.

Mark Whittington, who writes frequently about space and politics, has published a political study of space exploration entitled Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon? as well as The Moon, Mars and Beyond, and, most recently, Why is America going back to the Moon. He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner. He is published in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Hill, USA Today, the LA Times and the Washington Post, among other venues.

Continue reading here:

NASA's Bill Nelson shows how sausage making will take America back to the moon | TheHill - The Hill

What happens when you cross one of the worlds largest defense contractors with one of the worlds largest automobile manufacturers? Apparently, you get an electrically powered autonomous lunar rover. At least that is the fruit of a new collaboration between Lockheed Martin (LM) and General Motors (GM).

Mobility is one of the major priorities of the Artemis program, which is set to send humans back to the moon, and provide a permanent human settlement there, by the end of the decade. Last year they released a call asking for innovative approaches to rovers. LM and GM have answered that call with a still conceptual rover that is electric, can drive itself, and can travel farther than the original lunar buggies launched with the Apollo missions in the 1970s.

That last metric is not a hard one to beat the Apollo rovers were only capable of traveling 4 miles at a max speed of 8 miles per house. Improving on those specifications should be no challenge for the combination of LMs space exploration nous and GMs mobility expertise. Achieving feats that engineers 40 years ago could never have dreamed of would be different challenge though.

Two of the most interesting features of the proposed rover lean heavily on developments in the automotive industry over the last 10 years. Electrification and autonomy are buzzwords in what is slowly being rebranded as the mobility industry. Each would have advantages for lunar exploration missions.

Electric drive trains would either allow rovers to recharge themselves using onboard solar panels or quickly stop by a recharging station at a landing site or base for a top up before venturing out for more exploration. Solar power is relatively abundant on the moon, at least for the month when a hemisphere is facing the sun. How to charge the rovers, and the rest of any permanent settlement, for the months that their hemisphere is not pointing to the sun is a question that has yet to be answered.

Autonomy, though it faces its own challenges, is potentially the more game-changing technology. Only 5% of the lunar surface has been explored directly, and, in the beginning at least, astronauts will not have significant amounts of time to dedicate to tramping around on the surface analyzing rocks. Autonomous rovers, however, could potentially serve that role nicely, leaving on research and sample collection sorties from a central hub without requiring any input from the astronauts that are trying to build a sustainable base.

Materials those rovers might find could prove to be key components to that base. However, there is also the risk that if an autonomous driving system fails, the astronauts would have to use valuable time to go and fetch the rover itself. Surely LM and GM know how bad such a failure would look under the national spotlight of an early stage moon mission.

They might not even get the chance to prove their chops however, as the rover is still theoretical. While the corporate duo plan to use it to pitch to the Artemis program, a final selection has not been made. This appears to be GMs first foray into space exploration, but LM hasnt been as successful as usual in pitching their programs to NASA, having recently been edged out by SpaceX to build the Artemis programs landing vehicle.

Surely GM and LM will not be the only options available for any such rover program either. But if the concepts contained in their proposed system do come to fruition, it would mean a giant leap in our ability to explore our closest neighbor.

Learn More:LM Lockheed Martin, General Motors Team to Further Lunar Exploration with Autonomous Moon RoverNBC GM, Lockheed Martin developing a next-generation lunar roverSpace.com Lockheed Martin, GM team up to build new astronaut moon buggyVerge Lockheed Martin and GM are working on an electric Moon buggy

Lead Image:Visualization of astronauts next to a new generation of lunar rover.Credit: Lockheed Martin

Like Loading...

More here:

Self-Driving Lunar Rovers for Astronaut Road Trips on the Moon - Universe Today

LISTS Lost in Space Music: Records That Explore the Outer Limits By George Grella May 28, 2021 Illustration by Jinhwa Jang

Space music, space rock, kosmische Musik: these are all well-known genres that share a cosmic aesthetica sense of expansiveness meant to capture feelings of awe, mirroring our deep connection with the universe that surrounds us, and the thrill of space exploration and science fiction narratives. Its music that offers fantasias of the final frontier.

But there is another kind of space music, and this type is not a genre, but a concept. This is music thats literally about outer space itself: its nature and substance, the experience of being in it, its effect on human beings, and the ways we interact with it. The stylistic range of this music is immense; it includes records made by Sun Ra as well as records made by NASA, which not only compiled music to be sent into space (the 1977 Voyager spacecrafts Golden Records), but also released the album Symphonies of the Planet, which features sounds captured by the Voyager probes. (Sounds in space? Yes, theyre there.)

Theres even more to explore on this list, which features music about the infinite breadth and depth of outer space, music about crossing almost incomprehensible interstellar distances, romantic narratives about space flight, the ominous power of the universe, and more.

Space is far from silenteven if we need special equipment to hear its sounds. Electromagnetic waves travel through the vacuum of outer space; this is the solar wind that collides with the Earths atmosphere and produces both lightthe Aurora borealis and Aurora australisand sound, in the form of low-frequency radio waves. For this deep and delicate project, Kim Cunio created piano accompaniment for the sounds of the atmosphere (generally called sferics)like the sound of lightning traveling through the atmosphere into space, as recorded by the Very Low Frequency receiver at the Halley Research Station in Antarctica. Collaborating with space weather research scientist Dr. Nigel Meredith and Cambridge-based artist-engineer Diana Scarborough, Cunio builds harmonies that rise and fall over individual still points, as the whispers and clicks and scrambles of the sferics dance around her.

Mysterious and almost impossibly ancient, gravity waves have been traveling through space since the beginning of time itself. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) was built to detect these types of waves, and composer William Basinski used exclusive recordings of what LIGO captured as part of this commissioned work. More than just general gravity passing through the Earth, the waves incorporated into this album were produced by the merging of two massive black holes, 1.3 billion light years from here in time and space. Basinski produces ringing, flowing tones, underpinned by a regular, muffled, distant beat. The music sounds like gravity plucking a giant, planetary string, with the overtones rising and rippling out, back into the universe.

Steven Hawkings great breakthrough in cosmology came in 1974, when he determined that black holes werent empty voids from which no energy or information could escape, but that they emitted radiationwhat is now known as Hawking radiation. Jeremy Bibles four-hour opus is something of a metaphor for Hawking radiation taken one step further: What if black holes didnt just emit charged particles, but sound? Not such a strange idea, as both sound and radiation are types of waves. Music for Black Holes is the sound-poetry of these cosmicdeadends? Doorways? Warm swaths of tones gently glide above then sink below the threshold of hearing, and theres a meditative stillness evoking a surrender before vast and impersonal forces. Bible calls this, a map to guide one through the vacuum of space and time, and it can also be heard as the experience of passing through waves of Hawking radiation as one approaches the event horizon of Messier 31, never to return from an unfathomable destination.

This is space music as deep space music. If a black hole has infinite depths, the universe has practically infinite dimensions, expanding into the unknown every moment of existence. On this eight-hour album, S.E.T.I. (Andrew Lagowski) recognizes that one of the main challenges to interstellar travelers would be maintaining their sanity in the face of that endlessness. Here, he creates a hypnagogic environment for calming relaxation and sleep; a floating pool of sound to separate one from recycled air and the throb and hum of engine noise. Strange signals interrupt the music. Are they mangled communications from a distant and dying Earth? Alien civilizations trying to contact us? Listen deeply and find out.

Back at home, the human race has already established a history of actual space travel, though no human being has yet to make it past the Earths protective magnetic sphere. Yuri Gagarin was the first man to reach outer space, in 1961, and in the National Pools reimagining of the space race on this concept record, the Soviet Union continues to send cosmonauts ad astra. Psychological preparation is essential for the strange rigors of space travel, and this program was created by the Soviets to equip our cosmonaut comrades with these sounds. They intent [sic] for solo space travels, mind sharpening and concentration. An opening patriotic exhortation gives way to a sequence of music meant to focus on each task at hand, including the launch, while also steeling the nerves against nostalgia for home and country left behind, and the tragic and desperately lonely possibility that there will be no re-entry.

As of this year, only around 550 people have travelled into space (the number is approximate, because the determination of the boundary between Earth and space varies from country to country), with only two dozen having passed beyond earths orbit. But space travel narratives of science and technology have been in the human imagination for more than a century. Blak Saagans (Samuele Gottardello) debut album (and nom de plume) was inspired by Carl Sagans evocations of our place in the cosmos, kosmische Musik, and the psychedelic soundtracks of Italian science fiction and giallo films. On this Farfisa-based collection of original songs that emulate library music, Saagans vision of space is like Sagans: optimistic, joyous, more than a little playful, and eager to suspend all disbelief and indulge deeply in the most expansive possibilities of space exploration.

Darker legacies of the space age lie beneath the extensive shadow of triumph, possibilities, optimism, and progressive ideas for the future: the Cold War and militarization, detritus, disaster, death. Joel Giardinis concept records stand out both for his dark aesthetic and his emphasis on guitar-based textures. On The Age of Space, rocket and satellite debris circles the planet, threatening to spiral out of control into the atmosphere; launch stations sit abandoned, filled with puddles of water, the aroma of disintegrating paper, and overgrown with weeds; and cosmonauts, off course and drifting away, are lost in space. This is not Carl Sagans or Elon Musks concept of space exploration, but J.G. Ballards.

Kool Keith, Dan Emery, and Chad LEplattenier have an entirely different take on the space age: critical, funny, completely iconoclastic. Space Goretex begins with some kind of disaster on an alien spaceship: Im deep in the Milky Way/ Im headed toward the green planet/ My ships all fucked up. Kool Keith is here to tell us about space hallucinations, astronauts at the center of celebrity cults, robotic spaceships, sex in space, space suits and science fiction costumes as fetish objects. This is the space music concept a la Fritz the Cat, meant for a mature audience that looks at the multiple-entendre of a black hole from a funky and wise-ass angle.

Before there was space music in popular music genres, there was Gustav Holsts classical orchestral suite The Planets, which premiered in the fall of 1918. Christine Otts 2020 large-scale piece, Chimres, follows that classical lineage with a composition that imagines the cosmos realized through the nostalgic/futuristic sounds of early electronic musical instrument the ondes Martenot. Ott is an expert on the instrument, and a virtuosic thinker. She uses the 1920s-era electronic keyboard to blend tones that sound like both wordless singing and a lush string orchestra. Otts goal, in her own words, is to rub shoulders with electronic stars and caress incandescent planets. She floats through space, gazing on these orbs from a distance, their lights and colors turning the absolute zero of empty space into the burning cold of ice. This is a tour-de-force of instrumental playing and imagination.

Olaf Stapledons 1937 novel, Star Maker, is a science fiction classic. Narrated by a protagonist whose consciousness is projected throughout the expanse and duration of the universe, the book is Stapledons philosophical imaging of life in the cosmos. In this composition for chamber ensemble, Taylor Brook sets spoken excerpts from the novel above and against wordless vocalizations, skittering lyrical passages, crunchy timbres, electronic treatments, and field recordings. He draws an explicit connection to one of Stapledons most intriguing ideas, that spatial coordinates could be described via musical pitches. Brook represents both the out-of-body sensation and the survey of cosmological mysteries in his music, and theres a meaningful acknowledgement of the Lenape people and their landthe composer specifies the music was made in Lenapehoking, or the Mid-Atlantic region of the United Statesand touches of field recordings offer an intriguing look into Lenape cosmology, which connects the immediate experience of the land and nature to non-material higher universal plains, mediated through the soul.

Space is, finally, out there: it is everything beyond this planet, the universe itself. We may never reach it, but it reaches us, with waves and shudders and bursts that travel across the entire duration of the cosmos. The tracks on Pulse Emitters Voids evoke those celestial experiences near to EarthLunar Orbit/Lunar Surfaceand also that of distant, haunting objects like pulsars and quasars. The former is a pulsating star nearing the end of its billions-of-years life cycle, the latter a quasi-stellar radio sourcetheoretically the massive, hot, compressed energy at the core of a galaxy throbbing with radio wave radiation. Pulse Emitters sensual waves flow out of the speakers and spread out into the atmosphere and maybe out into space itself; eventually passing through the mindless waves of these cosmic phenomena, lasting until the heat death or compression of the universe, whichever may come first.

Read more from the original source:

Lost in Space Music: Records That Explore the Outer Limits - bandcamp.com