The Vinyl Frontier: The Story of NASA's Interstellar Mixtape

This is a fascinating story. The half-hearted attempt to leave information about life on Earth on the Pioneer missions was advanced by one or two orders of magnitude for the Voyager missions.This book describes in some detail both the logistics and the thought processes involved. This is really thought-provoking material. Alas, the author - who had no input whatsoever into this project - is too keen to insert himself into the narrative. This really impairs what could have well been a 5* book. The author's lack of a scientific background does not help either.I'm glad I read this book and recommend it to others, but I am disappointed at the loss of the quality this might have had.

A very compelling and intriguing true story that is an approachable introduction to interstellar communication. The book gives insight into Carl Sagan’s team of collaborators as they prepare the Voyager Golden Record time capsule that was launched into space in 1977.

While this slim volume was written by a Brit, it relates the amazing story of the Voyager satellites. The technology was state of the art 1970s best but The Vinyl Frontier focuses on the humanity that it hoped to capture.

I was familiar with the story of the Voyager Golden Record but this book went into too many of the boring details.

It is the story behind the greeting placed on the Voyager probe. Very interesting.

very well written

The contents of this record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by cosmologist Carl Sagan. Sagan and his associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind, thunder and animals, including the songs of birds and whales. The record also carries an hour-long recording of the brainwaves of writer and producer Ann Druyan. This is a kind of time capsule for the extraterrestrial species, should these spacecrafts lands on an alien planet or intercepted by intelligent beings. They may be able to determine that there are intelligent species in this universe.Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecrafts have left the solar system and journeying in interstellar space. The message recorded on the disc, from President Jimmy Carter, says that this is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings.Music includes that of Mozart, Beethoven, and Stravinsky; Indian classical music of Hindustani vocalist Kesarbai Kerkar, music of Guan Pinghu, Blind Willie Johnson, and rocker Chuck Berry. The inclusion of Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" was most controversial and highly debated.The record is constructed of gold-plated copper and is 12 inches in diameter. The record's cover is aluminum and electroplated upon it is an ultra-pure sample of the isotope uranium-238. Uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.468 billion years. It is possible that an alien civilization would be able to determine the age of the record.The author narrates the story of how the record was created from an historical perspective but does not go into the Voyager missions. This book is not for an average reader but may be interesting to readers of Voyager spacecrafts and the work of Carl Sagan.

In 1977 NASA created a golden record of Earth sounds and images that was intended to be found by any intelligent life that might come across the space probe Voyager.The Vinyl Frontier is the story of why and how NASA decided to go ahead with this project.The author of The Vinyl Frontier, Jonathan Scott, is a music writer who's equally at home with astronomy. Scott is also the perfect person to evoke the summer of 1977, when NASA put Carl Sagan in charge of the team that included musicologist John Hammond to record artificial and natural sounds that would make a positive impression of humanity—Earth on a good day.I've read the expression “three chords and the truth” used to describe rock 'n' roll, punk, and country music, which makes sense since all of those genres are American pop that ultimately trace their origins to blues. So Chuck Berry and Blind Willie Johnson were on the Voyager record. Along with Beethoven. But not the Beatles.Anyone who thinks astrophysicists are a dry bunch will learn otherwise from this story. This is also the story of how Carl Sagan and project director Ann Druyan fell in love and became inseparable. Unfortunately it was not a completely painless affair for the couple involved or others. Druyan was partly the inspiration for the main character in Sagan's best-selling novel Contact.Jonathan Scott is the perfect writer of this story. He's able to describe the emotions elicited by hearing Beethoven's Cavatina and also how a diagram of the hydrogen atom worked as a scale for the information on the golden record.And in describing the first mixtape he ever made, for a young woman named Beth, Scott proves that the motive for giving people you care for your lists is similar to the motive for sending Voyager out into the stars—the need to say I'm here.

Having been completely infatuated with space as a child, and having one wall covered in my dormer bungalow bedroom with buttons, switches and lights to send myself off to a far off planet at bedtime...this book talks to me! It is not too scientific but there is enough detail to fully understand and engage with the narrative, it is also funny but not so much that it breaks up the flow. Jonathan obviously knows his stuff regarding the topic and his love of music shines throughout. A big thumbs up from planet earth!

Tolles Buch über eine tolle Geschichte.

Excellent and short story of how the artefact (the vinyl disc) was produced.