This space-sounding electronic instrument was invented in 1928, but now it's undergoing a revival at the fingertips of musicians like Suzanne Farrin.
To study the effect of an environment with altered gravitational forces, we have to place samples in orbit by means of space flights, sounding rockets, or use simulation facilities on the ground.
SNK's Super Baseball 2020, set in the fast approaching but still space age-sounding year 2020, is more ambitious and a bit better.
A singing treecreeper is usually identifiable, since short-toed treecreeper has a distinctive series of evenly spaced notes sounding quite different from the song of Eurasian treecreeper; however, both species have been known to sing the other's song.
Over the next decades, these and other groups associated with CSR/MKI have developed and executed space experiments on sounding rockets, balloons, satellites and manned space vehicles and also instruments for ground-based observatories.
"It's a big thing stretched over a long period of time, like seeing an elephant from space," says Ford, sounding for a moment like Frank, who is an uninhibited minter of fabulous phrases: "happy as goats", "solitary as Siberia", "pale as potatoes", "a frank, good-hearted roll in the alfalfa".
"I just became known for small spaces," he said, sounding slightly ambivalent.
The bittersweet Every Breaking Wave creates a little fold in the time-space continuum, by sounding like Coldplay sounding like U2.
Planetary Resources, a start-up in Redmond, Wash., has plans for one of the more implausible-sounding space businesses, dedicated to mining asteroids for materials like water.
