Quindar on Science Friday w/Ira Flatow

Wilco keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen and art historian/musician James Merle Thomas took inspiration from the sounds of NASA missions to weave a tale of human space exploration.

Quindar may not be a familiar word, but as a sound, it’s instantly recognizable. During the Apollo space missions, the quindar tones were the bleeps made by the transmitters connecting the spacecraft to ground control. Quindar is also the name of the collaboration between Wilco keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen and art historian/musician James Merle Thomas. The duo talks about how they took inspiration from sounds in the NASA archive to tell the smaller, human stories of the space program.