Astronauts

Album: Wildfire (2016)
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Songfacts®:

  • Before Platten penned "Fight Song" with veteran songwriter Dave Bassett, the pair wrote this tune about the singer escaping from her troubles with her lover. "I wanted to write this song about a couple that would be safe way outside of the world," she explained. "The whole world would fall away and it was just you two kind of floating in space and you could see earth as this tiny little thing that could fit on the tip of your thumb and you'd be safe."
  • Astronauts have featured in a number of songs – most famously in David Bowie's couplet about Major Tom, who cuts off communication with Earth and floats into space,"Space Oddity" and its sequel "Ashes To Ashes." Other songs about space travellers include:

    "Rocket Man" by Elton John (Inspired by Ray Bradbury's short story of the same title about a child, whose astronaut father has mixed feelings at leaving his family in order to do his job).

    "Asthenia" by Blink-182 (About two astronauts sitting in their spaceship looking down on The Earth, contemplating whether to return).

    "'39" by Queen (A Brian May composition about an astronaut who travels to a distant place at near the speed of light).

    "Major Tom (I'm Coming Home)" by Peter Schilling (German singer-songwriter Peter Schilling's own sequel to Bowie's "Space Oddity").

    "Sally Ride" by Janelle Monáe (About Dr. Sally Kristen Ride, the first American woman to reach outer space).
  • Here is some astronaut trivia from The Encyclopedia of Trivia:

    The farthest distance from Earth an astronaut has traveled was 249,205 miles (401,056 km), when Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise went around the Moon during the Apollo 13 emergency.

    When Space Shuttle Discovery blasted off on October 29, 1998 with 77-year-old John Glenn on board, he became the oldest person ever to go into space.

    Astronauts don't do laundry but rather eject their clothes into space to burn up in the atmosphere.

    According to NASA, the top three items most missed by astronauts on space flights are ice-cream, pizza and fizzy drinks.

    Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a spacesuit damages them.

    In space, astronauts cannot cry, because there is no gravity, so the tears can't flow.

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