Fact #113902
When:
Short story:
During his US Tour, on the second of two nights at Arrowhead Pond, Anaheim, California, USA, Paul McCartney performs two song live by satellite for the astronauts aboard the orbiting Discovery Space Station.Full article:
Pab Boothroyd (Concert Sound Engineer, Paul McCartney) : One of the most exciting things I've done with McCartney was a live broadcast to the Discovery space station. NASA had previously used Good Day Sunshine to wake up their astronauts so that seemed a good one to play for them live. It was one of those situations where, if we missed the opportunity when the space station was passing over, there was no hope of ever doing it again. There was nothing as luxurious as a soundcheck. We had a one hour window in which to line everything up, do a quick test and then do it for real, after which it would be gone. It was a challenge but, as always, the solution was to keep it as simple as possible.
So I just took a feed off the back of my console, plugged it into a digital mono phone line, routed it through Kennedy Space Center, from where it was beamed up via an analogue satellite. Interestingly, the technology in the space station had already been up there for several years so it was quite old-fashioned and very basic stuff.
It was right in the middle of a live show and Paul just announced to the audience that we were going to try something a bit special, a live link-up with the Space Station. It was like, "Hello, hello, are you up there?" Then crackle, crackle, and they came on the screen. We could see and hear them but for complex technical reasons they couldn't see us, they could only hear us.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black for Audience magazine, Sep 2014)
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So I just took a feed off the back of my console, plugged it into a digital mono phone line, routed it through Kennedy Space Center, from where it was beamed up via an analogue satellite. Interestingly, the technology in the space station had already been up there for several years so it was quite old-fashioned and very basic stuff.
It was right in the middle of a live show and Paul just announced to the audience that we were going to try something a bit special, a live link-up with the Space Station. It was like, "Hello, hello, are you up there?" Then crackle, crackle, and they came on the screen. We could see and hear them but for complex technical reasons they couldn't see us, they could only hear us.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black for Audience magazine, Sep 2014)