Bagpipes are out of this world!

Well, maybe. This news article from One India informs me that piper Bruce Woodley from Vancouver is among the finalists for a Canadian representative on future NASA missions. I’m not very familiar with Bruce or his piping, but he won the Gold Medal at Inverness in 1993, so he must have a fairly good idea of what’s going on.

Of course one of the things he would like to do if selected is pipe in space (which I totally understand; I like to pipe wherever I go), though I don’t see NASA giving him the greenlight to bring his pipes into space. He mentions that in his interview, and also brings up some interesting points about how the pipes might work differently in space:

“I’m guessing it would be very difficult to play bagpipes and have them sound like anything we hear on the ground without redesign.”

An interesting observation, and one that occurred to my scientific mind as well. Traveling to different places even on this planet can make the pipes difficult to play, as differences in temerature, humidity, and air pressure really affect the sound. Playing at a lower cabin pressure (equivalent to about 9,000 feet or 2750 meters above sea level) in air with an elevated oxygen content would certainly argue with my pipes, so it would be interesting to see if he’s able to pull it off.

Best of luck to Bruce as the selection process enters its final process, and I’ll hope to see Bagpipes on Mars some day!