The Song That Went Into Space

I have heard some remarkable stories from the musicians who have come through Wesley's Place. I don't think I've ever heard one quite like David Roth's story about the time he accidentally promised NASA a song and then forgot to write it.

It began in 2006 with a telephone call from a woman who worked at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. She organized a series called the Exploring Leadership Colloquium, which brought speakers from different walks of life to talk about their work.

Previous speakers had included an Olympic gold medalist, a Tour de France champion, senators, members of Congress, foreign diplomats and Supreme Court justices.

Now she wanted David Roth.

"Made perfect sense," David told me.

David had loved space as a child. He read Spaceship Under the Apple Tree, watched Flash Gordon and Star Trek, and was fascinated by science fiction. In his excitement about being invited to NASA, he casually suggested that perhaps he would write a new song for the occasion.

His host thought that was a wonderful idea.

Fortunately, David had a year to write it.

Unfortunately, he forgot.

About 50 weeks later, the telephone rang. His host was delighted to tell him that more people had signed up for his presentation than any previous event in the series. Then she said everyone was looking forward to hearing the new song.

David suddenly remembered the promise he'd made.

He told her the song was coming along really well, hung up the telephone, and realized he had about 12 days to write it.

At the time, David happened to be reading The Secret, with its idea that someone wanting something in life should ask for it, believe it would come and then be ready to receive it.

David decided to give that a try.

He looked toward the sky and asked for anything involving outer space, inner space, storage space or any other kind of space to please make itself known as soon as possible.

Two days later, he was driving through upstate New York and stopped to visit his friend and fellow songwriter Penny Nichols. While waiting in her house, he noticed a stack of newspapers waiting to be recycled. Sitting on top was the science section of The New York Times.

The headline was about the history of the space program.

David's appearance at NASA happened to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Sputnik. The newspaper section contained stories about the beginning of the space race and memories from ordinary Americans about hearing that strange signal from above the Earth.

David had found his song.

He called it Rocket Science, and he gave the song its first public performance at NASA.

That alone would have made a pretty good ending to the story.

Two years later, however, Rocket Science went aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis during the mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.

A song David had forgotten to write had gone into space.

I asked David about several of his songs that have gone places he could never have anticipated. Nine Gold Medals eventually appeared in textbooks in India. Rising in Love was performed during Carnegie Hall's centennial celebration. Rocket Science left the planet.

David told me he doesn't feel that those songs become any less his when something like that happens. Instead, he marvels at the unpredictable life a song can have after it leaves the songwriter. "You just never know when someone will hear one at a certain point in their life and give them new wingspan to soar elsewhere."

Then he casually mentioned that he received a custom-made guitar in 2025 because someone found a cassette he'd made in 1988 in a used record store in Seattle.

"Another story for another time," he said.

I think I may need another interview.

David describes himself as a "musical reporter." He's drawn to ordinary people doing extraordinary things, particularly stories of kindness and decency that might otherwise have a very short life in the news.

"The noisy people in our modern world who have the biggest microphones aren't always delivering useful information to elevate the human family," he told me. "Stories about ordinary kindnesses and decency are worth a musical spotlight to me."

That may explain why his songs have traveled so far. He isn't looking for extraordinary people. He's looking for the extraordinary things ordinary people do.

Sometimes a song reaches someone sitting a few feet away in a listening room.

Sometimes it ends up in a schoolbook on the other side of the world.

And every once in a while, apparently, it gets on a space shuttle.

David returns to Wesley's Place on September 18.

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