In the world of space exploration, I’m known as the “Mars Czar” and/or former Director of NASA’s Ames Research Center. Indeed, there are lengthy histories of my past accomplishments on my website, Stanford’s website, and even Wikipedia. But those sources only begin to hint at why this album exists.

From the time I first picked up a baritone ukulele almost 65 years ago, I was fascinated by the possibility of making music. I soon graduated to a Sears Roebuck guitar, practiced for hours, teaching myself, and by 1966 was at Vanderbilt engrossed in science—as a double major in physics and astronomy—and music, playing across Nashville with fellow undergrads as the Nashville Blues Group (NBG). By then I had a Gibson Les Paul!

The NBG started out playing covers, but gradually evolved into something more experimental, exploring long, extended improvisation pieces that were the style of the times.

A few years later, after graduation, I co-founded the band Pale Fire, playing our original music at Nashville's legendary Exit/In as well as the bar scene. I took time to try music as a full-time career at that point and, while I loved playing music, I was also beginning to understand that, for me, the music business was not what I wanted to commit my life to. I decided that perhaps rocket science was where my future lay.

And what a journey that became.

For the next several decades, my work took me into the world of space exploration, from the science and engineering of Mars to leadership at NASA and Stanford. I had the extraordinary privilege of helping turn some of humanity's most ambitious dreams into missions of discovery.

But music never left me.

The guitar remained a constant companion, and the impulse to create, experiment, improvise, and play with other people continued to surface in unexpected ways. Now, later in life, I find myself returning to something that was never really gone in the first place. The Space Rangers share that same love of exploration—this time through sound.

Launch Fever is, in many ways, a continuation of a journey that began more than half a century ago. Some of these songs are new. Others reach back to earlier chapters of my life. "Half and Half," for example, is a song I first composed and performed with Pale Fire at the Exit/In in 1973. Hearing it again today, alongside the music we've created now, reminds me that while the years have taken me in directions I never could have imagined, the thread connecting it all is remarkably simple: Curiosity. Experimentation. Collaboration. And the joy of seeing where the journey takes you.

I spent much of my life exploring what lies beyond our planet. With Launch Fever, I'm happy to be exploring a little closer to home—and to where it all began.

—Scott Hubbard, August 1, 2026