CHRIS WOEBKEN

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Mark
The Society for Speculative Rocketry, 2014
collaboration with Sascha Pohflepp


The weekend March, 15-16th 2014 the Society for Speculative Rocketry held their inaugural meeting at Eyebeam, Chelsea, New York City.

In a day long workshop 15 society members explored the relationship between past and future realities of space travel and how they live within the public imaginary. Eyebeam was transformed into a Situation Room with window projections overlooking the Pacific Ocean, simulating the view from the RAND Corporations headquarter in Santa Monica, California.

In a guided speculation session building on the practice of The Extrapolation Factory where participants worked from materials such as Rockwell’s 100-year-plan to eventually create their own scale models of space ships or other related artifacts, real or fictional. At the end of the day each participant had at least one piece of ‘payload’ that will go into a functional model rocket. At the end of the day the developed payloads were reviewed in a video call with Karen Lau from SpaceX and Morgan Hendry, Engineer at NASA, JPL.
Day 2 fell on the 88th anniversary of Robert H. Goddard’s launch of the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket at his aunt Effie’s farm in Auburn, Massachusetts. To mark this momentous event, the Society embarked on a day-trip in order to launch the rockets and their payload from the very spot from which humanity had first tested the possibility of eventually escaping the gravitational pull of planet Earth.