The Raygun Gothic Rocketship is a

retro-futurist Retrofuturism (adjective ''retrofuturistic'' or ''retrofuture'') is a movement in the creative arts showing the influence of depictions of the future produced in an earlier era. If futurism is sometimes called a "science" bent on anticipat ...

art

sculpture Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...

in the shape of a giant

rocketship A space vehicle is the combination of a spacecraft and its launch vehicle which carries it into space. The earliest space vehicles were expendable launch systems, using a single or multistage rocket to carry a relatively small spacecraft in pr ...

. It was created by

Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a region of California surrounding and including San Francisco Bay, and anchored by the cities of Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose. The Association of Bay Area Governments ...

artists Nathaniel Taylor, Sean Orlando, and David Shulman. The exhibit stands 40 feet tall and weighs 13,000 pounds. The ship was built with 3 walkable decks. The interior is divided into the Engine Room & Life-Sciences Bio Lab, Crew Quarters & Navigation, and the upper Flight Deck and pilot chair. The interior includes artistic details such as captured "alien specimens" and a zero gravity bed. Creating the rocket required the work of 85 artists, engineers, fabricators, scientists and computer engineers. The creators described the art as "a future-rustic vision of yesterday’s tomorrow". A San Francisco newspaper said it "offers a retro-futuristic, highly-stylized vision of space travel". The Rocket was originally created as an art installation for the 2009

Burning Man Burning Man is a week-long large-scale desert event focused on "community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance" held annually in the Western United States. The event's name comes from its ceremony on the penultimate night of the event: the ...

Festival in

Black Rock Desert The Black Rock Desert is a semi-arid region (in the Great Basin shrub steppe ecoregion) of lava beds and Dry lake, playa, or alkali flats, situated in the Black Rock Desert–High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area, a silt ...

Nevada Nevada ( ; ) is a landlocked state in the Western United States. It borders Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the seventh-most extensive, th ...

. In 2010 it was moved and featured at a

Yuri's Night Yuri's Night is an international celebration held every April 12 to commemorate milestones in space exploration. It is named for the first human to launch into space, Yuri Gagarin, who flew the Vostok 1 spaceship on April 12, 1961. In 2011, th ...

celebration at

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

Ames Research Center The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) laborat ...

, as well as a second appearance at the Bay Area

Maker Faire Maker Faire is a convention of do it yourself (DIY) enthusiasts established by '' Make'' magazine in 2006. Participants come from a wide variety of interests, such as robotics, 3D printing, computers, arts and crafts, and hacker culture. Hist ...

. Later in 2010 the Rocket was moved and installed as a temporary art exhibit at Pier 14 in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

. It remained standing in San Francisco for 14 months. Today, the Rocketship is permanently installed on the site of the former Lowry Air Force Base in Denver, Colorado, which was redeveloped in the 1990's into a new Denver, master-planned community known as the Lowry Neighborhood. The rocket sits atop a custom-built kiosk which houses the Rocket Ice Cream Shop. The Rocket installation is part of the historic Hangar 2 adaptive re-use project, which is now a retail center and is also adjacent to the historic Hangar 1, which houses the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum.

Special Notes

The artists who created the Raygun Rocket might not have been aware of it, but this sculpture is the perfect incarnation of the rocket in the children's science fiction novel The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet and its sequels.

References

External links

{{Commons category * http://www.raygungothicrocket.com/ Retrofuturism Sculptures in Nevada Burning Man Outdoor sculptures in Colorado Outdoor sculptures in San Francisco Tourist attractions in Denver Rocket sculptures