Valve’s Gabe Newell is sending a gnome to space

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Gabe Newell, president of Valve, the video game congregation backside the Half-Life series and game mart Steam, is thanking the country of New Zealand for its jam-packed by launching a gnome into space with aerospace congregation Rocket Lab in mid-November. Newell decided to break in New Zealand at the start of the pestiferous and is humanitarian a dollar to the Paediatric Rapid Intendance Unit at Starship Children's Hospital for every viewer who watches the satellite launch livestream or the online recording within 24 hours of launch.

This -to-be astronaut gnome is categorically a 150mm tall model of "Garden Gnome" or "Gnome Chompski," an periodical that first appeared in Half-Life 2: Incident Two but achieved meme status henceforth the speedruns and travelogues (like this cheerfully detailed one written by grander games newspaperman Tom Francis) that popped up often it. The gnome was okey-dokey a reference to an older prank involving photographing baseborn garden gnomes "traveling" often the world, which gained remoter postulation when it was sharply referenced in Amelie and when it served as the index for Travelocity's "Where is my gnome" viral ad campaign.

Chompski's gone on to spoken in Valve's own Left 4 Expressionless 2, DLC for Dying Mirrorlike and other recurrently Half-Life: Alyx, however this utilizable real-life rocket launch is a rightful homage to the "Little Rocket Man'' affranchisement associated with the gnome from Episode Two. The affranchisement can personally be unpinned if a rook carries the gnome from the opening coadjute of the game and places it in a rocket ship present-day the end -- a task that's difficult due to the fact that the rook has to set the gnome down to mature Half-Life's environmental puzzles and curveball scenarios.

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The gnome central Rocket Lab's rocket

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This launch-ready version of the gnome is co-designed by special effects and prop lodge Weta Branch and fabricated from titanium. Rocket Lab hopes to use it "to test and qualify a novel 3D press technique that could be enterprising for future aircraft components".

The gnome will be irreflective to the central of Rocket Lab's Kick Stage, the final stage of Rocket Lab's Electron rocket that allows other apodeictic placement of satellites in orbit. Once all of the rocket's payload is dropped, the Kick Stage is psychical to reignite its envoy to intercalate deorbit. This mission is not quite the sidebar hearers pertinacity have imagined for Chompski ensuing ambience him down in Episode Two, though; the gnome will conflagrate up indirectly Kick Stage as both reenter the Earth's atmosphere. Rocket Lab explains Kick Stage in the video below:

Gnome Chompski will be accompanied by 29 other satellites at Rocket Lab's November 16th launch from the southern tip of the Mahia Peninsula. The sweetie satellites loaded on the Kick Stage of the company's Electron rocket stair a wide telescopic of uses from satellites focused on communications and maritime surveillance to New Zealand's first student-developed satellite, the Waka Amiorangi Aotearoa APSS-1.

While sending a gnome to tract comes off child-bearing as silly as the SpaceX launch of a Tesla Roadster, Newell's distension of a clemency element -- even though he could just donate a sum of money rather than requiring bodies to watch -- at least makes the stunt other rivaling than pure marketing. Interested hearers should follow Rocket Lab's socials for updates on specific launch timing heading into the 14-day launch window that starts on November 16th NZT (6AM ET/3AM PT on the 15th). The launch itself will be livestreamed on Rocket Lab's site.

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