Rocket Park Mini Golf

With the Rocket Park Mini Golf Course, the Lee H Skolnick Architecture +Design Partnership has shown once again why their student centered, education based projects are the coolest, most engaging, and FUN places for children of all ages to be.  Constructed on the site of the 1964 New York World's Fair next to the New York Hall of Science, Rocket Park Mini Golf is replete with real Atlas and Titan rockets fully 10 stories high that help provide authentic intergalactic ambiance. 

As stated on the Hall of Science website, "Players will explore key science concepts such as propulsion, gravity, escape velocity, launch window, gravitational assist, and more as they putt their way the through nine holes:

• Launch Window – In order to reach Saturn, players must pick the right time to launch their “rocket” through turning, intersecting elliptical orbits with planets and other celestial matter that will hinder its trajectory

• Blast Off! – Visitors will be challenged to shoot their ball up an inclined ramp with just the right amount of velocity to "blast off" a model rocket up a gantry
  
• Zero Gravity – Visitors will attempt to putt their golf ball at the correct speed and path to send their ball through a loop-the-loop structure that simulates the effects of “zero” gravity
  
• Earth’s Orbit – Players will attempt to putt their golf ball at the correct speed and angle to send their “rocket” up a ramp and into geosynchronous orbit
  
• Space Docking – Spaceflight sometimes involves complex and exacting maneuvers and at this hole players must putt into one of four space shuttle-shaped targets on a rotating disk in order to reach an International Space Station model
  
• Space Junk – To avoid a collision, players must putt their ball over a rotating disk cluttered with simulated “space junk”
  
• Gravity Whip – Spacecrafts can use the gravitational pull of a planet  to change their course. This hole challenges players to use gravitational assist in the form of a curving path around the Moon to curve the trajectory of their ball in the right direction towards Jupiter
  
• Re-Entry Angle – Players must putt their ball at a proper re-entry angle through the one correct “entry area” so that their “rocket” is slowed down by the simulated atmosphere to safely land on Earth
  
• Splash Down – Visitors will aim to shoot their golf ball across the putting green and into a skee-ball type mechanism with a model of the Earth as its main target"
  

In John Tierney's June 16, 2009 article in The New York Times, "Golfing Through the Statosphere",  renowned astrophysicist Dr. Michael Shara of the American Museum of Natural History, after playing a round with 2 fourth graders concludes, “The golf is fulfilling the museum’s mission.  Kids will learn a little. Adults will learn a little. The golf is good fun. And the rockets are cool”.  We must assume that there will be many life changing "Eureka!" moments on the part many of the youngsters who will experience Rocket Park.  Moments that could open new worlds of possibility for many of them.
Projects such as Rocket Park demonstrate how the Skolnick Partnership infuse their designs with the imponderables of childhood and captures the playfulness and whimsy that makes childhood such a special time.

Comments

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