Rocket City Space Fest's own moonshot
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The inaugural Rocket City Space Fest is fueling up for launch.
Why it matters: Organizers like Ralph Petroff are hoping to create an annual event that will grow into a globally-recognized festival celebrating all things space and Apollo in the city that helped build the country's space legacy.
The latest: The festival recently announced its full slate of 15 founding partners, including big names like Blue Origin, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, as well as SafeSplash Swim School and Swim Labs and the National Space Club Huntsville.
How it works: The nine-day festival is centered around the anniversary of the 1969 Apollo mission that first landed man on the Moon.
- From July 16-24, events will follow the milestones of the Apollo mission from launch to splashdown, anchored around Apollo Day, July 20, the anniversary of the first human Moon landing.
Case in point: Events include Lift-Off Day on July 16 with a Saturn V-themed event at the Space & Rocket Center Biergarten featuring Dorothy "Dottie" Metcalf-Lindenburger, the first Space Camp alum to become an astronaut.
- The Apollo Day celebration is a lunar-themed Concert in the Park with a 600-drone show, the state's largest to date.
- The festival culminates in a Splashdown party and Apollo veterans recognition July 24.
Zoom in: Organizers see a more expansive festival in the future, one akin to South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, with related music, film, art and science festivals throughout the nine-day stretch.
- Petroff credited Matt Mandrella, Huntsville's music officer, on the idea to expand it into a week-plus-long celebration, and "make this a one-of-a-kind celebration of space, science and the arts."
Context: Petroff noted the roots of the festival reach back to 1950, when German scientists including Wernher von Braun first arrived to build the country's space program alongside locals.
- "I would argue that those sharecroppers' sons and daughters and these elite German academics were the world's most successful utopians," Petroff told Axios, noting contributions to the arts and the community.
- "Because here we are a couple generations later, and we're regularly voted the best place to live," he said.
The bottom line: "Our goal is that in five years' time, Huntsville will be the place where global humanity celebrates Apollo and all things space," Petroff told Axios.