Gabe Newell is president of Valve, the video game company behind the Half-Life series and game marketplace steam. Newell decided to stay in New Zealand at the start of the pandemic and is donating a dollar to the Paediatric intensive care unit at starship children’s hospital.

The soon-to-be astronaut gnome is actually a 150mm tall model of’gnome chompski’. It was likely a reference to an older prank involving photographing stolen garden gnomes’traveling’ around the world.

A real-life rocket launch is a fitting homage to the’little rocket man’ achievement associated with the gnome from episode two.

Launch-Ready version of the gnome is co-designed by special effects and prop house Weta workshop. Rocket lab hopes to use it’to test and qualify a novel 3D printing technique that could be employed for future spacecraft components’.

The gnome will be attached to the inside of rocket lab’s kick stage. The kick stage is the final stage of rocket’s electron rocket.

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 small satellites span a wide range of uses from satellites focused on communications and maritime surveillance to New Zealand’s first student-developed satellite.