Rocket to Mars (and the Moon)

November 6, 1:30 PMSecond Life ExaminerApollo Manga

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We dodged boulders tumbling down from mountains on the Red Planet as we stood next to our rocket and talked about it and the life of its builder, European graphic designer Jenne Dibou. The planet was Mars, but of course not the same Mars that people have been gazing at in the skies for millennia, but a temporary Mars, created in Second Life for Burning Life 2009.

Most of Burning Life 2009 has vanished into the playa dust and what little remains may disappear at any moment. Jenne Dibou's Moon Rocket is one of the few remaining builds there; there was so much in Burning Life that this writer didn't discover her rocket yesterday. It's pictured here rising through the clouds as it rises from the Earth; there are more pictures in the slide show below.

The Moon Rocket, scripted by Mandy Marseille, isn't a glistening example of modernistic high tech. It's a rocket that's been well used, probably many decades old, rusting, with smudged windows, looking like it was purchased at a bargain price in a used rocket lot in a low rent district of the galaxy.

During Burning Life, it was lost among the many other builds that crowded the playa, but with most of those builds now gone, it sits alone on its platform, surrounded in all directions by expanses of barren desert, waiting to take avatar astronauts into space.

The ride does not disappoint. Before you blast off, you go through the obligatory pre-launch sequence and when it's done, you select your destination, then launch, with the appropriate sounds of a rocket taking off. There are two destinations: the Moon and Mars. The Moon isn't impressive, just a crater-scarred orb barely wider than the rocket, but Mars is something else.

When you hop off the rocket onto the Martian surface, clouds of red dust swirl around, constantly blowing. On one side, boulders regularly roll down rocket cliffs, threatening visitors. It was designed to be a game in which the winner was the avatar who most successfully dodged boulders, but it wasn't working either of the times I visited.

It's probably too late for you to ride the rocket - by the time you read this, the Moon Rocket and other last traces of Burning Life 2009 may have vanished completely - but if you want to take a look for yourself, the location is slurl.com/secondlife/Burning%20Life-Selenite/45/24/25, though as of this writing only the platform is there, not the rocket itself.

You can learn more about Burning Life 2009 and some of the amazing builds that were there in the fourteen articles about it that appeared in this space:

• The Man burns one last time
• The Temple burns
• Lamplighters' final fiery dance
• Lamplighters' fiery dance
• Rangers on the playa
• The roof is gone
• Burning Life 2009 is open
• preview 1
• preview 2
• preview 3
• preview 4
• preview 5
• preview 6
• preview 7

Burning Life is inspired by Nevada's Burning Man and closely adheres to its Ten Principles, particularly the principles of Radical Inclusion, Radical Self Reliance, and Gifting/Decommodification.

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All photographs in this report are by Erik Gordon Bainbridge.