Downey welcomes return of Rocket Fever festival

Photo by Alex Dominguez

DOWNEY — Rocket Fever returned to the delight of launch enthusiasts over the weekend, after having to go virtual last year.

Rocket Fever has been a staple event of the Columbia Memorial Space Center since its inception in 2010, continuing to grow in size, scope, and popularity each year.

That momentum was temporarily halted, however, when the event was forced to be watched from the comfort and safety of home due to the coronavirus last year.

Although excited to return to in-person activities, the CMSC did limit capacity on Saturday.

“Rocket Fever 2021 has the same energy and the same great STEM programming as always, we just had to control the crowds a little bit this year,” said Ben Dickow, Director of CMSC. “We sent out pre registrations to over 300 people; it sold out in less than an hour.”

The highlight of the event has always been the rocket launches, of which the space center ran about 200.

Other activities included air, water, balloon, and CO2 rockets, as well as the usual museum exhibits.

After having to adjust the last two events, Dickow said that the space center is hoping that Rocket Fever will come back “bigger and better than ever,” while also incorporating what they’ve learned during the pandemic.

“This is really, for us, a coming out since Covid,” said Dickow. “The staff of the space center…within about a month or so of closing the building last year, we retooled ourselves to be completely virtual. We hit the same number of people virtually – between 90 and 100,000 people that we do usually with an in-person year.”

“Now, here we’re coming out of all that virtual stuff, the staff is super excited to talk to people, but not losing the impact that we made virtually. Everybody is really excited to work on these two planes.”