gapingvoid

Our Planetarium and Space Discovery Center has had the misfortune of undertaking a capital campaign in the worst recession since men would cook their leather shoes. (We’ve tried Starbury’s, not tasty.)

We need some traction. NASA is halting manned spaceflights and this pivotal move to not go beyond, to not invent, create and seek more is stifling us as a society.

We wish to counteract that.

We feel the need to show visitors the many benefits of scientific thinking, technological advancement and exploration. If we stop innovating, we become parasites or worse.

Gapingvoid reaches a ton, metric obviously, of people and we need to jumpstart our campaign. We’re already half completed fundraising, but large funders simply aren’t coming. We need mass appeal, large amounts of small donations and constant inroads to every media outlet, dusty or social media base that we can. We have a staff of three to raise $19 million dollars.

Though Minneapolis is technically in a “flyover” area of the USA, some of the largest tech firms are located in our area. (3M, Medtronic, Boston Scientific, Seagate, Lockheed Martin etc.) Our area is an inventive, engineering hotbed but the stream is slowing to a trickle. We need to energize, excite and encourage young students into the field.

As astronomy is arguably the oldest science and often the most approachable, we see ourselves as the first road on a long journey to becoming an inventor, engineer, or simply a questioning writer, artist or teacher.

Help us Gapingvoid, you’re (one of) our only hope(s).

[Note: this is one of the Cube Grenade entries. Share your story for a chance to win a commissioned piece of art.]