Astronaut’s Caravan at Maker Faire UK

Craft & Design

DALE DOUGHERTY is the leading advocate of the Maker Movement. He founded Make: Magazine 2005, which first used the term “makers” to describe people who enjoyed “hands-on” work and play. He started Maker Faire in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2006, and this event has spread to nearly 200 locations in 40 countries, with over 1.5M attendees annually. He is President of Make:Community, which produces Make: and Maker Faire.

In 2011 Dougherty was honored at the White House as a “Champion of Change” through an initiative that honors Americans who are “doing extraordinary things in their communities to out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world.” At the 2014 White House Maker Faire he was introduced by President Obama as an American innovator making significant contributions to the fields of education and business. He believes that the Maker Movement has the potential to transform the educational experience of students and introduce them to the practice of innovation through play and tinkering.

Dougherty is the author of “Free to Make: How the Maker Movement Is Changing our Jobs, Schools and Minds” with Adriane Conrad. He is co-author of "Maker City: A Practical Guide for Reinventing American Cities" with Peter Hirshberg and Marcia Kadanoff.

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@dalepd

April 28th, 2013 8

The amazing Tim Hunkin has done it again. In collaboration with Andy Plant, Tim has created the Astronaut’s Caravan. It’s a trailer that turns 360 degrees. Tim had the humorous idea of creating a place where former astronauts might go on holiday to recreate a bit of the experience of being in space. Andy realized that they could make it work inside a trailer, also called a caravan.

When Tim came up to me and asked me to check out his caravan, I had no idea what he was asking me to do. When I saw the spinning caravan, I must say as someone who easily experiences motion-sickness that I wasn’t looking forward to climbing inside. I literally didn’t understand what I was getting into.

Here’s a video and some pictures of the caravan:

You sit on a bench inside the caravan. The walls of the caravan spin around but you can’t help but feel that it is you that is spinning round. A great illusion!