The Lebanese Rocket Society

ENAR

Ever heard of Lebanon’s bid to join the space race? You would have had you the chance to wander into New York’s CRG Gallery in Manhattan this spring. The multi-layered exhibit entitled “The Lebanese Rocket Society: A Tribute to Dreamers” includes works in the mediums of video, photography, sound and sculpture, and explores, as the gallery notes, a “forgotten space of adventure” in Lebanon. With the Americans and Soviets in a race to the moon in the 1960s, Lebanon began its own quest into space study and exploration, becoming the first country in the Arab world to develop its own solid fuel “Cedar Rockets”. It launched 10 in total between 1960 and 1967. The Rocket Society was lead by math professor Manoug Manougian and his students from Haigazian University and was widely popular, receiving broad media coverage, its own official stamp and financial aid from then-President Foaud Chehab. And then,