Pilgrim Rocket

The Pilgrim Rocket.

“Five-thousand feet… Ten-thousand feet… Fifteen-thousand feet… Hallelujah.”

― Countdown Voice

The Pilgrim Rocket is a means of transportation to the floating city of Columbia. Ten different launch stations in the United States served as the means for travelling to the city. After Booker DeWitt is transported by Rosalind and Robert Lutece to the lighthouse off the coast of Maine, he ascends to its top to find the door sealed with a bell-keyed lock. After ringing the bells in the correct sequence, the door unlocks and a stylish chair appears. When Booker sits in the chair, he is automatically strapped in, and the launch capsule closes up around him. Booker's Broadsider drops from his grasp as the rocket accelerates into the air, eventually reaching Columbia.

Gallery

Concept Art and Models

Concept art for the chair.

The chair model.

The capsule opened up.

Interior of the rocket

In-Game Images

The chair inside the lighthouse.

The rocket's gauges.

The rocket closes around Booker.

The rocket starts blasting off.

The rocket ascends towards the heavens.

The rocket reaching Columbia.

The whole of the capsule.

Behind the Scenes

• The boosters that propel the Pilgrim Rocket to Columbia can be seen on the roof of the top floor of the lighthouse. In theory, whenever the rocket is used, the contents and occupants of the room below would be incinerated by the boosters.
• The Pilgrim Rocket is the equivalent of the Lighthouse bathysphere found in Rapture.
• The reason for the seating section of the Pilgrim Rocket flipping downwards before lift off is hard to determine.
  • One can assume that it is a particularly extreme means of ensuring that only one person can board, and that they cannot bring any luggage with them. The fact that Booker lost his pistol may simply be an unfortunate coincidence.
  • It also raises the question of where the rocket's main reactors are situated. Being a cone-shaped vehicle, there is evidently no space around the seating assembly or underneath it.
• Unlike the bathyspheres of Rapture, the Pilgrim Rocket only accommodates a single occupant. This would make traveling to Columbia very time-consuming for a large group of people. Since Columbia had stopped accepting large groups of people from the surface years before, this was not a real problem.
• The Pilgrim Rocket, in terms of design, is similar in appearance to the Gemini Spacecraft used by NASA in the 1960s. The fact that this anachronistic design appears in 1912 can be explained by Tears.

Presley Co. 87

• If a person were actually undergoing a trip on a Pilgrim Rocket, they would be quickly attacked by a bout of high altitude sickness, an effect of being exposed to altitudes of 7500 feet and higher. Even if the cabin was pressurized, it would eventually depressurize upon arrival in Columbia. The rider would develop edemas in the lungs and brain after their blood bubbled like a bottle of freshly opened soda.
• The chair in the Pilgrim Rocket was designed by Mauricio Tejerina.
• The rocket's interior was designed by Paul Presley. His name can be found on one of the gauges.