History
The Richards Rocket Group Development Complex was a research facility located in Central City, California. It was where the city's leading scientist, Dr. Reed Richards, built the Marvel-1, a rocket with an experimental star-drive whose maiden voyage led to the cosmic ray exposure that resulted in the creation of the Fantastic Four.[1][2]
Aside from working on the experimental star-drive rocket project, which was partially funded by the federal government,[citation needed] one of their government contracts was to develop a special Broadcast Power Unit.[2] What other government contracts the research center might have had have not been revealed.
Not too long before the rocket was due to be launched, as Richards and his fiancée Sue Storm were driving home from the rocket base, they witnessed an alien spacecraft landing nearby. When they investigated, hoping to make peaceful contact, they discovered that the giant alien pilot, Gormuu, was a warrior planning to conquer Earth. Possessing the ability to increase his size and strength and seemingly invulnerable to human weapons, Gormuu rampaged towards Central City. Hoping to find something that would enable them to defeat Gormuu, Richards snuck aboard the unguarded alien spaceship and discovered that Gormuu fed on power that was broadcast to him from his ship and that he needed machinery aboard his ship to regulate his growth. Realizing that Gormuu's size was increasing but his mass was not, Richards returned to the rocket base where he adapted a special broadcast power unit that he had been developing into a power beamer. When Sue Storm and Ben Grimm heard that Richards planned to give the alien a massive burst of power, something that they thought would make Gormuu stronger, Grimm tried to stop him, but Richards resisted and managed to activate the automatic sequences that controlled the power beamer.
As Gormuu, drawn towards the great power he could sense there, entered the rocket group's compound, the device activated and began firing a power beam at him. Initially pleased to be receiving the extra energy, Gormuu soon noticed that he was growing weaker instead of stronger and that his body, while increasing in size, was no longer damaging anything on Earth. As his body continue to grow in size while becoming increasingly less dense, Gormuu realized that he had become nothing more than a phantom and had been defeated. Reed told Ben and Sue that Gormuu's body would eventually become so dissipated that he would truly be no more.[2]
An unspecified time later, Reed Richards, Ben Grimm, Sue Storm and her younger brother Johnny took the experimental rocket on an unauthorized test-flight that ended with them having to make a crash-landing.[1] What consequences this crash might have had for the research center have never been revealed.
Nothing has ever even been mentioned about what may have happened to the research facility following the crash of the rocket.Notes
- The research facility where Reed Richards worked on his FTL rocket has never been given a real name in any published story or any Official Handbook entry. This article's name is taken from the fact that the facility is referred to in Fantastic Four #271 as the rocket base, the development complex and the rocket group compound, with one panel showing that the name "Richards" was prominently displayed atop one building and as part of the complex's main gates (as can be seen in the image above).
- Despite the prominence with which the "Richards" name was displayed, the exact nature of the link between Reed Richards and the research center has never been stated. While it is highly likely that Reed used some of the money allocated to him by his father Nathaniel to establish the research center as part of his rocket project, it's not impossible that Nathaniel, himself a brilliant scientist, may have founded the center years earlier.
- Similarly, the name of the group who were involved in constructing Reed's experimental FTL starship has also never been established in-story. It was once called "Reed Richards' top secret rocket group"[3] but that was presented more as a description than as an actual/official group name.
- Since this facility, whatever it was called, was presumably where Reed and Ben argued about about the potential danger posed by cosmic rays, that means that this location should be listed in every comic in which that scene from the Fantastic Four's origin appears, including Fantastic Four #1.
- It has never been revealed if this facility was enclosed by the black dome that covered "all of Central City" back in Fantastic Four #293–295. If the center was located far enough away from the city, then it may not have been part of the approximately seventy square mile area that was affected, and therefore would not have disappeared when everything within the temporal field was sent ten thousand years into the future.
See Also
- 1 appearance(s) of Richards Rocket Group Development Complex
- 1 image(s) of Richards Rocket Group Development Complex