Introducing the Werenbach Earth Collection, Featuring Dials Made From a Recovered Soyuz Rocket

I am generally not one to be pulled in by gimmicks. But there are times when a gimmick—be it some sort of ambassadorship, or a highfalutin narrative, or even a tenuous partnership—influences a watch design in a positive way. So when I saw an email in my inbox from a brand claiming that they’re making watches out of reused rocket material, you can bet I opened it with some trepidation. But to my surprise, what met me was a pretty damn cool series of watches–introducing the Earth collection from Werenbach.

The Earth collection uses material from the outer shell (the booster and fairing) of the Soyuz MS-02 rocket, which was launched last year from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The re-purposed metal from the rocket makes up the dial for each model, with the color of the dial indicating exactly what part of the fairing or booster the metal is from.

Let us get the specs out of the way. The watches measure 40mm in diameter, 13mm thick, and weigh about 87 grams. The case features a sapphire crystal on both ends, with the case back showing off the Swiss-made STP 1-11, a duplicate of the 2824 manufactured by Swiss Technology Production (and owned by Fossil). The case is rated to 50 meters.

There are five models in total. Models Two, Four, and Five feature a Launch Sequencer scale. Essentially, this is an internal ring–adjustable by the second crown at two o’clock–that can set against a rocket’s time of lift-off. When it’s set, the minute hand will indicate what phase the rocket is in its altitude (as a point of reference, it takes the Soyuz rocket a little less than nine minutes to reach orbit). Sure, it’s a bit silly, but totally in line with the theme of the watch. Models One and Three are without this feature, and therefore lack the additional crown.

Aesthetically, each watch in the collection has a fitting tool-watch vibe. At its core, it’s quite an austere design, embellished mostly via some text on the dial (more on that later). Otherwise, there’s a major industrial theme driving through the collection, one that is emphasized by details like the brushed steel case and the raw, unfinished dials.

My only point of contention is that there is a lot of text on the dial of the three Launch Sequencer watches—eight lines of text, to be precise, going down the Y-axis of the dial. Above six you have a breakdown of all three stages of the rocket’s trajectory, which, in my opinion, should have been moved to the case back to declutter some of that space.

The Kickstarter campaign is well past its funding goal, and it’s slated to end Monday, May 29, 2017 at 6:00 PM EDT (so there’s not a lot of time left to back this project). Each variant is currently available for about $591.

To back the project, head over to the  Kickstarter campaign.