Jumping from an airplane is much too tame for Bob Maddox. He needs something a little more extreme. That's why he plans to strap himself to a four-engine pulse jet rocket, ride it to around 25,000 feet and then jump off.
You might remember Bob from our stories about his pulse jet bikes. The first one got up to 50 mph. That wasn't fast enough for Bob, who built a twin-engine bike that hit 73 mph. Now he's back with his latest idea, which amounts to shooting himself almost five miles into the sky and parachuting back. It doesn't sound quite so crazy when he explains it, and we're absolutely convinced he's going to pull it off.
"I know it sounds nuts, but it is totally doable," Maddox told Wired.com. "I can design and build the rocket and just use a simple guidance system."
The cabinetmaker and artist from Medford, Oregon, is no rookie to skydiving. He's already made a few thousand jumps, including a few from 20,000 feet. He's also no stranger to riding rockets -- on some jumps, he strapped a pulse jet to his chest to spend more time in the air. Is he at all worried about something going horribly wrong?
No. Not at all.
"It would be a very slow ascent, just 200 miles an hour, straight up," Maddox said. "That way if there were a malfunction in guidance the vehicle would just slow down and I would get out, instead of it tearing itself apart."
We love this guy.
Maddox has had a lifelong dream of rocket travel. In first grade he won a prize for his drawings of a rocket ship, and he credits his more recent work with pencil-and-paper for his survival.
"As for being fearless, I’m not," Maddox said. "That's why I’m alive. I don’t leave my life up to chance. I do a lot of testing to get the odds on my side."
Maddox says that his simple pulse jet will be safer than the space shuttle. He's already built a prototype (shown above and at left) of one pulse jet engine -- a technology that dates back to the early 1900s. Pulse jets are little more than a long tube with a fuel pump, a spark plug and a reed valve, but Maddox's pulse jets also have a throttle. That lets him control the level of thrust from the "pulse" ignition of air and fuel that occurs about 70 times a second.
By the way, that's just one of the four pulse jets that Maddox plans to ride toward the stars. They'll burn gas and kersosene and generate 4,000 pounds of thrust. Although liftoff will be a relatively low 250 mph, the rockets will be capable of nearly supersonic velocity, according to the Medford Mail. Gyroscopes and servos will monitor the pulse jets, and he'll use small rockets in the nose of his contraption for steering.
Once he reaches 25,000 feet, a small rocket in his ejector seat will shoot him clear of the pulse jets, and parachutes will bring him -- and the jets -- back to earth. He'll test everything with an unmanned rocket, but Maddox has every intention of making the jump himself at some point.
In order to keep his dream alive, Maddox needs cash. He wouldn't tell us how much he needs, but the Mail puts the figure at $40,000 to $50,000. He's looking for a sponsorship from the sort of folks who pay people to do things that most folks would say are entirely insane. A Discovery Channel feature -- "Kind of a cross between Monster Garage and MythBusters" -- or even a sponsorship from an energy drink that gives you wings would be nice, he said.
"I'm not looking for money," Maddox told us. "I just want to build and run the things I design. If I had the money I would just do it on my own."
Maddox can count us among his supporters -- if not materially, at least in spirit. We're rooting for him to try something no one's done before and come back safely to tell the tale.
"As far as I know no one has launched them self in a homemade rocket, into space or just a few miles up," Maddox said. "I’m just trying to be seen so maybe the public will get behind a hick from the sticks making a rocket in his shop and flying it."
UPDATE: 4:30 p.m. Eastern, July 31: Several readers have suggested Bob set up a PayPal account to accept donations. That's a great idea, and we've passed it along to him. We'll let you know if he creates one.
*Photos: Bob Maddox *
