{"id":2111821,"date":"2026-08-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2111821"},"modified":"2026-08-26T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T21:00:00","slug":"meet-the-man-who-strapped-a-homemade-rocket-to-his-chest-to-go-sky-diving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2111821","title":{"rendered":"Meet the man who strapped a homemade rocket to his chest… to go sky-diving"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cIn the early 1990s, I started sky diving,\u201d recalls American pulsejet pioneer Robert Maddox. \u201cAnd I was thinking, I need a jet or rocket on my chest to go faster…\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not a normal thought.<\/h3>\n

Correct. But Maddox isn\u2019t a normal human. Even less normal than thinking, \u2018what if sky dive, but jet powered?\u2019 is actually acting upon that thought. Which Maddox did, obviously. By building a homemade rocket.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Presumably he already had some sort of rocket making expertise?<\/h3>\n

He did not. Maddox had once seen a sketch of an old V-1 buzz bomb in an encyclopaedia, which he concluded was all the background research required to build a pulsejet, from scratch, in his workshop.<\/p>\n

A pulsejet. Remind me?<\/h3>\n

Probably the simplest form of jet engine. Take a big metal tube. Fuel goes in one end, gets ignited, explosion occurs, thrust comes out the other. That explosion generates a pressure wave that bounces back and forth inside the tube, creating a low pressure zone that sucks in a fresh charge of air. Then the whole thing happens again. And again. Get it right, and you get a huge amount of thrust.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And did he get it right?<\/h3>\n

Despite many fires, he did indeed. With nothing more than a very can-do attitude, a lot of gasoline, and a 50-million-volt stun gun as spark plug (no, really), Maddox transformed himself into the world\u2019s foremost authority on home build, fire-breathing pulsejets.<\/p>\n

And then took to the skies?<\/h3>\n

Only briefly, thankfully. After a few jumps with his homebrew pulsejet strapped to his chest, Maddox wisely decided his jet building obsession might be best served on terra firma.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He\u2019s spent the past couple of decades building pulsejets of increasing potency, before strapping them to vehicles ranging from skateboards to go-karts to land speed streamliners. And then heading out into the desert to see just how much fastness and flame he can coax from his creations.<\/p>\n

Much fastness, many flame?<\/h3>\n

Got it in one. Now deep into his 60s, Maddox is still going strong in pursuit of pulsejet progress, recently jet powering both a boat and pushbike and sharing the incandescent results on YouTube. Talk about setting the pulse racing.<\/p>\n

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\"TG<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Images: Reto Sterchi \/ Reduc \/ Eyevine<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIn the early 1990s, I started sky diving,\u201d recalls American pulsejet pioneer Robert Maddox. \u201cAnd I was thinking, I need a jet or rocket on my chest to go faster…\u201d That\u2019s not a normal thought. Correct. But Maddox isn\u2019t a normal human. Even less normal than thinking, \u2018what if sky dive, but jet powered?\u2019 is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,237],"class_list":["post-2111821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-topgear-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2111821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2111821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2111821\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2111821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2111821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2111821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}