Brian Walker, a 44-year-old toy inventor and self-made millionaire, plans to launch himself into space in Earthstar 1, a homemade steam-powered rocket using $300K–$400K in funding, aiming for 32–35 miles—half Shepard’s suborbital flight. His finless, bullet-shaped capsule features redundant parachutes, 400 psi pressurized suits, and eight small thrusters for stability, with a May 2002 uncrewed test from Oregon. Walker dismisses government skepticism, citing Russian cosmonaut support and NASA’s stagnation since Apollo, while callers debate feasibility and conspiracy theories. His mission symbolizes private spaceflight’s bold future, defying bureaucratic delays. [Automatically generated summary]
This is Coast to Coast A.M., actually, officially, and I'm Mark Bell.
Good morning from the island of Guam, commercially in the west, eastward to the Caribbean and the U.S. Virgin Islands, south into South America, north all the way to the Pole.
Coming up in a moment, I may have on the phone the man, the first private man in the world, to launch himself into orbit from his backyard.
His name is Brian Walker.
They call him the Rocket Guy.
And all I can say is this.
You've got to get to my website right now.
It's artbell.com.
That's A-R-T-B-E-L-L dot com.
Go to Program tonight's Guest Info.
And all you do is click below the name Ryan Walker where it says related info, project photos from Brian Walker.
And he's provided two pages of wonderful layout, by the way, that Keith has done for me of a project that looks like it's getting there, maybe almost done.
This man is going to try and launch himself into space.
In a moment, I'll tell you all about it.
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I'll tell you all about it.
You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
Tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from May 22, 2001.
This article appeared in the New York Post, and the moment I saw it, I thought, Brian is for me for sure.
Let me read it to you.
Dateline, Bend, Oregon.
Self-taught rocket scientist Brian Walker plans to shoot himself into space this fall in a $250,000 rocket that he built in his backyard.
For the past two years, Rocket Guy, as he's known locally, has been constructing Earth Star 1, the rocket that he hopes will carry him to the edge of space and then bring him back to Earth alive.
Quote, my whole mission is to show what a person can do on his own, says Walker, 44, a self-made millionaire who's invented dozens of mass market toys for children.
A college dropout who attended just two seminars of semesters rather of engineering school, Walker will be staking his life on how well he's been able to teach himself rocket science.
The launch will be from a 200-foot tower in a dry lake bed in central Oregon.
If all goes as planned, steam rockets, that's steam rockets and 12 Earthstar 1 motors will generate 12,000 pounds of thrust at liftoff, and in 15 seconds, it and Brian should be out of sight.
For the next 85 seconds, pure hydrogen peroxide will pour out of a giant fuel tank and over a silver screen, creating a violent chemical reaction that will push the rocket upward at four times the speed of sound, about 2,200 miles per hour.
Can you imagine that?
At an altitude then of about 30 miles, the fuel tank will detach and parachute back to Earth, hopefully to be used again.
Momentum will carry Walker and his capsule up to 32 miles, where he will indeed experience several moments of weightlessness and then begin to fall back toward Earth.
During re-entry, a giant airbag will deploy to slow the descent.
Once the capsule slows, a massive parachute will then open and Walker expects to drift down to the lakebed.
According to his plans, a pickup truck will be waiting to drive him to a group of bleachers where fans and 12 Hooters bar girls will then pour champagne all over him.
Walker shrugs off any talk of danger.
He screws, I die.
I'd rather die trying this than spend the next 40 years bitter.
I never made the attempt.
The only glitch could be the FAA, which has demanded, apparently, that Walker produce a flight plan and details of his rocket design before it issues a permit for his launch.
But Walker says, if they don't grant me permission to launch, I'll just take the whole thing to the border, across the border, into Mexico.
So there you have it.
And again, one more time, I remind you as we begin this interview that Mr. Walker's photographs, very impressive indeed, are on my website right now at artbell.com.
Yeah, I've always been an inventor, and I spent the earlier years right out of high school, the first 10 years or so, working on some really serious major projects, like a little two-man submarine for recreational use, and those kinds of projects that were huge undertakings and never got me anywhere.
And then about 10 years ago, I focused my efforts on the toy industry because for an inventor that's prolific, the toy industry is great because they're constantly looking for new products.
And so I started focusing my energy there.
And about eight years ago, I sold my first toy, and I've got about a dozen or so now on the market.
Oh, this has been, you know, my earliest memories as a child going back to, you know, the 5, 6, 7 age bracket was the beginning of the space program.
And to me, the idea of sitting on top of one of those rockets, the Mercury's, the Gemini, the Apollo, and blasting into space was just the greatest thing you could do.
And I wanted to be an astronaut.
But I'd say by the time I had reached the eight, nine-year-old age bracket, I just kind of had the sneaking suspicion that I was never going to get selected.
Because when you looked at the astronauts that they were picking in those days, they were career military.
They were top of the top of the top.
And I don't know, I just had some inner voice saying you'll never get there that way.
And I thought that I would just simply grow up and build my own rocket.
So this has been a dream.
It's been kind of, you know, in the background of my life for as far back as I can recall.
And because of that, I've always had a passion for the space program, watching the new developments in the aerospace and aviation fields.
And I've kind of watched what's been developed over the past 40 years and, you know, pick the things I like and discard the things I don't like and apply them to what I'm trying to accomplish.
I'm going to launch above the dry lake bed, go straight up like an arrow, turn around, come straight down.
There will be some drift, obviously.
The parachute that I land with has a three to one glide ratio, so when I open the parachute up at three to four miles above the ground, I will have potential to glide back between nine and twelve miles to that starting point.
But in a very real sense, I'm trying to duplicate Alan Shepard, the first American in space.
He went on a 62-mile high, 15-minute suborbital spaceflight.
And I'm trying to recreate that, except I'm hopefully going to be able to go a little bit more than half as high as he went.
Well, actually, it'll react with anything organic.
And of course, depending on what type of organic material it is, that has a lot to do with what the outcome is.
The catalyst that I'll be using in this particular motor Is a silver-based catalyst.
So if you picture a chamber packed full of silver-plated nickel screens and all these discs of, like think of a screen door in a window, and you cut out discs of that material and stack them up inside of a chamber, you spray the fuel through there and it hits that silver and that causes the reaction and it produces steam.
And the main motor, actually another little difference from what was in the story, I have one main motor that produces 12,000 pounds of thrust and that consumes 90 pounds of fuel per second.
Well that will burn, that will actually, at the beginning of the launch, the rocket itself is hurled upwards off of a pneumatic launcher.
And that will give it basically its momentum and the motor, from the moment the motor's firing, it's actually trying to lift all this dead weight because the weight is already in motion.
But that engine will run for between 85 and 90 seconds and it's during that time that I accelerate to a little over Mach 4.
I believe, and again, don't quote me on this because I know this sounds a little funny to a lot of people, but I don't follow a whole lot of what goes on with NASA.
Their acceleration, I believe, takes them, I think, what, 10 minutes to reach orbit?
describe that your rocket is going to sit in something that's going to no fire and have a These sleeves are carbon fiber sleeves, and they slide over barrels very similar to the way a paper wrapper is over a soda straw.
I've designed this thing backwards from my survivability first and then mission success as second.
So on the way up, at any moment during the flight, if something goes wrong, there's only one lever I have to pull, and my hand is positioned on it so that the G-forces would normally want my arm to come down and pull the lever.
And the only thing preventing that from happening is a little button that my thumb's on.
So if I pull that at any given time, it immediately shuts off the main engine, and it activates the separation device that separates the capsule from the fuel tank, and then the little engines, the little rocket motors on the capsule would fire and immediately deploy an emergency parachute.
So all the way along, no matter what might happen, the capsule has two completely separate and independent parachute recovery systems, and I'm going to be wearing a spacesuit with two parachutes on my person.
So if I get down to an altitude and everything with the capsule has gone haywire, there's a very positive removal system that allow me to escape the capsule and take my chances in a free fall.
Yeah, but I'm not sure if it's really fair to compare your average off-the-treadmill automobile with a rocket that's being launched for the first time.
That might not be totally fair.
Brian, hold on.
We're at the bottom of the alley.
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This is Premier Network.
that was our bell hosting coast-to-coast a m on this somewhere inside yeah My heart is on fire.
My soul take the wheel and swim.
My love is alive.
My love is alive Yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah There's something inside that's making me crazy.
I'll try to keep it together.
Explanations Should I tell you that you came In the era of the kind Outro Music She doesn't give you time for questions as she locks up your head.
And you follow Diana's sense of which direction can wait for this thing.
On the floor, never fucking stop.
But the hint that she leads you to be set up your mind.
Just walk away for one of those.
The year of the cast The year of the
cast You are listening to Art Bell somewhere in time tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from May 22nd, 2001.
Oh, I started off, let's see, well, about six years ago is when this dream kind of caught up with me.
Once things started taking off with my toys, it kind of came back at me and I started making the plan at that point as far as, okay, you know, what am I going to use for fuel?
What's my goal here?
What can I build?
What can I expect to do?
And so I started working on it from that point.
And then about three, well, I bought this place four years ago and the first thing I did was build a giant shop so I could start, you know, I needed a place to build it, obviously.
I actually began in earnest about three years ago.
And for the first year and a half, probably for the first two years actually, most of my efforts went into creating my surroundings and outfitting my shop and building a test area for testing the rocket motors and being able to put the rocket up on a large tower so I could work on it vertically and suspend all the parts.
And so a lot of the work I've been doing up to this point has just been getting to this juncture where I can actually begin working in building the components themselves.
I am right now working on a scale model that is more for visuals as opposed to real test.
I'm going to be launching this thing with a smaller fuel tank that carries one-third the amount of fuel on a much smaller test.
I actually, the actual date for my launch is next May.
I had originally planned on launching by August or September of this year, but once I went public last summer, I've done over 250 radio interviews and over 35 TV spots.
Yes, but so anyway, I put the launch off until May of 2002, but I'm hoping by September to be launching the actual capsule with a much smaller fuel tank that's going to just allow me to do a dry run and make sure it gets over that hump, that first six to ten second hump.
Don't start the ignition prior to the launching of the catapult.
Because what that basically does is: have you ever watched the space shuttle when it takes off just creeps and creeps?
And if you consider the amount of fuel it has consumed, just getting itself up to that first 100 mile an hour speed mark, it's an incredible amount of fuel.
And my theory has always been the faster you can accelerate a rocket before you have to use its own engines, its own fuel supply, the smaller the amount of fuel that you will require.
And you also gain a safety factor by already having reached aerodynamic stability.
i really could have been that's right i'd build a much much larger launch of them the one i'm having met done now so you would feel more comfortable with a larger Do you remember that motorcycle guy who's going to jump the Grand Canyon?
Well, from what I understand, what went wrong was they had not taken into factors the amount of g-forces, and basically what happened, his hand, and of course, like I said, these are reports I've heard, I don't know if they're true, but from what I understand, his hand slipped off the lever that was to fire the parachute system much earlier than it was supposed to.
Because it did go off the ramp, and it did launch, but the parachute came out almost immediately, and the whole thing parachuted down into the Snake River.
I don't believe it was a, I think had that not happened, I think it would have been very successful.
Hydrogen peroxide is a formidable fuel when used in this type of a thing.
And, you know, quite honestly, if there weren't people throughout history that were willing to do things that the rest of people thought was crazy, we'd still be living in caves right now.
Assuming that you're able to pull it off, there's going to be a lot of hand-wringing around because, you know, we spend, oh, gosh, you know, billions and billions and billions of dollars to get into space with the shuttle and to get the International Space Station up there.
And even the Russians, billions and billions and billions of rubles.
And so if you can do this for a quarter million, I don't know.
And there again, too, I want to be very fair in this whole thing also that, like I was saying at the beginning of the show, that what I'm attempting to do here is not even close to being an orbital flight.
I would not even attempt to do this if I was I would not even attempt to go orbital the way I'm doing this right now.
Well, again, the weightless thing only is going to occur when I'm reaching the point of no, when I'm approaching zero momentum and then as I begin my descent, there'll be a brief time of zero G, but I'll be going mostly from an accelerating standpoint when I'm going to be under high Gs to a period of decelerating G's and then increasing again as I begin my descent.
All right, well, before we even get to that, the second photo we've got up is an apparent aerial photograph of your, I don't know what to call it, compound.
That little capsule is going to be going way too fast to be giving that much surface area for aerodynamics to come into play.
A 2% or a 3% variation from one side of fin to the next doesn't mean anything when you're going 200 miles an hour, but at 2,000 miles an hour, the differences in the fins could cause all kinds of instability problems.
So one of the things I've done is redesign the capsule now without any fins, and it is an absolute bullet.
The form was built on a giant lathe, and it took about eight weeks of applying bondo and grinding it bondo off.
You've got to remember, I build everything in a solid form first, then I make a mold of it, and that mold is then what's used to build the finished part.
So I use everything from spray and insulation to bondo to plaster to plywood to foam.
To get the shape that you want, there's a number of different materials you can work in.
Bondo happens to be one of my favorites because you mix it up, and five minutes later it's hard.
You can sand it, you can grind it, you can do all the things.
It's the speed that you're traveling and the density of the air, and then of course the time.
It's like if you hold your hand over a candle for just a second, you don't get burned.
If you hold it there for a minute, you're in trouble.
I'm going to accelerate for 90 seconds, then I'm going to begin to decelerate.
And then when I begin my descent, I'm going to accelerate for a while, and then I'll reach a point where the density of the atmosphere and the speed of the capsule will reach equilibrium, and then the atmosphere will actually begin to slow me down.
Well, there again, that kind of heat, there's a difference between heat that a human being can withstand and heat that materials can withstand.
And I'll experience the surface in certain parts of the capsule will reach a couple hundred degrees, but it'll only get there for a momentary time and then it'll begin to cool off.
I plan on having an open launch and any meaning anyone who wants to show up is welcome to it, which based on the activity on my website, that could be several hundred thousand people show up.
I mean, it's amazing.
My website this month alone has been hit 900,000 times.
The worst of which would be a pressure leak that pressurizes the fuel tank because the way I feed the fuel to the engine is just basically a pressurized tank.
Here's a question, a pedestrian question I would like to ask.
While I understand that you will not escape the Earth's gravity, if you're up 30 or 35 miles, the g-force, if you weren't going anywhere but just sitting there at 35 miles, would be less, would it not, than when you're standing on Earth?
Well, from my understanding, like if you're, for instance, at sea level, and if you climb and stand on the top of Mount Everest, you're, you know, from sea level, you're 30,000 feet roughly.
And from what I understand, your weight on Mount Everest would actually be very fractional less than what it was at sea level.
No, I'm not going to you know for instance on the space shuttle the reason people are floating around weightless is because the centrifugal force of the shuttle as it zooms around the Earth is just exactly enough to counteract the pull of gravity.
And they're floating because the centrifugal forces are an absolute opposite of what the pull of gravity is.
If the space shuttle could stop and magically be suspended, like if God just held it there with his hand and he couldn't move, everybody on board would assume weight that would be a little less than the Earth's surface, but not a whole lot.
So, and you know, and then you look at the Sun, and that's strong enough gravity to keep us in its orbit 90 million miles away.
So the point is you can never really be stationary in space, because if you were stopped in space, you would soon be attracted to the nearest gravitational body, which would start attracting you towards it.
We kind of skipped ahead in your photographs a little bit.
I see then what is this thing that looks like it's got a propeller on it on one side, and then it's got, it looks like part of your, is your capsule on the other end?
And when I was in Russia, I went in their centrifuge and got up to six G's.
I wanted to go to like eight.
I wanted to go until I blacked out, but they wouldn't take me past six.
But I liked it so much that I thought, well, you know, I really need to build one of my own.
would you want to go into your blackout blocking out is not a really well i think that not In other words, I would have liked to take it to the edge of where I felt I was at the same time.
And at 70 miles an hour, that'll put six Gs at the seat.
And actually, this thing is really nicely balanced.
When you hang it from the center point, with my weight on board, it's perfectly balanced.
Of course, if you change it by two pounds, it begins to tip.
But what I want to do is the launch of the rocket will be vertically accelerating for 90 seconds, and I'll experience a variety of G-loadings.
So I'm going to simulate in that little capsule of the centrifuge the same G-forces over the same period of time that I'm going to encounter in the rocket.
I want to be able to test myself and know that when I'm in that thing and it's going up and something happens that, okay, all the safety backup features in the world are great, but unless the number one backup safety feature, which is my mind, unless that's in tune, then
In other words, if the rocket began to leave vertical and take off for some reason horizontally and then even begin to plunge toward Earth, would you necessarily be aware of that?
Well, I'd be aware of it from a number of different things.
The onboard gyroscope, which actually in the upper stages of the flight, the gyroscope is keeping the capsule pointed straight by activating a series of little rocket motors In the nose of the capsule.
That would be an indicator.
Secondly, the ground control, which I'll be completely in touch with the ground crew the whole time, they would be able to say, hey, there's a problem.
And of course, in the first six to ten seconds when I'm relatively close to the ground.
Well, any problem at all that is a big one is shut down the engine and separate the capsule immediately.
And the way the capsule separates is there's basically it's not much different than an automotive airbag in a little cylinder area between the fuel tank and the capsule.
And when that fires, it instantaneously pops the capsule off of the fuel tank.
And at the same time, the six little rocket motors on the bottom of the capsule fire to separate me.
Well, if this was sitting on the ground and I fired the separation motors in the capsule, that alone would be enough to push me far enough away and deploy the parachute to descend from a ground position.
This thing might develop a problem that requires me to leave before I even launch.
Now, I have not yet been able to come up with the scenario in which that would occur, but what I've tried to do here is think of every single possible thing that might go wrong and then expand on those as many times as I can and then start thinking of the unthinkable.
Okay, the only area that I look out of is the flat area, and that's a half-inch thick laminate of polycarbonate.
And then the open area on top, there's a little window sill, and I have a molded polycarbonate panel that fits over that so it doesn't disrupt the airflow of the air over the capsule.
There's eight of those, and those are behind each one of those is a hole, and that's where the eight rocket motors go.
And then, of course, the end of this capsule is just part of the form.
There's actually a very nice pointed nose cone, and up in the nose section is where the primary recovery gear is.
And then also in the back of the capsule, there's a secondary recovery gear.
In case the first, what happens when I get up to the absolute highest point of the flight, I'm going to actually come to a dead stop and then immediately begin to fall.
And at that altitude, there's no air.
So deploying a parachute at that altitude doesn't do any good, and it actually can produce a lot of dangerous, you know, the parachute could come out, and since there's no air, as I'm tumbling, it's a little bit more.
So what happens, the first thing that occurs when I reach apogee is the nose cone pops off and an inflatable bag, it's kind of a thing that once was termed a balloon, which was a cross between a balloon and a parachute.
It's just a reinforced nylon bag that inflates out the nose.
And what it does is it allows me, as I begin to descend, I will begin picking up the effect of airflow over the capsule.
So the wobble and shakiness and the tumbling action will stop after a few moments.
And because I've extended this inflated bag out the nose of the capsule, it'll just allow the thing to fall stable.
That's my first concern is I want the thing to fall stable.
I don't care how fast it goes.
I don't care what it's going to do.
just don't want the thing to tumble In other words, where do you get enough air to be able to deploy a parachute from 30,000?
I will deploy the first parachute at around, probably be around 60,000 feet is when that airbag releases, it automatically pulls out the first drag chute.
And that stays open until I reach down to an altitude of about 30,000 feet.
And then that pulls out the actual pilot chute, which still has me suspended from the nose, falling tail first.
And then as I reach the altitude, depending on how far off the target I am, that will determine how high I open.
If I've hit some turbulent air or some winds and I've drifted a considerable distance off target, then I would probably open at a higher level and I would have a greater glide ratio and a greater distance that I could cover.
But once I'm ready to deploy the landing parachute, the bridle, which is the suspension line from the pilot chute, that's connected to the nose of the capsule.
That is actually runs along the upper top surface of the capsule to the back end.
It's held in place with little stays because what I wanted to do is I want it to be able to pull the landing parachute straight out of the back.
So I go from a tail first to a nose first configuration.
It's a series of little stays that allow, over a period of about three seconds, the capsule goes from pointing one direction to pointing the other direction.
Then that allows a nice, very, very clean deployment of the main parachute, which is quite large in its pack.
And it is basically about a 600 square foot ram-air wing like a skydiver uses.
And most of that will be mostly be underneath the parachute.
I mean, the single, if you look at the different phases, like the power phase, the coast phase, the descent phase, the longest one particular phase will probably be the time underneath the parachute.
And anyway, that suit I'm wearing actually, that's a Russian microclimate suit, And when I went over and flew the MiG, they first put me in a full-body anti-G suit, and then they put this suit over it, and then I put on the helmet.
The helmet I'm wearing in that picture is an actual MiG-25 helmet that I bought from a street vendor in St. Petersburg.
Holy crap.
It's functional.
It's got a locking collar.
It's got a radio headset inside.
The face mask can open and close.
I've already run it up and it maintains air pressure.
And, well, a local TV station wanted to do a story on what I was doing.
And, you know, one of the really neat benefits I've had from going public with this, not only from the support I've gotten from so many people, but especially when I'm in Russia, the Russians are trying so hard to adopt concepts of democracy and freedom and entrepreneurship and all this stuff that they're very encouraged to see what I'm doing and that because I come from a country that values the individual and liberty and all that,
the stuff that we oftentimes take for granted, they see that I'm approaching such a big dream and they're very encouraged by it.
Oh, briefly, I had a chance to chat with him when I was there.
And of course, this past year for him, I'm sure, he's had so much going on trying to get approval.
And he's made a bunch of flights there.
But I had a chance to talk to him a little bit about it.
And he thought it was pretty neat, but didn't get the chance to go into it in depth.
As far as the Russians, when I was there last year, they were pretty much echoing the same kind of attitude that the individual Russian people I met as far as, you know, here I was trying to mount my own little one-man space program, and it was the result of the fact that I come from a country that allows me to do such a thing.
I think that he's got the knowledge, The expertise, the money, the capability, and the rocket.
And I think he can do it.
Probably.
He's Brian Walker, they call him the rocket guy, and for good reason.
If you want a visual, I don't know, demonstration of what he's going to use to get virtually 35 miles up.
Where there's no air.
Nothing but the curvature of the earth and the black of space.
And then come back to her if you want to know how he's going to do it.
It's we've got every photograph to show you on the website artbell.com.
Program tonight's guest info.
click on it and there are two pages of pictures of what he's built so far and what ryan thinks is going to take him into space You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time.
unidentified
Tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from May 22, 2001.
There apparently is some indication, according to the New York Post article, that the FAA may have some problems with what Brian plans to do there in Bend, Oregon.
Actually, you're not that far north of me, so I will load my RV and come up and see it, that is, if it occurs in Bend.
Now, what has the FAA told you, and did they approach you, or did you approach them with your plans, or what?
Well, actually, it's kind of funny because I've never spoken to them, and they've never spoken to me.
I think in some of the articles that have been written, people have gone and talked to people at the FAA and said, hey, a guy wants to launch a rocket, what's the deal?
And that's when they come back and say, well, he's going to have to do this, this, and this.
Basically, if you want to go into the airspace between 18,000 and 60,000 feet, you either need to have an aircraft with instrument flight rules, a flight plan, and a transponder, or you need a waiver.
Now, when members of the High-Powered Model Rocket Club, when they want to launch rockets to 50,000, 60,000 feet or whatever, they will apply to the FAA for a waiver.
And if it's determined that their launch location and altitude and time and when they want to launch is not going to interfere with commercial air traffic, they're issued a waiver.
Now, I am all in favor of that, because the last thing I want to do on a cross-country flight is have some idiot in a home-built rocket punch through the cabin of my cruising jetliner and cause me to spill my drink.
So I'm in total faith.
I have no problems.
And the place where I plan to launch from is a very remote area where there's no, I mean, there's a population density of about one person every 500 square miles.
Well, actually, I really seriously doubt I would do that.
I would basically exhaust every legal method of getting permission.
And if it looked like it was just going to be too big of a problem, I have no doubt that the Mexican government would be much, much more pleased to have me come down and launch there.
There have been a few stories that have run locally, and most people are pretty excited about it.
In general, I've had my website's been hit about 6 million times since June, and I've had thousands and thousands of emails, and 99% of them are all extremely positive and uplifting, and just wonderful to read people.
Some people write very poetic things that, you know, the challenge that I put forth before me and the way that I'm trying to approach a childhood dream is enough to cause them to look at their own dreams and things.
it's a guy kind of thing and i i know i'll get a lot nasty emails about that but it really is i mean my my own wife she thinks you're loony is yeah Ramona said that, I'm crushed.
Well, you know, I mean, she was smiling when she said it, but she really somehow she just doesn't understand this.
I think, and it's also the mothering thing of most women have this, you know, inside of them is probably, I don't know, some Freudian thing I can't think of right now.
Well, yeah, as more test data becomes available, because I don't have any test data right now because I haven't been able to test any of these components.
Later this summer, I will plan on dropping the capsule from a high altitude from around 20,000 feet high from like a C-123.
Because the only part that I have to do, I need to be able to launch the rocket and know that I can get it up to 1,000 to 1,500 feet without there being a major problem.
Anything after that, and this is one of the things that I've always, oh, I guess I understand it, but sometimes I don't understand it, that people seem to freak out when you talk about going higher and higher.
And to me, I look at the higher I go, the greater my safety margin becomes.
Once I get up there, okay, true, there's no air up there.
Well, if you go two inches underwater, there's no air down there either.
The capsule is pressurized to five pounds per square inch.
And in case of a cabin pressure loss, that's why I have the suit on.
That's basically one extra backup.
I do not expect the cabin to lose pressure, but that's one of the things you have to prepare for because the difference between living and dying at that point is whether you're prepared for cabin loss.
So then the ways of calculating the possible risk overall to you, there really is no exact way, particularly without having a full test flight of this.
No, I think to try and calculate a risk factor or a number would be really difficult.
Once the components individually have been completed and finished and I've been able to weigh them correctly and being able to know about the dynamics of the capsule and freefall, it'll be a lot easier at that point to do some computer modeling based on the amount of weight of takeoff, the amount of thrust to take off, the amount of extra momentum gained from the boosted launch.
These things will all, you know, I'll be able to crunch numbers better and come up with some more accurate numbers in those.
Those motors mount very similar to the way they're mounted there.
That's just a little holder that they're on is just...
to show you, exactly.
They would be mounted in there, and each one has a little servo connected to a valve, and that runs to a very simple little gyroscopic device with a small computer.
And whenever the capsule is not pointed 90 degrees straight up, the corresponding rocket motor just gives a little spit of power to keep that nose pointed straight.
So this is not the kind of guidance control system that would guide me to a specific destination.
It is a guidance control system that only does one thing.
And then there'll be a regulator because there will be eight small carbon fiber high-pressure air tanks that supply the pressure to this tank to keep the fuel flowing.
So this tank alone just has to be pressurized to the limit that is necessary to feed the fuel into the chamber.
Oh, you know, it's funny because listening to some of your guests the past couple, oh, the past week or so, and listening to some of their sentiments about NASA.
You know, I grew up at a time when I thought NASA was the most wonderful, incredible thing in the world.
And after we left the moon for the last time, it seems to me that NASA, from that point on, just lost its vision.
And the idea of that 2001, A Space Odyssey, that that movie, it kind of painted this future where we were going to be spending our time in space stations and going to the moon.
And, you know, to say we're no closer now than we were then is an understatement.
I think we're further away.
Because at least back then we were going to the moon.
And I think the idea of going to Mars is great, but personally, I think we should have people living and existing on the moon.
Well, if I went up and knocked on the door of the International Space Station with a bottle of vodka and caviar and said, hey, let me in, I can understand them really, really having a cow at that point.
But going up 35 miles and coming back down, you know, there'll probably be very little that they will actually say.
We're about to go to phones with Brian Walker, and I want to stress the international number again.
Wherever you are in the world, you can get to us, and it's our nickel.
We'll pay for the call.
You can go to my website and check out the international codes and try it that way.
Or you can call the AT ⁇ T operator and have her connect you from Europe or Asia or wherever you may be.
We'd love to have you join us this night, this afternoon, this morning, whatever it is, wherever you are.
The international number, again, is 800-893-0903, anywhere outside the U.S. and Canada.
And I promise I'll try and get to it as quick as I can.
That's 800-893-0903.
your questions for brian walker a guy who's going to actually launch himself into space shortly in a moment Somewhere in Time with Art Bell continues, courtesy of Premier Networks.
All right, once again, Brian Walker, the man who is going to, from near Bend, Oregon, not in Bend, Oregon, but near Bend, Oregon, launch himself to 30 to 35 miles up and then hopefully return safely to the ground.
No, I have not had anyone from government, with the exception of Bureau of Land Management, has raised some issues about where I want to launch and the impact it might have on having a quarter million people show up at such a remote spot.
And the capsule will be coming down horizontally, flying forward as opposed to its nose-up attitude of launch and tail-first descent.
When the parafoil, when the ram air wing opens up, I will be gliding underneath that.
And I would like to be able to put it on the back of a truck that is positioned underneath me and maintaining the same airspeed and same direction as me.
Fortunately, it is not a mission, it's not one of the critical aspects of the mission.
Right, well, I recently took up skydiving because that's part of my training for this.
And I've managed to so far have all except one of a stand-up landing.
The capsule itself does not have landing gear per se, but just before I land, there's a big inflatable bag that comes out from beneath the capsule to absorb the impact of the landing.
I wanted to talk a little bit, and if I could make a comment, also ask about the spacesuit, because now they're putting heaters in the gloves, and they may or may not have them in the rest of the station.
Well, the suit itself will have, there's two systems that control.
One system controls the capsule itself as far as providing pressure and air.
Then the second system provides my suit with the same.
That comes on if there's a cabin pressure loss.
The reason they put the heaters mostly in the fingertips and the feet is because the circulation and the extremities like that is so poor that those portions can get very cold when you consider you got a couple layers of fabric separating you from the vacuum of space.
But my particular needs will be much, much less because at the greatest length of time that I would have that kind of exposure would never be more than half the total duration of the flight.
I'm going to have basic telemetry set up because since it is a line-of-sight thing, it should be very easy to maintain really good radio contact with the ground.
They will be able to monitor the I mean what sort of frequencies and license do you use for that?
Oh, you know what?
Again, these are some of the details that I myself know nothing about, but I've had so many people offer their services over the past nine or ten months.
I've had people that do telemetry and do remote camera.
And so when it gets closer to that time, then that's when I'll start focusing on that.
But I know it's possible.
I mean, we're talking about line-of-sight radio communication for 35 miles.
Yes, but I have complete power as to which images I transmit to the ground.
I might not have the one on my face turned on a whole lot, depending on how there will be one camera in the cocktail looking at me, then there'll be one on my helmet, so whatever I'm looking at, I'm seeing.
And there'll be one in the nose looking down, and one in the fuel tank looking up.
Because I want to be able to, you know, right now when I go back and watch the videos I took in the MIG jet, it's like, you know, it's great to be able to watch what you've done.
But I would like to have my little portion of that, even if it's only raising the consciousness level of people that we're never going to see people getting the opportunity to go into space unless private enterprise picks it up.
Art, I remember back in junior high or something that, you know, when other kids were bringing bugs pinned to cardboard and paper-mâché volcanoes to the science fair, Brian was building lasers.
Well, depending on what the winds, a lot of that will depend on what the upper winds are doing.
You know, all things being equal, it's a good chance that if I pass through winds blowing in one direction, eventually I'll hit another layer blowing in another direction.
But I'm going to be traveling so quickly that I'm going to pass through these layers of moving air very quickly, and they're not going to have an opportunity to push me in any one direction very much.
So it depends a whole lot on what the conditions are that day.
If there's not a lot of upper air activity, then I'm going to go pretty much straight up and come pretty much straight down.
After the seventh circuit, the interesting thing is that the plane would get to a certain altitude, then it would begin this power dive, and you'd get 25 seconds of 0G.
And then at the very end of that, when they're ready to pull up, these bright lights come on, and at that point, you've got to stop what you're doing and grab on and get down on the ground, because when that plane pulls up, it goes from 0 Gs to 3 Gs.
But I'll tell you what, I would have easily done it again because when I think of how many times I hung my head in old Mr. Porcelain for stupid reasons, this was one reason that was well worth it.
And I have to say up front that I've answered now over 4,000 emails since last July, and I try my best to answer every one, but right now I'm just getting flooded with them, so I don't know if I'm going to be able to make it.
And what I'm doing is basically, because no one's ever done it before in an individual level, it's perceived as being impossible or something that can't be done.
Here, here.
And, you know, it may be, but see, the way it works.
Well, I'm hoping that, like I said, if you consider different altitudes, winds blow in different directions at different speeds.
And there again, if you're fortunate enough, you're going to pass through equal sections that have equal winds in different directions to compensate for each other.
But most importantly, I will be traveling so fast through those zones, and the silhouette of the rocket itself presents quite a small surface area.
I don't believe that the winds will have much effect on my overall movement.
Because when I begin to drop, there is effectively no air, and I just begin to accelerate at 32 feet per second per second until the air begins to cause a problem.
But that's good, because you don't want to linger.
Now, it's cheap from the sense that you're not burning fuel, but what it costs you is the negative side effect, which is the generation of so much heat.
If a returning spacecraft carried enough fuel on board that it could slow its speed very rapidly, then it would not be hitting the atmosphere at a speed high enough to cause frictional problems because you would have taken away that speed before you reached those levels of the atmosphere.
Let me tell you, you're going to be, I predict you're going to make it, okay?
And I send my prayers.
I'll be praying the whole time that you make it because we do need an alternative to NASA.
We do need private entrepreneurship.
We do need to show the world that a person can make their dreams come true in spite of everything.
And by all means, when you make it, when you come back to Earth, the question I have for you, and I'll get off the line and listen offline, and that is simply this.
You're obviously going to have a lot of book rights, movie rights.
There's going to be a whole lot of money you can be made off of this, enough to perhaps build the next step, which would be an orbital craft.
Are you thinking along those lines?
And again, I wish you Godspeed, and I'll hang out and listen to your answer.
And yes, there's a lot of potential of marketing, which is a whole different thing.
And I can't help but think of it because I'm in the business of obviously inventing and creating and then turning it into something.
But I try not to focus on that too much because it takes away from the mission itself.
But I would like to go and do bigger launches, higher launches, further launches, not continuing on this one-man crusade type thing that I'm doing this first one with, but I would like to move in that direction.
Okay, well, for the guidance system, there's two types of guidance.
One is aerodynamic, which is used obviously at the beginning of a flight when I launch, I'm using large, thin surfaces, so I have as much airflow interacting with as much surface area.
So at lower speeds, it will have a higher effect.
When I get up to a point that's too high to be using aerodynamic control, there are eight small 55-pound thrust rocket motors in the nose of the capsule.
You can see them on the website, and they're in a circular fashion, 45 degrees around the nose.
Now, it's important to note that the guidance I'm talking about for this specific rocket is extremely simple.
It's to keep it pointed straight.
It doesn't have to follow a course or take it to a specific point.
It just has to keep it straight.
So the guidance system is a gyroscope hooked into a simple computer that will tell which rocket to fire or which rockets to fire, because they're every 45 degrees around, so theoretically burning two or more at one time and varying the length of each burn can also move you almost any possible position.
I won't be handling that because there's no sense in it.
The gyroscope can be sensed and the computer input can be done far faster.
Now if something were to happen to the computer, Well, there again, this is one of the things that really separates this project apart from so many others.
For instance, in a space shuttle situation, I could do several things.
One would be to have a manual backup that I could actually fire the engines myself and without practical experience and performing that task over and over and over and over again, there's a very good chance I'd screw things up pretty good.
Second option could just simply be that if it goes out of whack, the important thing to consider is, and this is something I've discovered in so many rockets that I've launched, I've done all kinds of, you know, from the little solid rocket motor type to water rockets and big, big ones.
I'm talking big water rockets.
The rocket, if it takes off straight and things work out right, its natural desire is to continue going in the direction it's been set.
But then as I go into that next speed range, rather than having the deficit of too much air surface area to be interacting with that much speed, it sheds its outer portions and reduces its speed, or excuse me, its size.
So now it's working in concert with the second speed range.
It does that twice.
It drops off two overlays.
So I'm able to gain the absolute, I'm going to squeeze every ounce of aerodynamic stability that I can get for those first 10, 12 seconds.
And then through those next two speed ranges, I'm going to also try to wring out as much without carrying the burden of too much airfoil or air surfaces to interact with.
Now, if I come up to Oregon, when you land, can I get an interview with you pretty quick, or will you concentrate on the networks and work your way down?
It tells me, well, and if I read the emails and read the kind of messages I get, it tells me two things, that people really are excited, interested, and really want to see me do this just to see that someone can do it and just to see that this is possible.
But doesn't that also say that NASA is somehow missing out on a lot of spirit that's out there right now that would get behind NASA or the President of the United States saying, by God, we're going to Mars by such and such, a Kennedy-esque kind of statement, you know, setting a national goal.
We're sort of drifting these days.
And as you pointed out, kind of to the rear, we're drifting to the rear.
Yeah, I think there's two areas of pent-up emotion.
I think that's one area.
And then I think the other area, and there again, this is also reflected in my emails, is that there's an overall feeling about everything, not just in the space program, but just what life has become.
We put so much focus on individuals.
You know, it seems like all of our attention nowadays is on athletes or entertainers.
And I think that there's kind of a missing element that people need to see.
And, you know, the weird thing is, I never even in my wildest dreams thought of myself in a position of being someone that encouraging people onward in dreams or just looking at life a little differently.
And it's really quite interesting to get the kind of emails that I get.
Some of them have been extremely emotionally evoking to read people's.
In other words, if you, for example, go with the police sometimes, you'll go and you'll see a jumper, and they'll be up on a bridge.
And there's always these fools down below saying, jump, jump, jump.
And they just want to see it happen.
So that's one group.
And then there's another group of really forward-thinking people who understand what you're trying to achieve and what an incredible thing it would be.
As you know, the United States and other places around the world have specific launch locations into outer space, right?
And the United States has missile silos and stuff that are unspecified.
So how do you know with the altitudes that you're reaching that it might not set off an early detection warning system in some other country that you might start World War III is what he's asking?
I won't be going high enough to be able to trigger early warning.
In fact, my heat signature probably wouldn't even be, since I'm using steam, probably wouldn't even be detectable from space.
But this is going to be such a publicized event, and it's going to be happening within such a very small territorial area because stop and think about it again.
35 miles seems so high, but if you think about how far 35 miles is, it's not really that far in the grand scale of things.
Or if you really want to hear a dark scenario, we've got Star Wars, and the embarrassment would be too much for the powers at B, and one little push of a button and I don't think that would happen.
Yes, and I produced a video for him, and he was doing distillation of hydrogen peroxide like you have to be doing for your project to fly these personal belts.
And he had moved up to Oregon, and that's why I'm asking.
Okay, well, I have archives of all those magazines.
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Okay.
Just another thing I wanted to say, too.
Since I'm into science fiction a lot, having done these projects over the years, I don't know if this is accidental or a subliminal thing.
Are you aware how much your ship that I've looked at on the internet bears a resemblance to Zephyrin Cochran's first warp ship in the Star Trek mythology?
Just as an aside, just to show how all of this world comes up into funny little circles, the jet engines we used on our Jet Ultralight, they were the same engines that were used by Bob Lazar, and he put an afterburner on those, and he used those to power that jet-powered Honda out on the salt flats.
And that's what got Edward Teller to see his work in that newspaper article.
Well, I mean, that was an outrageous comment I made, but I mean, basically, it was true.
From your first design, capsule design, to the one that appears to be quite workable right now, there have been several steps where people have looked at it and basically said, hey, you're going to die, right?
As you mentioned, I have that animation, the animation.
Right.
Well, just moments before I began with you tonight, I was viewing the brand new one.
That animation was on the old design and method, and it's just really outdated.
But I have a brand new animation I was going to try and have up on my site by now, but it's probably going to be a couple more days.
And it shows now the actual rocket exactly how it's going to look, and the animation is much closer to reality now.
See, when I originally started working on this project, I wanted to keep it as simple as possible.
And the one thing about the rocket belt, whenever you've seen it fly, it's very stable because the thrust is coming out above the weight.
The feet are hanging down, and the nozzles, you know, are up at shoulder length.
And my theory was that I was going to propel this rocket by putting the engine up top and pulling it up with the center of gravity below the thrust because this would result in stability.
Well, if I was going to maybe hover all the way up, maybe that would be the case.
But too many people began pointing out to me that, you know, Goddard had tried this in the beginning, and for a number of reasons, it proves to be unstable and unsafe.
And I had lots of people, actually, giving me direction and pointing me there.
And once I realized the folly of my original design, I said, okay, well, scrap that.
I'm going to go with this other one.
Because by all means, I am not a real rocket scientist.
I mean, I'm basically utilizing common sense and then getting advice when I need it and making the changes I have to make.
Sure.
I want the thing to work.
I don't want the thing to not work to be able to claim that it was all my brand new idea.
So I would imagine if I'm going to be going a little more than twice that high, I don't know if it's log root progressive or whatever, as far as does that mean I'm going to be twice as high and see 1,000 miles, or maybe does that mean I see 1,500 miles?
Yeah, I'd probably be able to see to a distance like that.
Boy.
And then again, you know, it's just that, yes, it's that progressive moving out each step.
But it's interesting, you brought up high flight.
When I was real young, back before cable and everything, TV used to go off at midnight, and of course they always did the obligatory lowering of the flag and taps.
But one show used to always, one station used to always run this high flight.
That's right.
Pictures in the background of the guy flying in the jet.
And I just used to love to always have a treat to me if I was actually up late enough and awake to be able to catch high flight.
there's worse ways to go over a lot worse ways to go and only the worst with go but I mean, think about it.
I mean, this is really bizarre when you consider that I didn't go to college.
I got out of high school.
That was enough school for me because I'm dyslexic and a certain level of ADHD.
And that makes normal schooling torture.
And I failed so many times before I got to the point, I think between ages of 20 and 35, I moved back to my folks five or six times because I was absolutely going to be either homeless or moving back in.
Because I'd go off to pursue some dream and would fail so miserably that was it.
And because I hung out and didn't give up, I made it to this point where now I'm actually not only able to realize my dream, but I'm actually creating it.
And I've created this little world around me where I have this shop and this property and my income stream comes from toy royalties, so it gives me the freedom and the time to pursue this without having to do the day job each day.
I have one helper, a young fellow, Dave, a young guy that actually had emailed me after my first round of publicity last June.
And he's a young guy that lives here in Bend, and he's got experience in composites, a lot of experience in composites, and a real nice guy and bright and sharp, and he can do welding.
And so he comes in a few days a week and helps me deal with some of the stuff, building the molds and everything else.
But other than that, I'm handling pretty much everything by myself.
That's my message to the other parts of the world.
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Hey, are you familiar with, you know, Russia doesn't have much money, so they've been getting money from our country actually to support some of their rocket missions.
And remember, Pizza High put a big sticker on their thing, and maybe you could get some money from some companies, and you could go further next time.
Well, I have been, I've got a number of corporate sponsors I would like to see sponsor this that I have not made any real attempts yet because who would you like?
Well, I try and do things backwards because I'm dyslexic, okay?
So instead of going out looking for the best companies or the biggest or the ones who would be perfect, I look at the companies that I already support.
I have a BMW, a little M-Roadster, which is basically the rocket car.
And so BMW and their whole thing about driven to excellence and performance and stuff like that, it's the perfect mix of a sponsorship because there's all kinds of great commercials you can do with the two.
But before I approach these people, I've been wanting to get to a certain level so that when I do talk to them, they can see that this isn't just some guy with a water heater and plywood fins stuck to it with nails going to blow up half the neighborhood.
This is serious.
And give them a reason to take a strong enough look at saying this could be a real good thing.
And rather than becoming an endorser for a company because they wrote me the biggest check, it's going to be I selected companies that I already support.
So I've got a list of several companies that I'm giving some thought over the next few months here.
So if you were to black out at 6 Gs or 8 Gs, or you pulled more than you thought, and you blacked out, conceivably you could take the whole ride unconscious.
And then also, like, for instance, suppose you go back to this scenario.
I'm blacked out.
It's reached apogee.
It's on its way down.
Now, there may be something that's supposed to trigger to fire something, and if that fails, that might normally, that would be it.
However, at a different altitude, there was another thing that was supposed to occur if my speed was still at a certain point.
Everyone that Skydive nowadays jumps with a little device that's called an AAD, and it senses your fall rate, and when you reach 1,000 feet above the ground, I think it's 1,000 feet, but you reach a certain level, and if it senses you're traveling at a faster speed than what would be considered under a canopy, it'll automatically fire your reserve.
And they've saved countless, countless lives, and no one jumps without them anymore.
And there will be very similar type things in here that if I get to a certain point and all of a sudden it realizes that something failed earlier on and now there's still a problem going on, then it would do its own thing at that point.
So I've tried to put in redundant and double redundant systems.
Well, my speed at takeoff is not so much a matter of speed, it's acceleration rate.
Because obviously I go from a standing still position to accelerating upwards.
And the speed, I'm hoping to accelerate to about around the 140-mile an hour range in the first four to five seconds.
And then from that point on, it's just a steady increase in velocity.
And once I clear that six to ten second danger zone, if it's still on a straight course upwards, then there's very little that can go wrong from that point on.
But I wanted to say to your guest, Brian, Godspeed, sir.
Oh, thank you.
And I hope that all of Mr. Bell's listeners will be praying for you as I will.
And really hope that not only for your success, but I really hope that you can keep in contact with Mr. Bell because so many fine people listen to a show as you're finding out.
And I'd like to see you keep in touch with Mr. Bell.
Judgment truth is, I can't say it anymore because I love Tuesday
Afternoon I'm just beginning to see Now I'm on my way It doesn't matter to me Chasing the clouds away Something
Calls to me The trees are growing me near I've got to find out why Those gentle voices I hear Explain it all with a sigh I've got to find out why
I'm on my way I've got to find out why I'm on my way I've got to find out why I'm on my way I've got to find out why I'm on my way I've got to find out why I'm on my way You're listening to Art
Bell, Somewhere in Time Tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from May 22, 2001 Actually, if you listen to the words, you understand a lot Or maybe you didn't even have to hear it to understand But Brian Walker is planning on launching himself into space
30, 35 miles up If you want to know more about it, there are various ways His website, we've got all kinds of pictures We've got two pages of pictures on the website Of what he's building right now to accomplish this I suggest you take a look Before you
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chuckle, I suggest you take a look Brian will be right back You're listening to Art Bell, Somewhere in Time Tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM From May 22, 2001
Well, all right, back to what we go Brian Walker is my guest They call him the Rocket Guy And for good reasons Brian, welcome back Thank you You're going to get probably a lot of email because of this Oh, I keep going and looking at it every so often It's scary It's pretty scary I treat every email as if it's me writing someone else And it makes it really difficult to ignore
them And I want to answer everyone But, man It's because people have very strong feelings about this Well Stronger than our government knows And if they knew how strong I think they wouldn't have been dicking around for the last 30 plus years Oh, no, I mean, it's ridiculous We should have never left the moon We should have never left without human presence Of course not And it just doesn't make any sense That the nearest body Unless
there is stuff up there Whether they don't want anyone to know about I have never been able to understand Now that they believe there would be abundant sources of water In the form of frozen ice in the poor regions So you suspect that as a possibility?
Well, from what I understand They're quite certain that there's large deposits Oh, no, I didn't mean that I was referring to the things that they don't want seen Oh, I don't know We know I personally No, I personally don't think I think it's just a big rock The moon?
We know I'll tell you I used to be a real big believer in alien beings coming here But over the past couple of years I've tried to figure out exactly why would they do that Anybody that could come here Obviously has a technology that's so far advanced above us They wouldn't need to be probing us I mean, what are they going to learn from us?
And, you know, maybe it exists I just don't tend to believe that anyone would have come the great vast distances to come here No, but it certainly is possible there was at one time life on Mars There could have been I mean, it's hard to say You know, who's to say that its orbit has always been that far out?
It may have been closer to the sun Well, you know, we might be able to say if we would go there That's true All right, let's get to phones A lot of people First-time caller line You're on the air with Brian Walker Hi Hi, Brian Hi, Art Ah, you complain about the lack of the female genitality
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Yeah, there you go You complain that we get it just by asking I've been trying to get through all night I get disconnected from the line that's on for a long time And I don't get redialed Well, hey, I'm glad you made it through Because now it wasn't all, guys Yeah You guys are so naive about the space program I
mean, Art, I've been listening to you for years I'm Isometria This is Isometria I'm calling from Santa Cruz, California Yes About three blocks from the ocean Oh, yes Well, we had a...
Because they own space in their minds And they have the plan to completely control everything And of course they don't want us to be able to go into space But I pray that this is the beginning of it And I'm so, you know...
Well, I agree I'm so happy that...
I agree, too This is happening and that Brian exists we're we're on the edge of an era of a time I mean look at Timothy Leary he would be ecstatic about this dude he would and he would be ecstatic and I and I knew Tim a little bit.
And I lived there 86 and 87 building a little two-man recreational submarine.
And it was designed to just take two people below the surface in an airtight bubble, and then there was a large tail that stuck up the back to a float.
So once you got to an eye-level depth of about four feet underwater, the float stopped on the surface and kept you suspended there.
No, actually the way it worked out was that I had been looking for years for someone to fund and to back this deal, and I met the guy who owns this island.
He's actually from Vancouver, Washington, and he owns this island.
It's called Turtle Island.
And he was so intrigued with my project that he said that if I wanted to come down and build it on his island, he would fund the whole effort, and I'd go down and live there and build it there.
But he liked the idea of having me do it on his island, kind of, you know, like how many guys have an island with a guy building a submarine on it?
Well, as it exists right now, there's really not any FARS covering private rocket launches, not to my knowledge, or that type of thing.
I'm not flying.
I'm traveling through airspace, but I'm not flying through it.
I'm not operating an aircraft under my controls.
I'm basically in a ballistic missile that is traveling through that.
Now, the FAA does not own that airspace.
It only regulates it.
And if I request a waiver to travel through that airspace and my flight is deemed not hazardous to the public and there's enough notification, which is what they do when, for instance, when the Model Rocket Club decides to launch, then there's no reasonable explanation that they could deny me based on what the parameters are for granting access to that part of the air.
FAA doesn't own it.
I mean, that's free space above us.
I respect that they regulate it because I appreciate the safety that I travel in.
But by no means am I out to do anything that would harm myself, let alone anyone else.
And I just want to do things correctly.
But I'm just asking for permission to travel through this controlled airspace at a time and place that will not interfere with the general public.
unidentified
Well, and if I may follow up, Brian, with a follow-up question to that, how has your interfacing been with the FAA?
I know in Keen Eye, they do a lot of government missile launches, and they send out a lot of notems to the pilots well in advance, advising them to stay clear of that peninsula area during the launches.
How has the FAA been treating you in getting the waivers and going into airspace around your launch site in Oregon?
To be honest, and I was talking about this a little earlier, I think just before you came on, that I at this point haven't even dealt with them because right now, the way I look at it is what it's taking me to get this rocket finished, completed, built, and knowing that it's going to work is such a huge thing to overcome.
That when I come closer to the launch date, when I know my location and when I have all those things figured out because I'm choosing a place that is as far away from commercial air corridors as possible, and when all those things are done, then I will go make my application.
It just doesn't do me any good right now because there's no sense beginning a fight this far away from it.
I had never really put in the going to Russia, the couple trips I've made to Russia has been training in the sense of getting me used to certain situations.
And I hadn't really given that a whole lot of thought.
I've probably got about that much into it right now, and we'll probably spend about half again that much.
I expect to probably have $300,000 to $400,000 into it.
I mean, if I went to a certain point and came back, well, I'll tell you what, if I launched this thing and it actually went up and only went to, well, I would call it a success if I got 35 miles high and come back.
I will call it a, I'm trying to think of a word that would be not success, but not anything close to failure.
If this thing goes 20 miles high, I'm going to be probably just exactly as thrilled as I'd be if it went 35.
And I'd probably feel the same way if it went 10 miles.
And if the thing went up 5,000 feet and I still managed to make it down safety and walk away, I'd probably have just as much of a feeling of pride as if I'd gone full distance.
I mean, there's a lot of unknowns because, you know, obviously I have not been able to conduct wind size tests to know what the drag coefficient is or calculate.
Obviously, the drag as it begins throughout the flight.
Those things are things that I really can't, and quite frankly, I don't care about.
I don't need to know to that precise.
There again, this is not like I'm trying to put something into an exact polar orbit or an exact position in the heavens.
I just want to go up and down.
I've got you.
It's the easiest, the simplest thing I can think of to do is go up, come down, get out, wave to the crowd.
That's it.
Go up, come down, get out, wave to the crowd.
If I do that, I don't care where I went, how high I went.
I'll have a heart rate monitor and probably maybe a blood pressure monitor just for the sake of recording what I want to see that chart.
unidentified
Yeah, I'd like to see that.
Yeah, blood pressure.
Anyway, I had one more thing to add, a couple of more songs for y'all that Harry Nielsen, Spaceman, Major Tom, David Bowie, Rocket Man, definitely by Elton John in 2001, Space Odyssey.
It really has to do with whether, as a kid, you were reading, you know, the Heinlein Juveniles where the kids build a spaceship in the backyard.
Yeah.
That said, I have to admit that when I heard you were going to be pulling 6Gs, my immediate thought was, darn, he's going to black out just in time to miss the best part.
So I'm really glad to hear that you can pull 6Gs without blacking out.
Yeah, you know, it's not at all, for instance, it's not at All like free fall, because in free fall, you're aware of this pressure wave on you.
But when everything just goes weightless, it's just a, you know, if it wasn't for the visuals around you, it's like for instance, if you were sitting in a pitch-pitch, dark, black room and you went weightless, you'd probably notice very little.
You don't sense much until you go to move or until you try to interact with something around you, and then you see how all of a sudden, how weird it is.
Your brain is telling you that that water droplet shouldn't be floating in front of your face, and I shouldn't be able to do flips and thins in one spot.