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March 27, 2002 - Art Bell

02:45:12

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - The Rocket Guy - Brian Walker

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59:16

brian walker

01:11:57

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Speaker	Time	Text
unidentified		Welcome to Art Bell Somewhere in Time, tonight featuring Coast to Coast AM from March 27th, 2002.
unidentified		And the great American Southwest Ideal.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Everybody out there, good evening, good morning, good afternoon, wherever you may be in Earth's 24 time zones covered by this program, which is Coast to Coast AM.
		I'm Art Bell.
		It's going to be a weighty program in more ways than one.
		There are some things I'm going to hold off here a few minutes telling you about for important reasons.
		I'm waiting for this article to arrive on my website so that I can talk about it.
		I don't feel I should until you can make it up there and read it for yourself.
		Let's check national news storming into a hotel dining room.
		A suicide bomber killed at least 19 Israelis and injured 120 others when he detonated explosives Wednesday night, just as a meal was beginning at a Jewish Passover celebration.
		It's never going to end.
		Is it?
		Or is it going to be all of it?
		Is it going to be the end?
		Is the right question to ask about everything that's happening over there right now.
		President Bush signed legislation Wednesday designed to limit the role of big money in political campaigns, triggering a rush to the courthouse by critics challenging the constitutionality of law.
		I told you this would happen.
		God, they didn't even wait an hour.
		The president said, I wouldn't have signed it if I was really unhappy with it.
		Soon afterward, two lawsuits were filed against the legislation in the U.S. District Courthouse.
		The suits brought by the NRA and another by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky alleged the new law violates free speech.
		So they're going to send this one straight to the court without passing go.
		Milton Burrell, the acerbic cigar-smoking vaudevillian who eagerly embraced the new medium and became Mr. Television, has died at 93.
		He was diagnosed with colon cancer last year.
		So a legend is surely gone, Milton Burrell.
		I remember as a child, you know, vague memories.
		I remember my dad brought home a television and it was about a 7-inch screen.
		I know because I later got this TV, you know, from my room.
		It was this giant cabinet with those little tiny 7-inch screen, but everybody in the neighborhood came running over to see Bell's television, you know.
		And we had a full living room every night for a long time.
		That was the beginning of TV, and so was Milton Burrell.
		And that's where you saw him, and he's gone now.
		A good trip, my friend.
		A court convicted a U.S. airman Thursday of raping a Japanese woman, sentenced him to 32 months, including a case that deepened resentment toward American troops stationed in Okinawa.
		So a conviction there.
		American Airlines pilots have told the government that it should consider grounding the Airbus A300-600, one of which crashed in New York last year because of safety questions.
		American Airlines and Airbus Industries say the plane is safe.
		The FAA has ordered new inspections of the Airbus A300-600, but has not yet grounded the aircraft.
		Now, as you know, on my website, it just gets nothing but more interesting by the moment.
		The man who built the Coral Castle, I've seen years of info on this man and talked to many people who have been there.
		But the other night, John in Orlando, Florida blew me away.
		Blew me away.
		Sent me a picture of an obviously some sort of magnetic machine that the man who built this, I mean, it's the American equivalent of the pyramids.
		It's impossible.
		What this man did by himself, small man, by the way, impossible.
		Totally, utterly, absolutely impossible.
		He could never have moved the rocks around.
		As we are curious about the pyramids, we are curious about Coral Castle.
		And inside of the Coral Castle, here is this rare picture of this machine, which Isaiah again looks like something out of Stargate.
		And I've been talking about it the last couple of days since I got the photo.
		Now, I think you'll find this of some interest.
		My very good friend Woodley Striever wrote to Bill Mallow, who is a scientist, and asked him to look at the photograph that I put up on my website.
		And William Mallow wrote back the following.
		The structure seems to have the usual rotor and stator components that all motors contain, but in capital letters with exclamation points, there is the impression of resonance slash harmonics involved, which vary as the rotor seems designed to turn at varied vertical orientations and strikes varied-shaped relief patterns around the inner surface.
		There appears to be a handle for manual rotation and a somewhat eccentric inner surface.
		Each of the relief symbols or bells corresponds to one of the external rectangular bar-like stator-like composite structures.
		Tuning may be implicit.
		The construction of the bars around the assembly, together with the elevation and shape of the relief bells or sounding pins slash pegs, to design and construct a machine that rings and sings at acoustically powerful enough levels to lift and place megalithic objects requires an understanding of mechanics,
		physics, and harmonics that are reminiscent of John Keeley, the 19th century inventor who uncovered some universal laws of matter, force, sound that still baffle us.
		And that is what Bill Mallow wrote back to Louise Striber, who then passed it on to me in email, about this photograph.
		I'm telling you, it's incredible.
		So if you haven't been to my website yet to see it, please do.
		It is without question a magnetic device of some serious description.
		Now, why is it important?
		Well, because it's right in the middle of Coral Castle.
		That's why.
	It's right in the middle of Coral Castle.
	Now, the gentleman, now I get a lot of email.
	I get so much email.
	I'm awaiting an answer from the man who called last night and said that any hole in excess of 10,000 feet drilled into the earth is a matter of national security and is secret, highly secret.
	And he had the answer and he was going to give it to me but said it could hurt the U.S. So I said, no, send it to me an email.
	Well, Harold, I have not received your email yet.
	He's a ham.
	So if you would please put your call letters, Harold, in the subject line and send it to me again, A-S-A-P.
	I would certainly appreciate it because a lot of people want the answer to that, me included.
	I could have missed it.
	You know, I just get reams of email.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The two things that I additionally want to talk to you about that are going on the website have just now gone on.
		So I'm going to bring them up with great trepidation and hesitation, particularly in view of the second one.
		The first one is very interesting.
		When you go to artbell.com, here's what you do.
		You click on what's new, and instead of going down, you go up to where it says updated news and other websites.
		And the first is a very interesting picture.
		It's titled Baby with Tail, Reincarnation of Hindu God.
		And though the photograph has been around for a while, this is a photograph, folks.
		A very clear, very clear photograph of a child with a tail.
		A pretty good-sized tail at that.
		You know, we were talking about people with tails the other day.
unidentified		Remember that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, here is one with a tail.
		That is the first item.
		The second item I'm going to have to talk to you about.
		I am not going to withhold news from you.
		As you know, a lot of news breaks first in the United Kingdom, and for some reason, they're more on top of a lot of, I don't know, the kind of stories that I cover here than the press in this country.
		But I am told that this is going to break in the press in this country.
		That may or may not be.
		There has been published in the London Observer, Sunday, March 17th, an article that I consider extremely, you know, personally I consider this extremely defamatory to the memory of Father Malachi Martin.
		It's a rather long, involved article.
		It's entitled Condemned to a Life in Purgatory for Falling Prey to a Sinner in the Vatican.
		And it says some pretty horrible things about Father Malachi Martin.
		So here's the way I'm going to treat it.
		Right now I'm going to just put a link to the Guardian website article on my website.
		It's up there now.
		I think the link is second one down.
		It's called Condemned to a Life in Purgatory for Falling Prey to a Sinner in the Vatican.
		Click on that.
		It will take you across the pond and you can read the article.
		And you can decide for yourself.
		Now, Father Malachi Martin is no longer around, of course, to defend himself.
		And you may wish to give no weight whatsoever to this article.
		It's awful.
unidentified		Awful.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So anyway, with regard to the first photograph of the child with a tail and this awful article about Malachi Martin, just click on what's new and go up, not down, to where it says news and other websites, and there will be the information I'm talking about right now.
		And I'm not even going to, at this point, honor this article in any way by reading any of it to you on the earth.
		It's a rather extensive article.
		The bad part's really coming more toward the end.
unidentified		Oh, boy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you're not even done here on Earth when you're done.
		I mean, they're just going to come after you after you're gone.
		That probably happens to most people of some public, you know, some public exposure.
		so somebody who's very much in public eye even after they're gone anything that would appear to be like a terrible scandal will still break and will still make news hmm hmm You've seen this awful black water down in Florida, right?
		Getting a lot of news stories about it now.
		And this black water is incredible black water.
		Now, it's not killing life.
		We don't think it's actually killing life.
		It covers a large part of the ocean down there off Florida.
		It's not actually, it doesn't seem to be killing life, but it is devoid of life.
		Now, that may mean that the life just took off and went elsewhere, but we're beginning to get some first trickling of information about what they think it might be.
		Just trickling in, right?
		But these samples might be indicating that there is some sort of algae bloom.
		They're not really sure yet.
		You know, they're looking into reasons for the phenomena.
		And I've got a number of quotes from scientists here.
		Let's see.
		We have certain expectations about the number of bacteria in normal coastal ocean water.
		Good, clean ocean water has between 1 and 3 million bacteria.
		Elevated levels would be in the area of 10 times that.
unidentified		Huh.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Researchers from NOAA weren't aware of the phenomenon at the time they were sampling between Key West and 10,000 Islands at Hugh Florida's southwest coast.
		They collected in areas on the fringe and the core of the water, according to later reports from fishermen.
		Brand refused to speculate on what his findings might mean, but said the samples had an odd, quoting, an odd array of organisms, including green algae, that is not normally found in gulf water.
		There are a lot of surprising results people would not have expected, said Brand.
		Generally, you see green algae only under polluted conditions.
		So that's kind of where that story stands right now.
		In other words, they don't know.
		The water has indications of large amounts of plant plankton and no evidence of red tide.
		So this one is a new and weird mystery.
		in a moment there will be more Thank you.
		There sure have been a lot of people involved in microbiology dying lately.
		And here's another one.
		Castle Rock.
		Denver car dealer Kent Rickenbaugh, his wife Caroline, and their son Bart were killed Sunday in a plane crash near Centennial Airport.
		Pilot, Dr. Stephen Mostow, also died.
		Kent Rickenbaugh, 64, owned two car dealerships in the Denver area.
		Caroline Rickenbaugh, 62, known for her involvement in the community.
		Bart Rickenbaugh, 35, lived in Bozeman, Montana.
		Amostow, that's M-O-S-T-O-W 63, was one of the country's leading infectious disease experts and was associate dean at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.
		Amastow was a crusader for better health, an early advocate for widespread flu vaccinations, and more recently, an expert on the threat of bioterrorism.
		He was a champion for rural health care and childhood immunizations for the past three years.
		He'd been helping to expand the healthfair, a program that benefits thousands of people in Colorado.
		The key here, though, is that he dealt in the exact areas that he was working on bioterrorism.
		And there have been, without question, a disproportionate number of scientists out there working in this field who have been dying in, I don't know, unusual ways.
		I mean, I don't know if you say a plane crash is an unusual way to die, but in a way it is.
		And this list is beginning to get to be very long, and a lot of people are beginning to notice.
		So it's like this is beginning to get noticed, folks.
		It's all over the internet.
		It's not just me.
		So if there's something going on out there, why the media is beginning to notice, folks, we do live in strange times.
		I understand there's a warning to Americans around Easter in Italy.
		Mona was just telling me she saw a news slash about there possibly being danger to Americans in Italy around Easter.
		Figures, huh?
unidentified		The time cannot be your age, it's just a day.
unidentified		I was mine, I was mine.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There's a lot of bad people in the world.
unidentified		You're listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
		Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from March 27, 2002.
		Tell me, tell me, tell me lies.
		Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies.
		Tell me lies, tell me lies.
		Oh, no, no, you can't disguise.
		You can't disguise.
		Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies.
		Oh, I'm not making plans.
		Oh, no, you can't disguise.
		I hope I can be your strength of an oak with roots deep in the ground.
		The wonder of flowers to be covered and then to burst up from tarmac to the sun again.
		Or to fly to the sun without burning a wing, to lie in a meadow and hear the grass sing, all these things in our memories all the youngest face
		of this trip, just come on, yeah!
		I'll take a free ride, take a place, up my seat, It's more great.
		I've worked with a sweet few years.
		Sweat so hard just to end my fears.
		Not to end my life, but all my rest.
		But by now, by now, I shall not cry.
		Oh, my God.
		Oh, my last race, and my grace, I'm this one.
		You're listening to Art Bell somewhere in time, tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from March 27th, 2002.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Again, I will call your attention to these so that you might assess them yourselves.
		There is what I consider to be a very defamatory article about Father Malachi Martin.
		You can get to it by going to my website, clicking up on news and other websites, and then have a read yourself and see what you think.
		You have to wonder why.
		Only after his death would an article of this sort be printed.
		Now, there's at the top of the hour, it's going to be very interesting.
		You may remember the rocket guy, Brian Walker, who plans to launch himself 30 miles straight up in a rocket of his own design.
		And, of course, we've got photographs of that rocket, and we're going to get an update because we're getting close to what was the first launch date.
		Now, I think that may be pushback.
		I'm not sure.
		We'll ask a little bit, but it's getting very, very close.
		And I'm going to go up there and watch this launch.
		There is no question about it.
		We're going to open lines here in a second, but just very quickly, from Albuquerque, New Mexico, make way for the ultimate high-rise project, the space elevator.
		Here we go again.
		Long viewed as science fiction imagineering.
		Researchers are gathering momentum in their pursuit to propel this uplifting concept into actuality.
		Still, the mental picture needed to grasp the elevator to space idea.
		Well, you can't be weak of mind.
		Forget the roar of rocketry and those bone-jarring liftoffs like Rocketman's going to experience.
		The elevator would be a nice, smooth, 62,000-mile ride up a long cable.
		Payloads can shimmy up the Earth-to-space cable, experiencing no launch forces whatsoever, slowly climbing from one atmosphere right straight up into a vacuum.
		Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars, Venus, the asteroids, and all beyond are routinely accessible via the space elevator.
		And for all its promise and grandeur, this mega-project is made practical by the tiniest of technologies now, carbon nanotubes.
		Seen as an engineering undertaking for the opening decades of the 21st century, the space elevator proposal was highlighted here during the 2002 Space and Robotics Convention held March 17th through the 21st, sponsored by the Aerospace Division of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
		Well, well, well, well, well, think about that.
		They're really serious about this.
		An actual elevator that would go from Earth from ground into space and would take you there slowly without any rockets or anything else.
		These people are saying.
		These people are saying it really could be.
		Now, how it, you know, the engineering of that and the physics behind that totally escape me.
		But the concept is absolutely incredible.
		Take an elevator to space.
		I remember the Empire State building.
		I've been up in that elevator enough times, and that's a thrill, but my gosh almighty.
		62,000 miles.
		Yeah, yeah, yeah.
		First time caller line, you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Didn't someone once sing about a highway to heaven?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Art?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The stairway to heaven, yeah.
unidentified		Art, greetings from the nation's first capital.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		New York, eh?
unidentified		Big Apple, New York City.
		You know, if General George Washington was around, he would say, boys, when the smoke clears, we're going to be in the oil business.
		You know, it's no longer an immigration issue.
		It's a national security issue.
		The illegal invaders must be deported.
		You know, Art, Flight 587 that crashed into Rockaway, New York, there are witnesses who saw that jet blow up.
		And those witnesses all have the same account.
		They saw a small explosion by the wing, followed by a big explosion.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I could not agree more with you that somehow I don't feel like we've been told the whole story on that aircraft.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Not at all.
unidentified		You're right.
		And the government will say, well, it doesn't look like terrorism.
		But look, anybody with any common sense knows that until a full investigation takes place, you don't know what exactly happened.
		So you can't say either way.
		But if they're trying to put this out, there wasn't terrorism, because obviously they don't want the airline, commercial airline industry to shut down.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Look, look, the commercial air, you know, as a result of this 9-11 thing, the U.S. Postal Service is suffering horrendously.
		Of course, what occurred there in New York and all the repercussions of that to our entire economy.
		And the whole thing is strictly a national security issue.
		So I can't sit here and tell you that if I were sitting around some big oak table with a bunch of Intel-type guys and we were deciding what to do, even let's just, you know, for the sake of discussion, say it was, they know absolutely it was terrorism.
		I'm not sure the right thing for national security would be to say so.
		What do you think?
unidentified		Well, I think you've got to come clean with the American people because then you're putting other people at risk.
		Look at the sneaker bomber.
		Is that what America has come to where we have three flight attendants fighting with that lunatic on that jet coming from France, even though the day before they threw him off the jet, if you remember?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The whole thing is, I do.
		The whole thing is madness.
		But, but, but, but, but, uh, listen to me now, and I'm going to say this again.
		You know, even though I'm like everybody else, I want to know, I sure as hell want to know what the truth is, I also see the other side of it.
		If you were trying to act in the best interest of our nation, and you had already observed the horrendous impact on the economy in this country from 9-11, the psyche of the American people because of 9-11, the worldwide repercussions because of 9-11, the war because of 9-11.
		In other words, these are world-shaking events, and the American people were beginning to get frightened.
		Kind of a combination of first shock, then, I guess, anger and fright.
		And so would you pile on, if you knew something had been a terrorist action and you didn't have to say so, would you pile on?
		And would you slam the economy harder and scare the you know what out of everybody?
		Or would you perhaps hold that information close to your chest until you had irrefutable evidence?
		Or even if you had irrefutable evidence, there might be a national security issue there.
		Wildcard line, you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Yes, I was listening to your program last night, and I just think we're getting a totally monolithic, though, one-sided view of post-9-11 events.
		And there's former CIA officials like Ralph McGahey, David McMichael, and others who got so disgusted with the kind of propaganda they were ordered by their superiors to plant at various media outlets to frame up various countries for attack that they left the agency and set up magazines like Covert Action and others.
		And I think we're being subjected to the same type of thing.
		listening last night i couldn't believe the third year kindergarten simplistic uh...
		outright ratings of bellicos ratings of the of the guest last night and if we consider the uh...
		the uh...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		manipulations towards that actually sir uh...
		He's not really ultra-right at all.
		Not ultra-right at all.
		It's just that what he believes about the God part of the brain and now apparently our self-destructive wiring, he is, you know, he is very, I told him right in the air.
		He's very narrow-minded.
		He is very narrow-minded.
		And he is nevertheless, for me, very intellectually stimulating in terms of getting into it with him.
		And I really enjoy that.
		I think he's dead wrong on a couple of things and maybe right on a couple of others.
		And so do other very well-educated people like Professor Kaku.
		They think he's a very interesting person.
		And he is stubborn, single-minded, macro-minded even, but extremely interesting to intellectually spar with.
		No question about that.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Hello.
		I don't know if you push a button.
		Now you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Yeah, I'm Ethan.
		I'm from Kentucky.
		Yes, Ethan.
		First thing I wanted to tell you is, well, I have something for you.
		My granduncle was, he claimed that he had alien abductions multiple times in his life, and he passed away a few weeks ago, and he left me, I inherited something from him that I'd rather tell you off the line later or something.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, everybody's always wanting to tell me offline.
		Just give me a general description right here.
		Would you please?
		I try to keep everything as much as I'm able out in front of the audience, you know?
unidentified		I'd say it's smoking gun evidence of JFK shot.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, we know that JFK was shot, sir.
unidentified		No, but it's a different view.
unidentified		It shows the driver.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, this has been going around for a long time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The driver turning around and shooting the president of that, what you say?
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Man, that's real old stuff, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Real, real old stuff.
unidentified		Well, okay, well, the other thing I wanted to talk about was the question I wanted to ask you is the tenth planet stuff of I've heard about.
		I've heard it supposedly a comet.
		I've heard it's a planet.
		I've heard it's a brown dwarf.
		I've heard it's supposed to come anywhere from five years to next year.
		I've tried to do research on it.
		I found all these different things.
		I wanted to know what you knew about it.
		Has it been called on telescope?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, there's a big ABCnews.com story, which I've had on the website forever now, about something out there that does indeed look like it could be either a tenth planet or even a sort of a dead sun.
		So the answer to your question is yes, there's a great deal of information out there about the possibility of a tenth planet that would seem to coincide with what a lot of people like Sitchin and Hazelwood and others are saying.
		In other words, there's some mainstream backing for it, but we don't know much beyond that right now.
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Hello.
		Hi, Art.
unidentified		How are you doing?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm doing okay.
unidentified		This is Steve from Tucson.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Steve.
unidentified		Yeah, well, I'm going to get to my point in a second, but regarding that 10th planet you were just talking about.
		I'm an astronomer.
		You wouldn't happen to have any declination or attention quarterly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I absolutely would not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No.
unidentified		But when you get them, please put them on the air.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Uh-huh.
unidentified		Okay.
		The main reason I called, I don't know how to start.
		Last night I was coming home from Phoenix with a buddy of mine.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
unidentified		And it's about one o'clock in the morning.
unidentified		And I'm, you know, I've listened to your show a lot, and I hear all the people calling talking about UFOs and all this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
unidentified		I thought I saw something maybe five years ago, but I didn't know what it was.
unidentified		But this, last night, I was coming down I-10, right down.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sounds like your worldview changed last night.
unidentified		Yeah.
		Me and my friends.
		Yes.
		We were coming down I-10 at about mile post 178.
		There was an object in the field to the right of us, to the west of the freeway.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		It was flying above the field, maybe at an altitude of about 10 feet.
		I mean, I'm surprised it wasn't mowing down saguaro cactus.
		It was so low.
		Wow.
		And it was coming towards the highway.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We'll describe the object.
unidentified		Triangular.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh.
unidentified		Three very bright white lights on the bottom.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And how big roughly would you guess?
unidentified		Well, when it almost hit us coming across the highway, this is the strange part.
		It was coming towards the highway, flying very low over this field.
		And it went actually over I-10 as it was banking back towards the field.
		And that's when I caught a full bottom view of it and got all three of those bright lights right in my face.
		And then it went right back into the field.
		I hit the brakes in my truck.
		I thought I was going to hit it.
		It was down.
		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, pause, take a deep breath, and try and tell me again how big this object was.
unidentified		Judging by the spacing of the lights, there was about 30 feet between the lights.
		And the object itself wasn't much bigger than its light spread.
		It was very thin.
		It made absolutely no noise.
		I'm an aircraft mechanic.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sir, I have seen almost exactly what you are describing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Flew right over my head.
unidentified		Well, this thing almost, I had to hit the brakes so I wouldn't hit it with my truck.
		It made a 10-foot over-the-freeway pass as it was turning back towards the field it came from.
		At which point I slammed on the brakes, pulled off the side of the road.
		I knew it was at Mile Post 178 because I happened to park right next to it.
		And me and my friend.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How many of you saw this?
unidentified		Well, me and my friend, and then right afterwards, somebody else we don't know pulled up past our car and pulled off the side of the road, and they got out and they were watching it.
		Right.
		And so I wasn't the only one.
		And it was 1 o'clock in the morning.
		There's hardly anybody on the freeway in the first place.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		To whom have you reported this?
unidentified		Just my immediate friends and family.
unidentified		And they all believe me, you know, because I don't walk around telling crazy stories.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I believe you.
		I'm just suggesting that you should pursue this now and report it.
		Okay, there are any number of reporting agencies you can go to.
unidentified		Well, I have a theory, and basically, when we were watching this thing, it looked like it was searching for something in that field.
		It was flying very, very low and slow.
		And at one point, it looked like about a half a mile out, it landed.
		About 15 seconds later, it took off almost straight up.
		Made absolutely no sound.
		Now, I used to be an airplane mechanic.
		I know the sound of props.
		I know the sound of helicopter blades.
		I know the sound of the quiet military helicopters.
		I know the sound of engines.
		There was nothing.
		I mean, nothing.
		And I was close.
		It's into the point where I would have heard this thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I had the same experience, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Came straight over my head.
unidentified		And it was the weirdest thing.
		And at which point, it was searching this.
		We watched it for a good 10 minutes.
		And then it took, after it went straight up, it flew and it was moving pretty quick and then stopped.
		Started heading back towards right at my van.
		At which point my friend and we were just standing there looking at me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Maybe at that point it had noticed you were there as witnesses.
unidentified		Well, I was jumping up and down waving at it, at which point it stopped again.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
unidentified		Turned around and went the other direction.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I see.
unidentified		I know it sounds nuts.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't know that I would have been waving to it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, do you know what...
unidentified		I was at the point of, you know, I've been an astronomer all my life.
unidentified		I love everything astronomical.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, listen, sir, I've got to take a quick break.
		That's a pretty dog-on-good story.
		Write it to me in the email and get hold of your friend so you can verify.
		And by all means, notify the authorities.
		And there are any number of notification agencies that I've had on the air here.
		of them.
unidentified		We'll be right back.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		See, I almost missed that commercial break entirely.
		I get so involved in what I'm doing.
		This article on Malachi tonight threw me for such a loop that just even talking about it and the rest of it, and you just forget about doing a commercial break.
		That's really bad for commercial radio.
		You have to do your commercial breaks.
		So I damn near blew it.
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		Yeah, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello.
unidentified		Hey, this is Ken.
		Remember Ken and Sherry?
		We were on your show one night about the haunted house.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes, I do, of course.
unidentified		Yes.
		I'm going to get those pictures to you.
		We'd had a guy was checking them out, and apparently they're not so much like ghosts, but demons.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, ghosts are, that's just a word, you know.
unidentified		Right, right, yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's just a word.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We really don't know what these things are.
unidentified		But anyhow.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, why do you say demons?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, what is it about the photographs that would say more demon?
unidentified		The teeth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Did you say teeth?
		Yeah.
		Give me a mental picture.
		What do you mean the teeth?
		What do they look like?
unidentified		Well, there's like this face that's it's got like it's grimacing its teeth at you in the first picture that I took, and then in the second one.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, see, now I really want these pictures.
unidentified		Yeah, it's the mouth is open, and you can see like this whole row of teeth down.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, sold.
		Sold.
		Sold, sold.
		Send me the photographs.
unidentified		Yes, I'm going to get those to you.
		But one of the reasons I was calling was I wanted to hear more about that soundtrack that you played the other night about those guys that had drilled the hole to Siberia.
		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's not much more to say or tell.
		I mean, you know, what can I tell you?
		They drilled the hole.
		They lowered the mics.
		It was a Reuters News mainstream story.
		And then I got the file, and you heard me play it.
		What more is there to say?
		I really wish I could bring a guest on and talk about this.
		And if there's anybody who knows about this, I will sure have them on.
		How's that?
unidentified		That would be good.
unidentified		I'd love to hear that again.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you want to hear it again?
		Well, we'll get around to it, I'm sure.
		The Rocket Man is coming up.
		This guy's going to launch himself 30 miles straight up.
unidentified		You're listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
		Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from March 27, 2002.
		But he left me much too soon, his ladybird.
		He left his ladybird.
		Ladybird, come on down.
		I'm here waiting on the ground.
		Ladybird, I'll treat you good.
		Oh, Lady Bird, I wish you would, you lady bird.
		Would you like to buy my beautiful mood?
		Would you like to ride my beautiful moon?
		We would float among the stars together, you and I. So we can fly.
		Up, up and away my beautiful moon, my beautiful moon.
		The world's a nicer place in my beautiful moon.
		And where's a nicer place in my beautiful moon?
		We've been singing a song until the long silver sky.
		For we can fly.
		Up, up and away my beautiful moon, my beautiful moon.
		Suspended up to the twilight canopy.
		We'll say survive for the star to glow our eyes.
		We'll find some change in places of love Remier Radio Networks presents Artwell Summer in Time.
		The night's program originally aired March 27, 2002.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Here he comes.
		What this man is about to do is going to blow your mind.
		We've got the photographs to back it up, too.
		We call him Rocket Guy, aka Brian Walker.
		And he is going to launch himself 30 miles straight up in a rocket of his own construction.
		He calls the Notion Project Rush, R-U-S-H, an acronym for a rapid-up superhigh.
		That's what I mean.
		Rapid up super high.
		There are no plans for orbit.
		Just to set the altitude record for a private citizen, Walker is an inventor whose successful toy designs include the Air Bazooka, the Celestial Seeker, the Alien Orbiter.
		Long before Project Rush, Rocket Guy was developing ideas and inventions, both practical and amazing.
		Now, we had Rocket Guy on one time previously.
		And he indicated that he had plans to launch in the spring.
		Probably about now, actually.
		So that's why we're having him back right now.
		I said I would go up and I would watch the launch and attend the launch.
		And I am absolutely going to do that.
		I know a lot of you will not have heard the first program, so we'll sort of fill you in.
		We've got these wonderful new photographs on the website tonight of the rocket nozzle and various parts of the engine.
		And obviously, he's made a stupendous amount of progress.
		Just a stupendous amount of progress in what he's done.
		And so all of this is well documented on the website.
		This man is going to launch himself.
		it's an incredible story and it's coming right up All right, here is Brian Walker, aka Rocket Guy.
		Brian, welcome back to the program.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Thanks, Ark.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Nice to be here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It was, how long ago did we do the interview?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Last May, so just under a year ago.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Just under a year.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And if I recall, if I recall correctly, you were planning on launching in the spring, I think it was May.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I was hoping to launch this May.
		And just as a quick update, I'm not going to make that launch with the full-size rocket.
		There's been a lot of things that's been going on.
		This project has gotten increasingly more complex as time goes on.
		And I actually had never really established a launch date.
		It was more than a million.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It was kind of maybe May, I remember that.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and it was more than anything else driven by the fact that ever since I went public with this just about two years ago, the amount of interest in media has just been so overwhelming that not only has that taken a lot of time, but a lot of there have been literally tens of thousands of people that have inquired about wanting to come see the launch.
		And so I've tried to have a date up that would kind of appease that.
		And it's just this is not the kind of project I can work around to get.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Look, even NASA has lots of delays.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and this is about as one-man a project as you can get.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's right.
		And if there's any concern and that's causing a delay, why, hey, I wouldn't hesitate for one second.
		Put it off again and again and again, Brian.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So, you know, I mean, it's your butt.
		That's right.
		Now, some people obviously will not have heard the first program that we did together.
		So we need to do a brief recap.
		What exactly are your plans?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, just a real quick summary of what's going on.
		You know, when I was six years old, that's my first earliest memories of watching the space program.
		I'm 45 now, and that was at the very beginning.
		And like a lot of kids in that day, I wanted to be an astronaut.
		But by the time I was about nine, I'd kind of concluded I just wasn't cut out for the military career slash academic side.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You didn't have all the right stuff.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I didn't have all the right stuff.
		I mean, looking back at those, you know, the original Mercury 7 and what was required, I just, some kind of gut instinct told me I was not going to get into space that way.
		And so I had basically a childhood dream that I'd someday grow up and build my own rocket.
		And that kind of was always in the back of my mind, although I think for most of my life it never seemed a reality I would approach.
		About 10 years ago, I began to start experiencing success as an inventor.
		And this dream kind of re-emerged, and since it had never been done yet, I started looking into what the possibilities were, and would it really be possible to do this?
		And I've set a goal of attempting to make a flight straight up.
		It's not an orbital flight.
		I'm not going to reach orbital altitude or orbital velocity.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but 30 miles, you're going up 30 miles, right?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, 30 miles.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's really up.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		It's way up.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Last April I flew in a MiG-25 in Moscow, and that was at 80,000 feet, which is about half that high, and that's high.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, well, so you must have made a fair amount of money with your inventions to be able to go flying about MiGs in Russia and to be undertaking the kind of project you're undertaking here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would that be fair to say?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's fair to say.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Your inventions were good.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I've got a number of toys that are doing very well.
		One in particular that's become a big, big hit at the Disney parks and stuff.
		That's been just an amazing success in that product.
		And, of course, I am basically trying to fulfill a dream.
		And one of the biggest benefits, if not the biggest benefit, of the immediate attention I've had has been, you know, self-motivation on a project like this can be extremely difficult because there's times when I see this project in its whole entirety and I just kind of shake my head like, what am I doing?
		This is just too big.
		But the amount of emails I've had from people and the support and the interest that this has gained has done a whole lot to help get over those hurdles.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know there's a chance you're going to kill yourself, right?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'll tell you, I won't launch in this thing if I have a feeling that I will not at least escape, you know, my number one mission here is survivability, and number two is success.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I understand.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But even with all the, you know, precautions that NASA takes, I mean, people die.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's true.
		And what I've done, of course, is one of the things, one of the reasons I've had some delays is, number one, I've decided last summer, late summer, first thing that happened is I ran out of room and I had to put up another building.
		I just didn't have the interior space anymore.
		My shop is where I build all the components.
		And that means a lot of fiberglass work and messy dust and constantly building pieces.
		I needed a place to actually assemble it.
		So I put up a 45-foot diameter geodesic dome, and that serves as the assembly building.
		And it's 27 feet at the highest point in sight, so I can actually work on the rocket standing vertically.
		And that project, of course, I started, believe it or not, that building began to go up on September 11th.
		September 11th was the day that the work crew came up to put the kit up.
		And, you know, like everyone else, I went through several months of just, you know, kind of this bleak not knowing what.
		You know, I was spending so much time and money on this project.
		And, you know, the whole situation in the world was such that there were times when I was ready to give up on it, just not knowing.
		And the dome took six months to get to the point where now it's ready to be used.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, before we proceed, let me ask you, what would you say now is your projected date for launch?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, what I've done is I've gone, kind of backed up a bit, and I've been working on a rocket that's one half the size, carries about 1 20th the fuel load, and the rocket itself is one half size, and I've basically wanted to test the features that I've planning to use on the full-size rocket.
		This test rocket is designed to go to about 15,000 feet, and it's on a mobile launcher.
		It's a 16-foot trailer, and it uses an air catapult to actually initiate the launch.
		It'll accelerate the rocket to 30 miles an hour in 8 feet, and that gives me immediate stability.
		I'm going to be doing test launches on that late spring, early summer, and my goal is to do three test launches on it empty, and then ride it up the fourth time to an altitude of 15,000 feet, and then I'll skydive from it.
		It's designed that I won't come down in the rocket, I'll come out of the rocket.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And skydive back to Earth?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Right.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		One of the things.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wait a minute.
		How high again?
		15,000 feet.
		15,000 feet.
		And from there, you'll literally sort of jump out.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		The capsule that I'm in, and the pictures of this, or some of the pictures you have on your website show the rocket body of this.
		The capsule is one in which I'm not quite standing, not quite squatting inside.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		There's a full-length door that opens up, and basically the panel pops off.
		The rocket will go up, and then there's a nose cone that comes off, and a 26-foot parachute will come out.
		And then as soon as that rocket begins, as soon as that parachute's come out, the panel pops open, and I'll come out, and I'll just do what would be a normal typical skydive.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, I recommend now to all of my audience who have already not gone to the website, the best way to understand how serious this man is and how far he's gone is to look through the photographs he has provided under a program, tonight's guest info.
		Please go to Brian Walker, click on the new projects, and go through those photographs.
		Then click at the bottom on previous photos, go through the entire, you'll see the entire rocket.
		You will see some absolutely, you'll see the whole rocket compound from the air.
		You'll see the craft, the capsule, you'll see the whole thing.
		Everything is laid out for you, and you will realize just how serious or crazy, depending on your point of view, the man you're listening to right now really is.
		But he certainly is extremely serious.
		All the hardware is here.
		I'm curious, Brian, how much have you spent so far?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I've probably got right now probably around $3,000 to $350,000 in this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's quite a bit.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, a good deal of that has been in the infrastructure because, you know, I had to not just...
		For instance, I built a centrifuge, and I finally got that operational last November, just about time to wrap it up for winter.
		And that's so I can get used to the G-forces.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have you been in your centrifuge?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I've been in it to 3Gs.
		I've had it run empty up to 8.5 Gs.
		I've been in it only to 3 because that's when the weather, by the time it was ready to start testing, the weather turned and it was just time to wrap it up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How would you term going into the centrifuge at, say, 3 Gs?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Does it begin to get uncomfortable?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		3 Gs consistently, you know, the thing about centrifuge as opposed to being in an aerobatic aircraft or even on carnival rides, the G's forces are consistent in one direction, so you're not feeling the nausea aspect of the vertigo from having your equilibrium slammed left and right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, but still you weigh.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		You feel three times your weight, your chest gets heavy.
		Now, in Russia, I've been up to, in the Russian centrifuge, I went up to 8 Gs, and at that point, you have to actually work very hard to keep your throat open and your chest cavity open, because if you lose that and they flatten out from the forces, you don't really have any muscles, for instance, to open your throat back up, and they have to immediately stop it.
		But 8 Gs is you're fighting to just kind of maintain at that point.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And what kind of G-forces are you going to pull in the launch?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Probably around 6 Gs.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Around 6, for what period?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, it'll be immediately at the launch.
		There's a considerable slam because of the air catapult that launches it.
		And then it'll moderate a little bit.
		And then for 90 seconds, on the full-size rocket, the motor runs for 90 seconds, and there'll be a consistent six to as many as high as 8 Gs.
		And I know I can take that because in Russia, when I did the 6 Gs the first time I went, when I went back last year, they took me to 8.
		And the doctor in charge of the centrifuge program said that had I been training for a Soyuz launch, he would have okayed me on the centrifuge yesterday.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Which was very neat.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How much does it...
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		MiG-25.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What does it cost to take a ride to MiG-25?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		That was about $11,000.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		About $11,000.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You've now taken two?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		No, I've only done the MiG once.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I went over in June of 2000, the first time to Russia, and I went with an expedition tour company that puts together exotic vacations and did a week cosmonaut training, a week-long, not week, a week-long cosmonaut training thing at the Star City, and they took you into Centrifuge, and we went up into zero-gravity parabolic flights.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Did you happen to tell them while you were over there what your plans were?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah, oh, yeah.
		They were, you know, of course, the translator, they first looked at me and scratched their head and couldn't figure it out.
		But when they started seeing the pictures of what I was doing, they were very enthusiastic, very excited about it.
		In fact, one of the really neat things was the fact that for most of these people that I met there, they'd never really had any contact with someone from our system, our capitalist democratic society.
		And for them to see one person approaching what is their pride, a one-man space program, was very, you know, it was mind-blowing to them that just because I come from a country that gives individuals the right to do whatever they want to do, basically.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's another subject we're going to cover.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it was an exciting time, and I've been back four times now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So they didn't laugh real hard, or at least not in your view.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		No, no, not at all.
		In fact, you know, when I was out, I went to one air base when I was there last April, I not only did the MiG-25, but I went and did a little L-39, which is a trainer jet.
		And when the commander of the base saw the article, they gave me one of their club patches and put my thing up on the wall, and they were very, very, you know, very excited.
		I didn't get any kind of ridicule at all.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I would like to come up even to see your bailout at 15,000.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		That's going to be a very significant event in and of itself, just because no one's ever launched themselves in a private rocket.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I mean, as far as it's either been in a Russian or American spacecraft, any human being has ever gone up in a rocket, whether it's 500 feet or 5,000 feet or 100 miles.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are there any laws against your doing this?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, really the only thing is that depending on where I launch from, I will need to get a waiver from the FAA to utilize that airspace.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		And that makes absolute sense.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's all?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, in other words, you obviously issue a warning that aircraft shouldn't be in the area when you do what you're about to do, right?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		We're right.
		It's not me issuing a warning.
		go to them, it's like, for instance, there's a Tripoli is a nationwide monologue organization that has chapters all over the U.S. And when they're going to do one of their high-altitude launches...
		Well, they don't only notify them.
		They actually have to apply for a permit, and the FAA will grant them a waiver.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I see, but that's as serious as it gets.
		And they do routinely grant those waivers for rocket enthusiasts, right?
		Sure, sure.
		And those kind of rocket enthusiasts have to be licensed.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, they have to be members of a group and stuff.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I'm going to be basically just going for a simple waiver that says, look, you know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, they do have to be licensed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They go through a testing procedure, I believe, don't they?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, it depends on what class of.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But when you really get up there to where you're going to put some way up there, then you are required to get some kind of license, I think.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		Well, yes, you know what?
		I'll tell you what.
		I look at this project, and I haven't got to that crossroad yet of having to deal with it.
		There's so much involved in this project right now that's not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I do think that's true, though.
		I have a number of model rocketry magazines, you know, and they talk about, in fact, they won't even sell rockets to people who have not been licensed at a certain class or something or another.
		You know, it's kind of interesting.
		I looked into it because I wanted a rocket.
		I want a rocket for my front lawn.
		I was going to put a rocket on my front lawn.
		I thought that it would send an interesting message to the community and my neighbors just to sort of have that rocket out there, never necessarily to launch it, but I mean, it would be very cool on the front lawn.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, and I can understand.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I mean, the whole point is that the government's got a very vested interest in making sure that we're not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But listen, hold on.
		We're at the bottom of the arrow.
		Hold it right there.
		You know, I had to do this, right?
		I mean, listen to the words.
unidentified		Zero out, 9 a.m.
unidentified		And I'm going to be high as a kite by then.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We'll be right back.
unidentified		You're listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
		Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from March 27th, 2002.
		It's lonely out in space on such a time.
		timeless flight Ooh And I think it's gonna be long time.
		The dust come brings me round and get to find, I'm not the man they think I am at home.
		Oh no, no, no.
		Mother ain't find a place to raise your kids.
		The fact is cold as hell.
		And there's no one there to raise them If you're dear And all the science I don't understand.
		It's just my job, but they're weak and gonna be alone.
		Yeah.
		You're listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
		Tonight, an on-core presentation of Coast to Coast AM from March 27th, 2002.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Just had to play that, didn't I?
		Right?
		Well, listen.
		Listen to me very closely.
		Before you, just as a result of listening to what we're saying right here, dismiss this out of hand.
		Don't do that.
		Really don't do that.
		You've got to go to my website.
		We have an array of, I think, probably 20 or 30 photographs of the rocket complex, the complex in which all of this is being built, of the parts, of the craft itself, of the escape mechanism, the module, the nozzles.
		There's a lot of new photographs up there.
		This is obviously an extremely serious, real effort.
		So before you dismiss this for one second, you've got to go up there and take a look at the photographs.
		That would be my first suggestion to you.
		The man building all of this, the man who's going to ride atop it, ultimately to 30 miles above Earth, is on the line.
		He's Brian Walker, and he'll be right back.
		Once again, here's Brian Walker.
		Brian, I get questions during the course of the show by computer.
		Charlie in Edmonton, Alberta asks, has the rocket guy ever skydive even once?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
		Oh, yeah.
		I started taking, actually, it's funny, I made my first parachute jump in 1972 when I was 16.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		And that was in the days of old.
		All they had was military surplus equipment.
		And on my fourth static line jump, I climbed out of the airplane and I was ready to go.
		And the instructor grabbed my shoulder and he said, get back in the plane.
		And the static line was actually wrapped around my arm.
		Had I jumped, it probably would have been all over.
		And I couldn't jump.
		I had to get back in the plane.
		He undid it.
		I climbed back out.
		But that was it.
		My mind froze and I couldn't jump.
		And it took me almost 20 years to face that fear and get up there and jump again.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And with that in mind, and what do you have in mind?
		How does all that square?
		I mean.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Basically, facing fear and getting past things.
		Skydiving nowadays has become such a completely different activity than it was 20 years, 30 years ago.
		The equipment is far more sophisticated, three times more reliable than the person jumping it.
		And, you know, it's just like a matter of where you are in your head.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so you're now comfortable anyway.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah, yeah, completely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The craft that you're going to launch, even your test rockets, are they going to be reusable?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that's one of the biggest, with this test rocket, for instance, the biggest challenge I have is making sure that I can land it without destroying it or damaging it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Because I want to be able to do several test launches to make sure that the systems all work.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Because it's worth a lot of money.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, definitely, definitely.
		The way it's set up right now is there is, in fact, the pictures you have up on your site, the very first one shows me holding this big thing above my head.
		That is the actual fuel cell which goes inside of the gray body where the fins are.
		And that has a carbon fiber wound tank that holds 30 gallons of fuel.
		And there are four carbon fiber wounds.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Of what kind of fuel?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		90% pure hydrogen peroxide.
		The way this thing works, basically, is 90% pure peroxide when it reacts with silver is a very violent reaction that produces steam as it expands.
		The Old Bell rocket belt, which you've seen in James Bond and a million different places, that is the same type of fuel and the same type of motor.
		So I've got this fuel tank.
		It's 30-gallon tank.
		It's 10 inches diameter, 8 feet long.
		And then surrounding it, every 90 degrees, there's a 4-inch diameter carbon fiber sleeve, which is 9 feet long.
		And that whole assembly will fit over the pneumatic launcher, which is also seen there on the site.
		There's four big blue tubes.
		And what happens is that at 40 pounds of air pressure, that will deliver 2,000 pounds of lift.
		So the moment the engine is initiated, the compressed air will actually boost the whole rocket into the air, accelerating 30 miles an hour and 8 feet.
		And that gives it its momentum, and it overcomes the fact that it's not sitting still, and it doesn't require the engine to overcome the dead weight.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you're catapulting yourself, really.
unidentified		Right.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		See, if I had my way, I'd launch rockets a little bit differently than the way we've been doing it.
		I would build giant Earth-based catapults that would accelerate the rocket to a very high velocity before requiring a use of its own fuel.
		You know, you take a typical rocket, whether it's a space shuttle or a Saturn or whatever, and you watch those things when they launch, and by the time they're reaching several hundred feet in altitude and at high speeds, they've already used up an enormous amount of fuel.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I've got you.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Which it had to carry in the first place.
		It's like if you had to climb a 10-mile ladder and figured it was going to take you a week to climb that ladder, if you had to carry all your own fuel and water, you'd never even be able to do it.
		If you were being supplied your fuel, your water and your food on your way up the ladder, you'd be much lighter and you'd be able to do it much more efficiently.
		So I'm a big believer that putting things into space should not be done by lighting a fuse and letting it start from scratch at a standstill and having to carry every single bit of its own fuel.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I would think then that the timely ignition of your rocket would be a really critical item.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, you don't want for one second begin falling or tumbling or doing something that's not sound when the engine does ignite.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, exactly.
		And what exactly will happen is it happens kind of simultaneously.
		Fortunately with this type of rocket, the ignition is a result of a chemical reaction.
		And when the valve is opened up, the fuel tank is pressurized and the fuel is forced into the catalyst chamber under pressure.
		There's one basically rotary ball joint basically that opens up and it allows the fuel flow.
		And the Rocket Belt, for instance, the Bell Rocket Belt had thousands and thousands of flights with virtually never any problem because it's such a simple process.
		It's not like trying to mix an oxidizer, liquid oxygen, and kerosene or alcohol and control a combustion and a burn and where if you're off by several percentage points in your mixture, you could have an explosion or a burnout.
		This is opening up a valve and allowing the fuel to flow through.
		So what will happen is basically as soon as that valve opens up and the rocket engine reaches a certain point, that's when the compressed air launcher will release it.
		So it won't be dependent upon one or the other.
		They will operate basically simultaneously.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, well you said now the test rockets you're going to be launching, which include your getting on one of them, is going to be about half scale, right?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		It's about half size.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		It's not a true scaled down version because the full size rocket's designed to carry 9,000 pounds of fuel.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so how are you going to fit into this smaller version?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, the capsule portion on top is 27 inch diameter, 6.5 feet tall, and the idea is that the door on it is virtually full-size as my body.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		And I'll be wearing a complete skydiving rig with a regular parachute, an emergency parachute.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but that's like a what you just described, size-wise, is about a coffin.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't particularly like that.
unidentified		That may not be a good analogy, but it doesn't need to be.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		It's like being in a phone booth.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		It's like being in a phone booth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, we'll use phone booth.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		And the thing is, I'll only be in it for maybe 45 seconds.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		45 adrenaline pumping seconds.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it'll be very, very much adrenaline.
		But I'll tell you quite honestly, I look at this from the means by which I plan on launching it, by giving its momentum.
		I'm also doing two things on this.
		Not only am I using the compressed air catapult to give it its actual momentum, but there's also the fin setup on this is set up to where the stims at launch are extremely large surface area, which means at low airspeed they have very effective because it's comparing holding your hand out the window of a car at 10 miles an hour versus 60 miles an hour.
		And then holding a clipboard, you know, your hand at 10 miles an hour doesn't do much, and at 60 you can clipboard.
		You hold a clipboard out, and at 60 miles an hour, you lose control of it if you turn it.
		So the fins on the rocket, there's four large fins that are there for the full length.
		But when I launch, there's a section that actually doubles the surface of each fin.
		It's like an overlay.
		And so the moment the rocket comes off the launcher at 30 miles an hour, the surface area of the fins are so large that it would actually take some other action to cause the rocket to not go straight.
		Do you see what I'm saying?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I do.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		And as soon as I reach a certain speed point, then there's basically a ripcord style pin that pulls out, and those overlays are shed off the rocket.
		And now I'm not carrying the problem of, of course, the large fin is great at low speed, but when you get to a higher speed, it can induce instability.
		So I'm losing those fins.
		Now, on the full-size rocket, there will actually be three fin sections.
		And when I launch, the fin sections are about, each one's about the size of a sheet of plywood.
		So there's a very large aerodynamic surface.
		And when I reach 100 miles an hour, and then again around 350 miles an hour, these sections come off, which finally trims it down to where the fin size at the, the permanent fin, the small fin, is trimmed for the rest of the flight.
		Because of course, Matt's point on, I'll accelerate, and the atmosphere gets thinner and thinner, of course.
		So there's a kind of a curve where the speed and the density of the atmosphere, and of course then the rocket begins weather veining also, where just the length and the size of the shape of the rocket causes it to want to point straight.
		Now also the main rocket, or the full-size rocket, it has eight 55-pound thrust rocket motors in the nose.
		And what that does, that keeps it pointed straight.
		Remember, I'm not trying to go to any specific location, so guidance on this is not critical.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're just trying to go up.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I just want it to stay going straight.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		That's the secret here, is I just want it to go straight.
unidentified		I don't want to go cartwheeling off.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I've seen a lot of the NASA launched rockets cartwheel off, and many, many, many rockets have cartwheeled off.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so you think this will prevent that eventually?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, the three things, using the guided assisted launch.
		For instance, if you've ever launched a small model rocket like a Lilesties rocket or something, when you don't use the guide rod and you just set it on the ground, it doesn't need, you know, it'll cartwheel everywhere.
		But you put it up that far.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I've launched some number like that.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Very dangerous.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		And then when you put it on that little launch rod, if you give it a controlled distance to accelerate, that makes all the difference.
		It's kind of like the difference between shooting a small pistol with a short barrel and a long rifle.
		The greater distance you have to...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This way you have every possibility of destroying a house several blocks away.
unidentified		Yeah, way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		instead of your own.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		There again, I plan on launching in an area that's so remote that if you figure the highest Where are you going to launch?
		Well, actually, there's a number of areas I've been looking at, but my favorite choice right now at this point, just because of its location and the vast size of it, is the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, where they do the Burning Man, and they do a lot of model rocket launches there also.
		So that's such a vast area that there's places I could launch there.
		And if you figure my highest point, no matter what would occur as far as drift and everything else, I would still not come down outside of a cone.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		That would be in a certain direction.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Or in any direction I might go, I'm going to still come down within the confines of an area.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How much of a crew will you have with you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, recovery, that kind of thing.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		They'll be quite a good size crew.
		I've had so many offers to do this as a live television event and people wanting to do all kinds of...
		Well, that's it.
unidentified		Why not?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I mean, that's going to, I think in many respects, that with the number of people that want to show up to this launch, just trying to organize that kind of event alone is half again as big of a project as this whole thing is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We'll come up there.
		You know, we'll do a broadcast.
		Oh, yeah, we'll do a broadcast.
unidentified		Absolutely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No question about it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And I don't do those things, but I would do that.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, I'd be honored to have you do that.
		But there again, I'd much rather turn over dealing with that aspect of this to someone that wants to cover that end of it.
		As far as a crew, there'll be, you know, I've had so many people volunteer to want to do different things.
		I've had people with experience in telemetry and all different aspects that, because I can't, you know, I'm doing basically the grunt work of building all the components, with the exception, for instance, of my rocket motors.
		I have a guy in Florida that's been building my rocket motors because he's been doing peroxide rocket motors for 30 years and knows what he's doing.
		He knows what he's doing, and I don't have, you know, it doesn't make any sense for me to invest in giant, huge metal A's and stuff for that small portion of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, why reinvent the wheel?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		But I enjoy doing the building, for instance, the fuel tank setup.
		That thing is, that's really, I enjoy doing that.
		It's extremely laborious and time-consuming, and yet there's kind of a Zen thing of getting out there and starting with these raw materials and turning out something.
		And that tank, that tank, I'm getting ready to do tests on it, but I wouldn't be surprised if that thing would be able to take 3,000 to 4,000 pounds of air pressure.
		And it only weighs 10 pounds.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, are you married?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		No, that's an interesting story, though.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I'm going to be soon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you have a fiancé?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I met a woman in Russia.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In Russia?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		In Russia.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Congratulations.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
		She's very wonderful.
		She's my soulmate.
		I mean, I have no doubt that we had spent three months of daily email correspondence.
		And when I went last April to fly the MiG, we had arranged a meeting.
		And from the moment we met, you saw stars.
		Yeah, and she had actually wanted to be a cosmonaut when she was a little girl and always dreamed of it.
		So when she heard what I was doing, you know, she was just...
		No, because once we'd actually met and I went and spent the first time, when I met her last April, I was there for two weeks.
		I flew the MIG, and she has a little boy who's eight, who's just absolutely a wonderful little boy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you're going to be a father, too?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I go.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I'm going from a 46-year-old bachelor to a married parent in one step.
		I'll tell you, it's funny.
		I've never had real strong desires to have a family until the past couple years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, my point when I asked was, and still is, I mean, obviously she is going to be, I guess, supportive of what you're about to do, or does she have questions?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, she's very supportive of it, and yet she has the fear that you might normally expect.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, here she is about to come all the way from Russia.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yep, and just to come over and see me go up in the fireball.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		And I'll tell you, quite honestly, that's been one of the reasons that I have kind of made some changes to this program because before she came along, I was probably prone to be a little bit less.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you were ready to light the match.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I was ready to light the match.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, do you think that having suddenly a wife and a child will cause you to further rethink the risk?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, there again, that's why the test rocket's there.
		And the test rocket has to perform the way I expect it to three times, and then I'll go up in it.
		If I have a feeling that it's not going to go well and I'm not going to survive this thing, I won't go in it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And you're going to have a test amount of Brian Walker weight in the rocket, right?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, there'll be a Brian Walker test dummy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, really?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I figured, well, I better not put an animal in there.
		I'll get PETA after me.
		So I wouldn't impose that on an animal anyway.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Isn't that strange?
		i mean uh...
		if you put an animal in a rocket an organization comes after you right if you as a human get in a rocket Yeah, they're lighting the match.
		Interesting world that we live in.
		It really is.
		So, okay, when might your wife be coming to join you?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I'm hoping to go back over in May.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, in May?
		Oh, so.
		Oh.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		It's coming up.
		It's coming up.
		It's been actually a very interesting turn of events, the way things have all happened, because, you know, like I said, I'm 45 years old, and it was kind of unexpected that I would find love at this point in my life, but that's what it is.
		I don't know what else to say.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hey, it strikes.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		It strikes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's life.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		She's just such a lovely woman.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I just can't even begin to say it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is she about your age?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		No, no, she's quite a bit younger.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		She'll be 29 in April.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		29?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, I want to have a child of my own, and she wants to have another one, so it was imperative to find someone younger.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, boy, you have had a rich, full life here of late, haven't you?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's been interesting.
		I mean, you know, I've been an inventor all my life, and it's been tough because, you know, I'm a dreamer.
		I dream.
		I see things.
		I see things before I do them.
		And then I've got to come.
		It's kind of like if you go ahead in a time machine and see something, then you've got to come back and accomplish it.
		You know what I mean?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Philip in Hattiesburg, I guess, Pennsylvania, asks, Art, ask him why is he doing this?
		And if it does work, how far will he go?
		Well, we've covered that.
		What will he do next?
		And has he ever had treatment for this disorder?
		You can hold your answer until after the break.
		We're at the top of the hour.
		Don't dismiss this.
		Not for one second.
		You go look at the photos.
		Before you even call me tonight, you look at those photos.
		I'm Art Bell.
		This is Coast to Coast AM.
unidentified		You're listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
		Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from March 27th, 2002.
		God keeps his eye on the star.
		And He used to lean upon me as I pledged allegiance to the wall.
		Lord, I recall you today.
		Thank you.
		You're listening to Art Bell, Summer in Time.
		Tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from March 27, 2002.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Ryan Walker is my guest called the Rocket Guy.
		Tonight's qualification to be a caller is that you have seen the photographs on the website.
		Go to my website, look at the photographs because otherwise you just wouldn't believe, you couldn't believe that he's really about to do what he's about to do.
		You just wouldn't believe it.
		So that's a qualification.
		Go up there and take a look at the photographs first.
		The End Once again, here is Brian Walker, aka rocket guy.
		Brian, let's pick up where we left off.
		Assuming that, I mean, what if all this works?
		If your test rockets go fine, your first personal flight goes fine, even the big flight goes fine, would there be anything else where would you then say, look, I have achieved my goal, I've made history, so I quit?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I've given a lot of thought to that, and I think that there's a very good chance that that's probably where I'd be at.
		I'm already getting really tired because I've been at this for so long.
		And, you know, getting back to a couple of the questions that I asked, why am I doing this?
		And, you know, I don't think I can sit and give you an absolute definitive, exact answer other than the fact that there's a drive to do this that kind of propels me on.
		Why?
		Well, I guess maybe it's a combination of the fact that I've always been totally intrigued by space, and the idea of being able to travel in space has just been one of those things that I've always wished I could do.
		Secondly is the idea of approaching a project of this size and actually carrying through and doing it, kind of like completing a life doctorate.
unidentified		This is kind of the thing that just works.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		And then the third thing, if I might just add this also, in the past 22 months, I've had about 11 million hits on my website and probably about close to 10,000 emails.
		And the kind of emails I get from people, the majority of them are so incredible.
		The amount of support and people telling me how the fact that I'm approaching this dream has given them the motivation to go after their dream.
		And I'm beginning to see that there's something much bigger maybe here that I never really expected.
		So there's a number of reasons that are driving me to do this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that also is pressure, though.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		It is pressure.
		It's a lot of pressure.
		And that's one of the reasons that I was really happy to be able to get back on your show is because I know that for every maybe two or three hundred emails I get that are great, positive, and wonderful, I'll get one, you know, that's I've had some kind of I've had some pretty ugly emails from people.
		Again, fortunately, they're ugly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What kind of ugly?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I mean, do they call you a lunatic or you know, well, worse than that.
		I mean, I had some people that are just, I think they're just angry because for some reason, I don't know.
		Like I said, fortunately, they're very, very few and far between.
		I get some people that originally would say, well, you know, you're nuts or whatever.
		And I can deal with that because.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But you said anger.
		That's interesting.
		There's always angry results.
		I did a program last night and I knew it was coming.
		And I just knew it was coming.
		The kind of subject material we dealt with last night.
		There's reams of angry email.
		And so I'm used to that.
		Anybody in my position is.
		But what kind of angry?
		I mean, what appeared to motivate the anger in those few that you did get?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I don't, you know, maybe just disturbed people.
		I mean, I've had some from people just like, you know, you're going to die, you're going to burn, I'm going to laugh, da-da-da-da.
		You know, just some disturbed stuff.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that's kind.
		Yeah.
		I hope this is not a rude question, but you have had, at some point in your life, a competent psychiatric exam.
		So, I mean, you are balanced, more or less, right?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'll tell you, I've always considered that what separates a sane person from an insane person is the sane person stops on occasion to question their sanity.
		Fortunately, I do that a lot.
		You know, one of the questions that last call or the last one you asked about my disorder, I'm like, well, which disorder?
		Because, like, I'm highly dyslexic.
unidentified		I've always been dyslexic.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		One of the reasons I was a horrible student when I got out of high school, that was it for me as far as formal education.
		You have dyslexia.
		Oh, yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Isn't that bad in the rocket business?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I don't, personally, I've never really thought of dyslexia as a disorder.
		I see it as something that appears as a disorder in a world where things are used to a certain way.
		But if you go back historically, people that have always been considered brilliant or have done big things in life and stuff, I think you find that most of them would consider.
		Well, no, be considered dyslexic, though.
		I see things forward to backward.
		And as an inventor, it's very beneficial to be able to see a project from the finished state and kind of, in my own mind, back-engineer it.
		It does cause problems in other areas, though.
		I went up flying yesterday to get pictures of the property to put in the website.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, those aerial shots we had.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You just got those, huh?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I just took those yesterday.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, right.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, the newest ones.
		The newest ones that show the completed dome.
		Yes.
		And so I don't have a license.
		I've flown with friends and family members all my life.
		But a buddy of mine called him up and we went and got an airplane.
		And I still get up there and every so often is like, I'll push something when I should pull something.
		so deflect the uh...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		well that's what i was saying though in the rocket business uh...
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		that pushing or pulling at the right moment would be In other words, it's dyslexia-friendly.
		It's nothing that's too it's you know, like I said, I don't have problems driving or anything like that.
		The point is, it's like it's just there in this part of me, and it makes certain things.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Maybe you just need little signs.
		If necessary, pull this.
		Damn it, Brian, don't push it.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, push, don't pull.
		That's right.
		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, Raven in Modesto says, okay, then, Art, should we call your guest Brian Sky Walker?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		You know, but it's interesting.
		I got an email from Brian Walker in Scotland today.
		Did you really?
		Yeah, I've had emails from all over the world.
		I've done 334 radio interviews in the past 22 months.
		I mean, all over in 58 TV shows.
		And, you know, the thing is here, I never, in my wildest dreams, expected two years ago when I did my first story that this thing was going to continue.
		I mean, I thought after the launch, of course, there'd be tons of interest in this, but it's just been this juggernaut, and there's been times when I just wanted to completely stop anything.
		But really, the thing that's kept me doing interviews and stuff is the fact that there's times really when it's extremely difficult to motivate myself to go down to the shop and work on this because at times the project just seems too big.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, have you had volunteers?
		And have you accepted volunteers?
		In the actual work part of this, I would think a number of people would volunteer, and out of that number, a few would be good souls who really would work.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I've had lots and lots of people that have offered to volunteer.
		They want to come work here and work with me and stuff.
		The problem is I really enjoy my solitude and just doing things on my own.
		I have one fellow here locally, a young guy, Dave.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, of course, if something goes wrong, you only have yourself.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's not only that, but it's just like, for instance...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or actually your new Russian wife would only have...
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Having too many people around would be difficult just because it would upset the flow of things.
		And trying to relay what I want done to someone else and not being concerned about wanting to look over their shoulders and stuff like that.
		It's a very difficult thing to give up.
		This one guy that does come work, he comes a couple days a week and helps.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's kind of like packing your own parachute, right?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes.
		I mean, there's a lot of things that I just, this has been my baby and my project forever, and I want to do as much of it as I can.
		And there may become a point in time where I decide to bring in some more help, you know, as I've already done in certain parts like the rocket motors and things like that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, going back to the full-scale model, if you're up 30 miles, essentially there's no air, right?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		There's no air.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In fact, where does the well, good, easily breathable air is about 13,005, somewhere in there.
unidentified		Feet.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Beyond that, you better have an oxygen mask.
		It is recommended.
		And then where does the air really begin to disappear?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, for instance, if you're flying an airplane, you need supplemental oxygen.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I think it's over 12,000 or 12,500 feet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, somewhere in there.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		If you go skydiving, for instance, you can go up to that altitude and jump.
		Now, if you start getting the higher you go above that, of course, then you begin suffering hypoxia and you start losing your ability to comprehend what's going on.
		And of course, flying an airplane or anything like that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But again, you're going 30 miles.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		what i'm asking is where i see oxygen really start well i'm going to be a It'll be pressurized to 6 psi.
		And then also, one of the nice things here is that I managed to talk the Russian Space Agency into selling me a spacesuit.
		And I have the same exact space suit.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You have a spacesuit?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I have my own spacesuit.
unidentified		Russian spacesuit.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		In fact, can I put my website?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, of course, yes.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		RocketGuide.com.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		There's pictures of my spacesuit.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		RocketGuy.com.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		RocketGuide.com.
		And yeah, I got a Russian spacesuit, which is the same ones that they wear when they go up in space.
		And it's not an EVA.
		There's basically two different types of spacesuits.
		You have your emergency spacesuit and you have an EVA suit.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And this is an emergency suit?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		This is an emergency suit.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		It's designed to provide an atmosphere around your body in the event of a catastrophic cabin pressure loss.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		For how long?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, that depends on how the spacesuit itself is just a containment vessel.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, once again, so everybody understands.
		So that people understand.
		For example, the highest mountain in the world is what, 29,000 and change.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And at that point, they call it the death zone from about 207, 2025 to 29.
		Somewhere in there is a death zone.
		And people die at that altitude quite readily.
		And so that's only miles, 5,280 feet.
		So you're going to be out of air real quick.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I'll be out of air very quickly.
		But there again, like, for instance, when I was in the MiG, at that altitude, of course, if there was a castro, the cabin loss without the air, without the air mask, the oxygen mask and pressure suit, you'd be in serious trouble there.
		But that's why I have the spacesuit.
		Now, the length of time, of course, that I could survive in the spacesuit depends on the life support system it's connected to.
		Since this flight will only be about in duration 15 to 20 minutes long, the amount of air supply and the life support system that the spacesuit's hook to has to only be a very short duration.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Tell me something.
		What will the view be like at 30 miles?
		You must know what it'll look like, roughly.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'll tell you, from looking at it from the MiG, and there's pictures on my website that I took from the MiG at 80,000 feet, you know, at that altitude, you could see a very well-defined curvature of the Earth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Oh, sure.
		And looking at the edge of the Earth, you'd see the thin blue atmosphere, and it would go pitch dark.
		So that is going to be exacerbated considerably.
		It'll be quite a bit more defined at 30 miles up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Quite a bit is an understatement, I think.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, correct.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Big, big understatement.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		At 30 miles, you'll be looking down on all the atmosphere.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Right.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		99.99% of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Of the atmosphere.
		Right.
		At 30 miles at your highest point, where will you be with respect to gravity?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, this is an interesting about gravity, that gravity remains constant for a very long ways in space.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		The reason that the people are weightless, experience weightlessness, for instance, in the space show at the International Space Station, is because the spacecraft is orbiting the Earth at 17,500 miles an hour, and the centrifugal force at that speed is exactly cancels out the pull of gravity.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But if you were to stop the space shuttle in its present orbit and just brought it to zero miles per hour.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		everyone's fall down have they have of a percentage gravity left the nurse but it would be normal it would be it would be marginal wouldn't be like his Yeah, because that's why, because if you think about it, they're traveling 17,500 miles an hour.
		you consider that speed picture the same thing if you spin a bucket of water around over your head.
		That water is glued to the inside surface.
		When you begin to slow that bucket down as you spin it, the water gets swashy.
		And if you slow slow enough, it will fall down on top of you.
		So if you consider that the space shuttle is traveling at such an incredible speed, the centrifugal forces in there, if that was not being counteracted by the pull of gravity, would have them glued to the opposite side of the space shuttle.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So that's kind of a, you know, there's a kind of a So then really, in your flight, even though it's 30 miles up, you will not experience weightlessness at all.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In fact, you'll have almost one G at that altitude?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, no, what I'm basically told, actually, is that as long as when I'm accelerating, I will be experiencing G forces.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Of course, yes.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Once the engine shuts off, then I will go into basically a weightless period.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, there will be a weightless period?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, for the period of time that I am actually in free flight, as I stop accelerating and coasting.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no kidding.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, okay, for about how long, do they ask me?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, that depends on the point, just because, for instance, the rocket's going to consume 90 pounds of fuel per second.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		And so as it is going to be putting out 12,000 pounds of thrust.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And at the fastest, how fast will you be going?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		It could reach speeds of between Mach 3 and Mach 4.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Mach 3.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		By the time it runs out of fuel, in a 90-second time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you are going to break the sound barrier some number of times.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, it'll break the sound barrier very quickly within the first probably 20 seconds of launch, it will have already broken the sound barrier.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, I've broken the sound barrier.
		I've been in a jet, broken a sound barrier.
		The sound barrier twice, a Mach 2 and better.
		How would you describe the feeling that you have when you break the sound barrier?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, when I broke the sound barrier in the MiG, I didn't even know it.
		The only way I could tell was looking at the instruments, all the instruments that depend upon airflow, you know, vertical or the air speed indicator and stuff.
		As just as you reach that point, they flutter.
		And other than that, I didn't have any feeling that I was breaking a sound barrier.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That sounds very interesting because I went to Paris on the Concorde, and of course, it's a very smooth flight, probably unlike the MiG.
		But in the Concorde, when we hit Mach 1, you could kind of feel a sort of a slight backward and then a slight forward motion.
		It was very subtle, but you could sort of feel a slight backward and then a forward motion.
		It was really interesting.
		Same deal at Mach 2.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm very certain that different aircraft obviously have different characteristics in that respect.
		Now, the MiG, of course, the sheer power of that thing is just mind-boggling.
		The engine, there's two engines in this thing, and the exhausts on those engines are like four and a half feet in diameter.
		And I mean, it's just amazingly powerful thing.
		And actually, on the way down, when we got down to Mach 1.5 at 60,000 feet, he let me take the stick.
		And I got to see it.
		I did barrel roll left and a barrel roll right going Mach 1.5.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		That was the coolest thing I've done to date.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Gee, was that included in the package?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
		I mean, basically, the guy that my pilot, a guy named Alexander Gurnov, who's a very well-renowned Russian aviator and just a fantastic flyer, he basically, he was the flight instructor.
		He flew the airplane, and we went up, and he was in the back, I was in the front.
		The MiG-25, the normal MiG-25 is a single-seater.
		The one I was in was a trainer that has an extended nose.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, hold that thought.
		We'll be right back.
		Truly, only in America.
		Only in America.
unidentified		Can a guy from anywhere launch himself.
		You're listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
		Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from March 27th, 2002.
		I'll celebrate and make me grow to be present only in America.
		A lucky girl like you, or a poor boy like me in America.
		And a kid who's watching a car, take a giant step and reach right on them.
		And I'll see you next time.
		I'll see you next time.
		New Year Radio Network presents Art Bell somewhere in time.
		The night's program originally aired March 27, 2002.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm not sure Ben Miche Me was a good choice of bumper music either, but.
		Um, oh well, uh, Brian Walker, aka Rocket Guy, is my guest.
		And again, I'm gonna say this again.
		If you wanna call and talk to Brian this morning, it'll it'll uh first require that you go to my website and look at the photographs.
		I really mean that.
		Uh otherwise you cannot possibly imagine how serious he really is.
		Of all the joking around that we might be doing about this.
		This guy is real serious.
		He's got what amounts to a factory.
		He's built most of what he's going to use.
		It's real serious stuff, and it's all well documented.
		20, 30 at least photographs up there on the website.
		So go see those so that you can comment intelligently.
		Otherwise, you just wouldn't leave it.
		I mean, you couldn't leave it in order to properly comment or ask a question.
		so get to a computer and then take a look see for when we open lines which will be shortly Once again, Brian Skywalker.
		Brian, you know, I really, only in America was a much more inspiring song for what you're doing than Ben Me Shape Me.
		But that brought a question to mind, and that is the following.
		When we originally talked about all of this, you were going to launch the big one first.
		I mean, you were just going to do a one-time, I'm going up 30 miles, baby.
		And, you know, the consideration of, well, can I get permission?
		Do I have to get permission?
		Do I have to talk to the military?
		Do I have to do this, do that?
		NASA, whatever.
		Will somebody come and try to stop me and all the rest of it?
		Then, you know, I understand the position you were taking was, hey, you know, if I don't have all the permissions to hell with them, I'll do it and face consequences when I get back.
		You know, like guys who climb buildings and stuff like that.
		And I understand that.
		But now that you're planning three test launches of significant rockets, it's kind of a different kettle of tea now, isn't it?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes, it is.
		And the thing is, it's like I don't want to be put in the category of someone that is going out and doing things that defies laws and stuff like that.
		This isn't about that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I know, but I mean, now you might be forced.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, you might be confronted when you launch your first rocket and then prevented from doing it again or find yourself in violation of something or another.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'll tell you, one of the things I'm going to do is face those things.
		I'm going to go out and get permission to do it.
		I mean, what it really boils down to it, there's specific reasons why there's laws, obviously, governing this type of activity, and mostly it's so that Other people, innocent bystanders, are not put in harm's way, which is nothing that I want to do.
		But the fact of the matter is, I can get in my automobile and become a much greater menace to a much larger number of people than the rocket possibly could be.
		So there again, if I had started at the very beginning of this project, if I had sat down and said, okay, before I begin anything, I'm going to go out and find out what legal hurdles I need to clear, it's a very good chance I never would have even started the project.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, I agree with you.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I'm so disheartened.
		And so, you know, I've always had kind of a little tongue-in-cheek saying it's a free planet.
		If I want to leave it, who has the right to stop me?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, maybe the CIA, the FBI, NASA.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		NASA itself does not have any governing authority over me.
unidentified		The FAA is the agency.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Local police, you know, all kinds of agencies.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		But, you know, that's another thing.
		And I could understand if I all of a sudden just came out of nowhere and, you know, two days before my launch was going to do something like this.
		But that's one of the reasons I'm being so open and upfront about this is because I'm not out to pose a threat.
		You know, I mean, of course, obviously, ever since September 11th, there's been some people saying, you know, well, do you think people are going to look at this as something that might be a threat or something?
		And no, that's one of the reasons I'm not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, probably not.
		I mean, all they have to do is look into your history.
		I mean, you've been engaged in this now long, long, long before September 11th was a glimmer in Osama bin Laden's eye.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		And the place where I plan on launching where that may end up eventually being issued.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now that there are laws against killing yourself.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Pardon me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There are laws against killing yourself.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's true.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		But no, I live in Oregon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But you're not going to be launching in Oregon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're going to be launching here in my state.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, let's see, there's some jurisdictional borders to worry about.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		But if I can get a doctor to sign off the nine terminal, then I could just say, well, this is my accepted means.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, all right, then, don't you think that, let's say, when you get your rocket done and you put it on some kind of trailer and haul it down to Nevada, now that's going to provoke right away there some interest as people see this giant rocket passing them on the highway or as they pass it, more likely, I suppose.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But to be hauling a rocket down the road, how are you going to do that?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, right now, for instance, my test rocket is on a 16-foot trailer.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		And it looks, I mean, you know, it looks, it has a very, I don't want to use the word menacing, but I mean, it's a big, long, gray rock.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, see, that's my point.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, see, people, since 9-11, when they see this rocket going down the road, they're probably going to imagine all kinds of things.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but not when it's being told by a Mercedes SUV.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I mean, that right there kind of sets the pace.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't know about that.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, there, again, that's one of the reasons I've had so much publicity and I've had so much attention with this.
		I'm not real those that's something that I'm not real worried about.
		And of course, when it comes time to launch it in that respect, there'll be quite a bit of hoop-a-law, and it's not going to be just like me cruising down the highway with this rocket.
		There'll be quite an entourage of port vehicles.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I remembered you said you were going to have Hooter's girls.
		That was before the Russian Bride-to-Bridge.
		Oh, by the way, has your Russian Bride-to-B asked you anything about insurance?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		No.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, okay.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		No.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So anyway, so no Hooters Girls now?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They're out?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		No, I probably will forego that.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		You know, I mean, I wanted to have my little cheerleader.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There goes half my reason for coming.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, hey, if you can organize and don't have to come along, I won't come.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Let me put that one.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm just kidding you.
		All right.
		Have you really taken time with your bride to be in?
		You've really sat down and does she speak enough English to, or do you speak enough Russian so that you can have a serious heart-to-heart?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		No, I tried learning Russian, but it's a very difficult language, and at my age, trying to learn a brand new language like that, the amount of time and energy and effort to put into it would be extremely difficult.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, then I think I don't know how you do it then.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So she speaks very little English?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		She started studying English just about one year ago.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Right after we met, she started English, and now she's doing very, very well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So then, I mean, you've got to sit down with her then, and I guess show her a picture of the rocket and point to yourself and go, me.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		No, actually, when we started corresponding, it was through the emails, and she had software to transfer.
		And we actually had, for the first six months, our email communications was our major, obviously just about our only way of communicating.
		It was very easy to understand each other.
		And, of course, the first two times I went there, she could understand almost everything I said if I spoke slowly and if I searched for words and if I used my little electronic translator.
		But she could not formulate thoughts quick enough to respond immediately.
		And it was really kind of neat because every time we'd get together, we'd talk and basically I'd talk.
		I'd get home that night and she would have sat down and responded to me through the email and it was really quite nice.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now you live at the Rocket Ranch.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I live at the Rocket Ranch.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I live at the Rocket Compound.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Rocket Compound.
		All right.
		So since you've got a wife and a child soon to be at the Rocket Compound, somehow I don't picture your Rocket Compound as domestic.
		Well, really domestic.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		It's not, I have to admit, I do not have what would be considered your typical domestic dwelling.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's probably going to have to change to some degree.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, the house, I have a very nice little log house.
		It's a very, very nice, cozy log home.
		And then, of course, I have the two shops and the dome.
		And I'm basically going to turn the home over to her and let her do what she wants here because I've got now my shops and my dome to occupy me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wise choice.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it's about time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What about at 30 miles?
		Now, if you take a 757 or 747 trip to Europe, you get a pretty high.
		And, you know, I'm trying to remember now, but about 38,000, 39,000 feet, they display the temperature for you, and it goes down to like I've seen it at 60 below zero.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah, it gets, you know, and when I was up in the NIG, for instance, it was, you know, it was probably 100 degrees.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, below zero.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, but up at 30 miles, what's the temperature liable to be?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Really, really cold.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, how really cold?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Oh, probably in that minus 100 degree range.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I mean, 100 below zero.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, 100 below zero.
		So the question is, obviously, how are you going to protect yourself from 100 degrees below zero with the wind chill factor?
		My God.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, the capsule itself is a composite structure.
		The capsule is all composite carbon fiber Kevlar epoxy with kind of a ceramic type paint.
		I don't have to worry too much.
		Actually, I really don't have to worry about frictional heating because there again I'm not going to be traveling anywhere near orbital velocity.
		However, the duration of the flight is so short that the cumulative effect of both frictional heating or exterior temperature will not have a long enough time.
		For instance, some of the questions I've had like, you know, am I worried about possibly the parachute freezing into a solid block?
		And it's like, well, no, because first of all, I won't be up long enough in those conditions.
		And then secondly, the heat that comes off the eight little rocket motors in the nose of the capsule every 45 degrees pouring out.
		And they're controlled by a pretty simple gyroscopic system that just...
		And then, of course, there can be a not real, consistently perfect pulse of that rocket motor.
		So I'm going to actually run those rockets the entire duration.
		They'll be running equally.
		And then I will moderate them slightly whenever the rocket begins to tip.
		And the heat coming off those will keep the complete interior of the rocket itself more than warm.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		And of course, my spacesuit also provides me a great deal of protection from the external.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, now here's something else.
		The United States, through NORAD and the Russians and the Chinese and everybody monitors serious rocket launches.
		I mean, we've got satellites, they've got satellites, everybody's got satellites.
		They know when something serious is launching.
		And wouldn't that be another reason why it might be undesirable to have, without notification, something rising off the Nevada desert to the 30-mile?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Oh, well, that's why I'm saying there will be.
		There'll be, I mean, this is going to be, like I said, a televised event.
		It's not going to be a secret.
		It's not going to be a mystery.
		It's not going to just happen.
		This is not going to be like the guy in the lounge chair with the helium balloons in L.A. Air Force.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Actually, that was pretty cool.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Did you hear that tape that I played?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Oh, of the hole in the ground?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no.
		No, no, no, no.
		I had a tape of the lawn chair guy.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Did you hear that?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Now, I'm not sure if I heard the lounge chair guy or the pilot of the airplane that's on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no, no, no, I got that.
		I've got the lounge chair guy.
		I've got the real tape.
		In fact, at my network, you guys, now that I'm thinking about it, would please dig that up.
		I'll play it in the next couple of nights.
		It's unbelievable.
		You can hear him describing what it's like in the lawn chair.
		He's got a radio with him, you know?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Right, right, right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it's unbelievable.
unidentified		See, to me, that to me is so much.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		That would be a lot more dangerous than what I'm doing.
unidentified		See, people get real freaked out about this.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but still, you have a parachute.
		I mean, he was exposed to the elements at 16,000 feet.
		I was drifting in an area where I mean, let's face it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He didn't notify.
		But on the other hand, I mean, who are you going to call and say, look, you know, I'm launching myself in a lawn chair, and nobody would ever take you seriously.
		But you, on the other hand, you had enough free publicity, and what you're doing is obviously very serious.
		And so.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and getting back to your question about whether or not at this altitude and because of the low heat signature and everything else, this would not really be picked up as a threat from any, you know, just like the model rockets people launched, like we were talking about earlier, they have some of those rockets going to hundred thousand-foot distance themselves as well.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		And that there again, if this was something done in the cover of night without any notification or anything, then I'd be absolutely inviting trouble from a variety of areas.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Military, for sure.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		This is something that is, you know, I don't have any desire to be in that category.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have you been contacted by any official agency?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		No.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Even with all the publicity, nobody's come forward.
		That's why I said only in America, you know, that really is true about our country.
		Only in America could you do something like this?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, and that's one of the things I'm out, you know, ever since September 11th, one of the things that has kind of kept me going on this is like, dad government, I'm not going to let them steal my dream.
		I'm not going to let them quench what the American spirit is.
		And there's been too many people that have sent me emails saying, don't, you know, don't throw in the towel.
		Don't throw in the towel.
		This is important.
		This is what people need to see.
		I mean, I literally have had emails that have moved me to tears.
		I had a one-line email that said, dear Rocket Guy, I just wanted to let you know that your project has brought one father and son closer together.
		And I have no idea if that was the father, if that was the son.
		You know, I've had people tell me that they were on the verge of giving up when they'd heard about how many times I've failed.
		Because between the ages of 20 and 35, I went off to do my, I built a two-man submarine in Fiji, and my goal was to put these in resorts where people would rent them and cruise around underwater to see everything.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It was a pretty good idea, actually.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		It was a really neat idea.
		I was just a little before my time and not well-funded enough to make it a real effort.
		But there were six times where I was so, you know, I had to start from scratch.
		I had to move back into my folks' house and start all over again from scratch.
		And the last time, that was 10 years ago.
		I was 35 years old.
		And, you know, when you fail that big and you've got to literally begin all over again, it becomes very disheartening.
		And yet, the kind of response I've had from people that have drawn some inspiration and some strength or whatever from what my experiences have been, it's become a very important key element to this whole thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you're probably going to have your choice of media to be there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, aside from myself, and I've made you promise that, aside from myself, what major TV media, for example, what shows would you like to have come and cover this incredible endeavor?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, I went through this whole thing.
		I've had so much interest.
		I've had documentary filmmakers, people want to do this and that.
		I've talked with a number of major production companies in Hollywood that wanted to acquire the rights to do a television launch.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm thinking like Good Morning America and Today Show and that kind of thing.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I've done those shows already.
unidentified		No, no, no.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I mean...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, yes, yes.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		You know, I could do it either one or two different ways.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		One way is to have an exclusive deal and do a televised network launch coverage.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, for God's sakes, if you do that, have a radio clause in there for me, eh?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, there'll be two different areas there.
		But to tell you the truth, I kind of got to a point where I just started pulling away from making any decisions like that because right now I am totally autonomous.
		This is my project.
		I don't solicit funds from individuals.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but it may be, let's face it, that a major network would offer you big dollars to do it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And after all, dollars are dollars, and development money, that's rocket money.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		That's it.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I just don't want to right now be put under the additional pressure of someone saying, you've got to go.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's more security for the Russian wife.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, but it's just, I enjoy the fact that right now I call the shots in this and no one else has anything over above me.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I am interested in a couple of corporate sponsors.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so in other words, ultimately you will make a deal.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You just don't want to think about it right now.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and I did.
		Last year I went through a whole period where I was in the process of actually negotiating a deal.
		But what it boiled down to, there wasn't enough money up front in it for me to basically sell myself into the bondage of someone else saying, look, we've scheduled this for such and such date.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And in view of what you're doing, actually, upfront money would be very important.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but there again, it's like I'm pretty well funded right now for what I'm doing.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		And if I'm going to put myself in a situation where someone else is going to be trying to push me and get me move faster.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you're a real independent.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Hold on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We're at the top of the hour.
		And when we get back, we will open up the phone lines.
		We will.
		If you have a question for Brian Skywalker Rocket Guy.
		I'm Art Bell.
unidentified		You're listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
		Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from March 27, 2002.
		Time, time, time, the sea has become a me.
		While I look around, where are you?
		Well, the night he's driving on his guilty mind.
		Just far from the borderline.
		When the hitman comes, he knows damn well he has been cheated.
		And he says, now I'm stepping into the twilight zone.
		This is in that house, he is like being called.
		I think I can move at the moon and star.
		Where are you going?
		I'll let a ball, ball.
		You will go, you know.
		When a bullet hits the ball.
		You will go, you know.
		When a bullet hits the ball.
		When a bullet hits the ball.
		We'll be right back.
		You're listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
		Tonight, an ongoing presentation of Coast to Coast AM from March 27th, 2002.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Rocket Guy Brian Walker going to the phones here in just a moment if you'll stay right where you are.
		Back now to the Rocket Guy Brian Walker.
		Brian, you're back on the air again.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This should be an interesting hour with the audience.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So if you don't mind, we'll just sort of jump right into it.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Lots of questions, of course.
		First time caller line, you're on the air with Brian Walker.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hello.
		Hi, Mr. Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, you have noise and crackling on the side.
unidentified		I'm sorry.
		I do have a Sanyo phone.
		I have a five-mile guaranteed radius from the phone.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you must be out about four and a half right now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Anyway, do you have a question?
unidentified		Yes.
		Excuse me.
		I'm a little nervous.
		Hi, Brian.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Hey, how are you doing?
unidentified		You have an excellent guest tonight.
		I enjoy your show very much.
		Yes, thank you.
		This is Mike.
		I'm calling from the Hub of the Universe from Boston.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		And I have to have one comment for Brian.
		If Evil Knievel ever put all of this thought into any of his jumps, much less the rocket launch, he would never have gone through it.
		And I wish you guaranteed success in jumping the bureaucratic hurdle that you're up against.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You've seen the photographs, I take it, of course.
unidentified		I saw some in Maximagazine last year.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There you are.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		Firm's backyard.
		Okay.
		And, you know, balls the size I can't describe, you know, made out of, you know, brass.
		You expect to beat the terminal velocity by re-entering the atmosphere to be able to jump out of a plane at the Earth speed.
		I mean, you know, terminal velocity has that name for that reason.
		What terminal will you if you jump out at a thousand times Mach 1?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I won't be no.
		The small rocket, the test rocket that I'll be jumping from, will not be traveling.
		That's going much, you know, 15,000 feet.
		And I will actually exit it in a transitional period when it is actually near a standstill.
		Because the rocket will go up and it'll run out of momentum, and there'll be a point in time where it is actually coming to a standstill before it begins descending.
		So I'll be coming out of it before it reaches that.
		I do not plan on leaving the confines of the capsule, the full-size rocket, unless that was the absolute last chance.
		I've got three basic backup systems in the main rocket, and the last one would be to separate the two halves and get out of the thing in the but I have not yet been able to come up with a scenario where I would actually have to do that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If you did, you of course could not do it until you got to an altitude, assuming that you got to 30 miles, and you then had a problem.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You would have to get to some minimum altitude before you could take any emergency move at all, wouldn't you?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes and no.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I mean, there again, that's one of the reasons for having the space suit, is that in the worst case scenario, the cabin loses pressure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh my God, and you exit the spacecraft at 30 miles?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, the...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		in that space suit, do you think you could survive?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		No, I wouldn't go up 30 miles because the biggest problem I'm going to have from that kind of altitude would be Melt, yes.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		So I would have to get to a certain point before I would consider leaving, but there again, that's kind of like the last case scenario, and I don't plan on even having, I don't plan on getting near that point.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Wildcard line, you're on the air with Brian Walker.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hello, how are you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		I'm in Houston, Texas, and it's funny, last year when you did the broadcast on that fellow that got the tape on the balloon rider.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, did you hear that?
unidentified		I was actually talking to the fellow the next day.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That was amazing.
		That was amazing.
		I'm going to replay it soon.
		I had just even forgotten about that until it was just mentioned.
		Then I remembered I had that incredible tape.
		Anyway, go ahead, sir.
unidentified		I was curious when, and does he have any fear?
		Do you have any fear of your relationship with the Russians in going up at an altitude to where there's things up there looking down on that a lot of people don't see?
		And I'm just curious if he has any fear of his relationship with another government, just not as a paranoia, but he does have some intelligence and the technology, and he's going to test something, and he was actually getting right to what I was going to ask.
		And I understand him departing the ship, but what's going to happen to the capsule when he departs?
		Does it have a trajectory to land and recover, or is this just a one-time usage?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, getting back, first of all, I'm not going high enough.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		You've got to realize, 30 miles is really not all that far.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it seems pretty far to me.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		It just seems very far because it's a long ways to fall.
		But 30 miles, if you were to pull yourself back away and look at 30 miles above a point, for instance, in Nevada, the center of the state, I'm so far from being able to go anywhere.
		I'm not in a trajectory that would carry me out of the area.
		I'm not at an altitude that would allow me to reach an orbit.
		There's very little threat to anyone.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What is, by the way, about the lowest altitude one could achieve or would begin to achieve some sort of orbit?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		A low Earth altitude is going to be up around 100 miles per minute.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		100 miles, about 70 miles above where you're going.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I'm a long, long ways from orbit.
		And of course, the two major components that are necessary for orbit are orbital speed and orbital altitude both.
		And I'm a long ways away from reaching an orbital orbital altitude.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And could never achieve that even accidentally.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		No.
		And to get to a second question, everything, there's only on Earth Star 1, which is a full-size rocket, there's basically the capsule and there's a fuel tank.
		The fuel tank will jettison when the fuel is expended after 90 seconds, and it has its own recovery system in it.
		It has its own parachute system, and the capsule itself, there again, I do not plan on departing that capsule.
		Unless the absolutely worst happens possible thing.
		And there again, it's very lightweight material.
		There's not much to it.
		And the location where I plan to be launching from, it's not going to be posing a threat.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, but in the middle of a city, that'd be a different story.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, of course you don't.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you have life insurance?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, no.
		no you don't know what i needed it because not having a family it's like Yeah, that's just more challenges.
		You know, life itself is a series of challenges, and that's just going to be one new one to add to the mix.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, is that something that you're going to try to acquire?
		That's the point.
		it would make some sense i mean they were of course and if the insurance company knew what you were going to do I mean, it could come down.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		There again, this is one of another additional reasons for doing the test rockets and stuff is that I'm using technology that, you know, I have not really invented per se anything here.
		I've been using technology that's been proven and developed.
		There may come a point in time where someone would be willing to write me a life insurance policy for the publicity end of it.
		You know, a lawyer type thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's thought.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		But there again, this is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I wouldn't.
unidentified		Well, I probably wouldn't either.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		But I have no desire to climb on board something and die in it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I just won't go in there.
unidentified		That's clear.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's clear.
		All right.
		East of the Rockies.
		You're on the air with Brian Walker.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Morning, Art.
unidentified		Hi, Brian.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Morning.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you, sir?
unidentified		Jupiter, Florida.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
unidentified		Listening to you on the 610 IOD.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		He just answered part of my first question.
		Are you going actually vertically straight up, or are you taking 90 degrees straight up?
		Or are you going to point it out a couple degrees?
		How much drift are you going to get?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's a good question.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		The drift will occur basically depending on what the upper winds are.
		Because again, a lot of people have maybe some understandings that are a little bit different than, you know, when I go up, I'm still going to be still rotating with the Earth because I'm basically carrying it by momentum.
		The time I will be going up, any level that I may pass through with different winds blowing in different directions, I'm going to be traveling through them very quickly, so there'll be very little effect overall.
		And on my descent, most of the way down from the highest point I reach, whether it's 30 miles or 35 miles, depending on how high I go, most of that time is going to be coming down very quickly.
		And once again, I'll be passing through different layers of...
		Well, it depends on the time of year that I launch.
		I don't plan on going through the jet stream.
unidentified		Are you riding it all the way down?
unidentified		Are you going To get out at some point?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no.
		I'm going to stay in the capsule.
		I'm staying snug inside the capsule unless, there again, unless it's the worst case scenario and I have to leave it.
		But the capsule will fall, and when it reaches a point, for instance, the landing gear or the landing system consists of a drug chute that will come out at about 50,000 feet and will slow my descent and stabilize.
		And then I have a landing parafoil similar to what a skydiver uses, which has a 3 to 1 glide ratio.
		So when I reach a certain point, let's say when I get to about 15,000 feet, if I'm more than so many miles off the mark, then I can open at a high enough altitude to glide back to that landing point.
unidentified		That leads into my second question.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		So if I get down, if I'm at 15,000 feet and I'm only two miles to the west of the landing site, I will continue to fall to a lower altitude.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Minimum opening altitude, though, would probably be probably around 8,000 to 10,000 feet, because that way, if the primary parachute system failed, there'd be plenty of time for the backup.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Boy, it sure would be impressive for the people on ground if you can come nearly back to the launch point.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		That would be awesome.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, sweet.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		The goal is to come back and land in the same area where I took off.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, right in front of the camera.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, this has got to be done, you know, I'm not going to splash down somewhere, you know, 100 miles away and then show up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I understand.
unidentified		Caller?
unidentified		Are you going to take video with still shots going up and coming back and maybe micing yourself?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I'm going to have complete telemetry.
		I plan on having anywhere from six to eight video cameras.
		Do you ever watch Fear Factor?
		I've not really.
		I've come across it.
		I haven't seen it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you should watch Fear Factor anyway.
		You should probably.
		In fact, you should be a contestant.
		What I was thinking was they have these helmets, you know.
		Right, helmet.
		And they have a helmet can.
unidentified		Right, right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And I guess you're going to have one of those?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		What I'm going to do is, no, I plan on having probably anywhere from six to eight cameras remotely mounted at different points in the rocket.
		And most of what I'm going to be relying upon as far as visuals are not going to come from windows because I'll be on my back facing up and the windows that I have, I won't be able to see out much of anything.
		I'm going to have a flat screen monitor in front of me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you're really going to be depending on the video yourself.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		Because what I'll be able to do, for instance, with eight cameras, let's say each one's going to be connected to its own digital recorder, because I want to record the entire flight from as many different perspectives as I can, because obviously afterwards, that's going to be very wonderful prize to have is that video.
		And I can click to either one of those cameras at any time and see.
		So for instance, if I'm on my way up and all of a sudden I've got some very strange thing going on, a buffeting or something, I can click to the camera and take an external view of a specific part of the rocket at any given time.
		But definitely, definitely going to record as much of this as possible.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So that if a fin were to lose integrity and fall off, you'd be able to see it?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, for instance, yeah, if something of that nature were to happen, then for instance, when I launch immediately at launch, there's a window of greatest exposure is just within the first couple seconds.
		If the rocket were to lose stability immediately after launch and begin to arc over, then I've only got a certain amount of time to initiate the escape procedure, which is an explosive shutoff on the main engine.
		And then to separate the capsule from the fuel tank, I'm using two, they've got two basic things.
		There's six small rocket motors on the bottom of the capsule that develop 135 pounds of thrust each, and they'll fire.
		And at the same time, there's something very, very similar to like an automotive airbag.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And to not do that on time, you'd be driven into the earth like a steak knife into a turkey, wouldn't you?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, it depends how quickly after it left the launch tower, it would depend on how quickly it left the launch tower that that would occur, because every degree...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, if you didn't act at the right moment.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yes, and again, that's one of the reasons why the one thing I can do to ensure my survivability is having a tall launch tower.
		For instance, if I had a 400-foot tower and I accelerated at 4 Gs, I would come off that tower with enough momentum to carry me to 1,600 additional feet.
		So from a 400-foot tower, that's a plenty of good safety margin because that means I'm going to come to a stop at 2,000 feet and then begin descending.
		So the taller I build my launch tower, the greater potential I have of survivability even under the most catastrophic of experiences.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Gotcha.
		West of the Rockies, you're on air with Brian Walker.
		Hello.
unidentified		Yes, I'm calling from near Phoenix, KFYI.
		Yes, sir.
		I have a question which might sound a little bit on the paranoid side, but I was just wondering of your guest, Brian, specifically, have you ever, earlier on before you became public with your plans that you're now publicizing, whether you were ever believing that you might have been under any type of surveillance regarding to any technological developments that you might have done earlier?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well asked, but I bet the answer is no, because he said he's used off-the-shelf essentially technology.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, no, I'm not, I don't even think about that because, you know, I don't claim to be any great genius or to be a know-it-all or to be doing anything other than just observing and learning and using the best of what's available.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, look, you're a successful inventor.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So that's a light up right there.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		But my inventions are, you know, they're toys.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		They're things that delight and entertain children, and it's not like I've gone out and invented any kind of serious technological thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You could still potentially be entertaining.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I'm very entertaining.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have you ever heard of the videotape called The Faces of Death?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		No.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you're probably better off not going to be aware of that.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I try to avoid things like that earlier.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I've seen a lot of people say, well, at least you win the Darwin Award, and it's like, well, no, I don't plan on getting a Darwin Award.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't think you would get it.
		Well, you might get listed, actually.
		You might get listed.
		But, you know, because your effort is honestly, all joking aside, so serious, I wouldn't think the Darwin Award people would put you up.
		I really wouldn't.
		Even if you died.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, even if I look at it this way, that if I die doing this, and I say this not, of course, in trying to be prophetic in any way, but then, hey, that was my way of going.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		That was the way I was meant to go.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		All right, Sarah, hold up.
		Brian, hold on.
		We'll take a break, and we'll all be right back.
		Stay there.
unidentified		You're listening to Art Bell Somewhere in Time on Premier Radio Networks.
		Tonight, an encore presentation of Coast to Coast AM from March 27th, 2002.
		Pretty soon all my troubles will pass.
		Cause I need Shushu Shoo, Shushu, Shu.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Shushu Shu Shu Shoo Shu.
unidentified		Sugar Dum.
		I never had a dog that liked me some.
		Never had a friend or wanted one.
		So I just lay back and laughed at the sun.
		Cause I'm in shoo-shoo-shoo, shoo-shoo-shoo.
		Shoo-sho-choo-shoo-choo-shoo.
		Sugar town.
		Oh, I can't take another party.
		Oh, you say you're my friend.
		I'm in my wit's end.
		You say your love is mortified, but that don't coincide with the things that you do.
		And when I ask you to burn the ice, you say you've got to be Cruel to be kind in the right measure.
		Cruel to be kind, that's a very good sign.
		Cruel to be kind means that I love you, baby.
		You've got to be cruel.
		You've got to be cruel to be high.
		Well, I do my best to understand these, but you still must have fight.
		And I want to know why I pick myself up off the ground to have you knock me back down again and again.
		And when I ask you to explain, you say you've got to be cruel.
		You're listening to our quebe somewhere in time, tonight featuring a replay of Coast to Coast AM from March 27th, 2002.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		30 Miles.
		Brian Walker is going in his own homemade rocket 30 miles straight up.
		We're taking calls for him and sort of exploring this whole thing.
		Be right back.
		Well, you know, up 30 miles, if the winds caught you wrong or changed during your operation, I mean, potentially you could get carried right out to the ocean, couldn't you?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Oh, not from that far inland.
		i mean if you think about my descent rate and there again i'm going to be falling uh...
		you know i reach my highest point Well, no, there again, if the upper winds indicate that kind of velocity, I just won't launch.
		Won't launch.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So in other words, you're going to have to have really good weather information.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I'm going to have to know what the upper winds are doing and stuff.
		How do you find that out?
		Well, you can check with different weather services to find out what's going on.
		Mostly it's where the jet stream is.
		If you're not in the jet stream, there's really not that much in the way of lots of upper surface winds.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you hope the jet stream is up around Seattle somewhere?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, it just won't be right over me at that point.
		Otherwise, I won't do it.
		But also, when I reach my highest point, what I do is when I begin descending, I don't want to tumble.
		And I also don't want to deploy a parachute when I'm in an area where there's no air because potentially I could wrap up and get caught in the suspension lines.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you've really got to fall far enough to begin to get some air for the chute, right?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Right, and that's going to take quite some time.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		So when I reach apogee.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let me stop you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How long will you be falling before you can deploy even a drogue?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, what I'm going to do at the moment the rocket reaches apogee before it begins descending, the nose cone comes off, and I'm going to inflate a large, it's not really a balloon, but it's kind of like a balloon.
		It's an inflatable nylon-type bag that, in effect, triples the volume or the surface area of the craft.
		And so as I begin descending, it creates more drag without the potential of it causing me to tangle.
		Then at around 50,000 feet, that will separate, and as it separates, that will pull out the drogue chute.
		And that way...
		It would probably be somewhere in the neighborhood of two minutes or so.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you'd be falling for two minutes.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's going to be a long free fall because a typical free fall from 12,000 feet or 13,000 feet in skydiving, a typical free fall is about 60 seconds.
		Right.
		And of course, you reach an average terminal velocity is around 120 miles an hour.
		Starting from that altitude, though, since there is no air, the acceleration just continues and continues.
		Colonel Joseph Kittinger set the world's record Gershe jump back in 1960 from a bloom gondola 16 miles high and he came very close to breaking the sound barrier really yeah he he was falling very, very fast.
		Interesting, I actually met him.
		He's one of my mentors growing up.
		I was always very, very intrigued.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So, wait, it's possible, it's conceivable you could break the sound barrier?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah, the human body could do.
		I mean, the sound barrier sounds a lot more than what it is.
		It's just the speed that happens to be the speed at which sound travels.
		And, yes, I mean, the human body is capable of breaking, is falling faster than sound.
		He reached top speeds just in excess of 600 miles an hour.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah, that's on up there.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		And, you know, when he left the Bloom Gondola, it was amazing because he falls away, and, of course, he had no way of controlling himself because there was no airflow.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Right.
unidentified		And, you know, that's a real free fall.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		That was a real freefall.
		And it was only, he had only had 30 jumps.
		He was part of what was called Project Manhai, which was the beginning of, you know, this started in the late 50s, and it was to determine the kinds of things that people would go through in space flights.
		And, of course, in those days, they had no idea of how the human was going to, how the person, how.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you go up to the edge of space and jump.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yep.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, that's got to be something to contemplate and then do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		My God.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Especially with 1950s, early 1960s technology.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Wildcard line, you're on the air with Brian Walker.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Top of the morning to you, Art, and thanks for taking my call.
		Sure.
		I admire Brian Walker's courage, but I'm also fearful.
		This is George Colling from New York, this new and WABC.
		And I'm concerned that I'm a former aerospace engineer, and I used to design packaging for rocket flight, etc.
		One of the toughest things for a launch condition is to design your electronics to survive a launch condition for random vibration and for shock loading.
		And I wonder if you're going to pre-qualify your electronics on shaker tables and vibration tables before you actually put them through flight.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, to a certain extent, yes, but then to another extent, I'm going to be relying very little on electronics for the actual mechanics of the flight.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but you'll have video recorders.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Those things are things that could fail and not affect the actual outcome of the flight.
		For instance, the engine controls, the fuel flow that goes to the motor and everything else like that, these are not dependent upon sensitive electronic circuitry.
		The idea here is to keep it as simple as possible.
		And there again, this is not going to be generating the kind of, you know, in a typical rocket you've got pumps and things that are all creating harmonic vibrations that operate against each other and cause lots of problems.
		I'm operating on a pressure-fed fuel system that is forcing fuel into an engine, and I'm eliminating a lot of the areas that are going to cause high vibration and high stress loads for electronics.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, all right.
		How about that as an answer, Colin?
		Okay.
unidentified		Well, as long as he's cognizant of it, because that's why spaceflight costs so much for NASA.
		Sure.
		Everything is pre-qualified.
		The no chances are taken, and there's lots of redundancy built in to any system that has to control the flight of the aircraft.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So what kind of chance do you think he has?
unidentified		Well, if he pre- Well, I don't know what does he understand his G-loading and does he understand his vibration loading?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, these are things that are going to be hammered out more in the test, first of all, the initial rocket.
		But there again, this is so far and away different than launching, for instance, a satellite or human cargo into space.
		My window of error is so large here in comparison to typically what would be considered a space flight, per se.
		Just the fact that in a conventional rocket that's mixing liquid oxygen and hydrogen or whatever other kind of fuel, there's so many little tiny potential things that could go wrong.
		I have a virtually zero chance of what would be considered any kind of catastrophic explosion.
unidentified		Okay, I have a question for you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		why not if you really want to get up that high why not go up in a balloon and jump i mean why i had the additional The point of this is the fact that I'm fulfilling this dream of designing and building my own rocket.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I mean, growing up, the idea of what was the best thing in life I could do, and that, well, building a spacecraft to launch myself.
		So doing a balloon.
		And, you know, like I've had some people also suggest, why not use a balloon to lift the rocket to a certain altitude first?
		that kind of takes away the the excitement of the of the watch It does.
		Also, for instance, yes, if I were to use a balloon to carry me to a certain altitude, my risk exposure is actually longer because the duration from leaving the ground to getting up to an altitude where I would then fire the rocket is a greater period of time to put stress on my life support system, the potential for other problems to encounter.
		Like, for instance, when Colonel Kittinger did his balloon gondola, one of his jumps, because he did a number of these, he had a pressure loss and his hand swolled up to like twice its size.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That would be worrisome.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and so I want to reduce the limit, the time that I'm exposed To the actual risk as low as possible.
		And that greatest point is going to be in the first five seconds.
		Because after five seconds, if everything has gone okay, then from that point on, altitude actually begins to become my friend.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Actually, your hand going to twice its size would be a precursor to exploding, wouldn't it?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, these are the accounts that I've heard of when we score twice its size.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But I mean, I think that way, if your hand got to twice its size, you're on your way to explosion.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, you're on the way to just a big, big expansion of skin.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
		All right.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Brian Walker.
		Good morning.
		Hello.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Hello, Ar.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Prosine.
unidentified		Hi, Brian.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		It's a pleasure talking to both of you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		Denver, Colorado.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		I was wondering if there's anyone at all trying to do the same thing that you are doing.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Right now there's a thing called the X Prize, which is a competition that has been formed by a St. Louis-based organization.
		Actually, it's kind of the same routes that put together the prize that Charles Lindbergh won.
		And the parameters for this is to have a three-man rocket that can carry a pilot with two passengers to an altitude of 62 miles and then return to space within a two-week period.
		So it has to be able to complete two flights within two weeks.
		And it's a $10 million prize, and there's a lot of teams right now.
		In fact, they have a website, xprize.com, as their website.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so there's a lot of teams working on that?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		There's a lot of teams.
		And yet I just haven't signed up for that specifically because it's not really, you know, I'm not a team, and I'm not trying to build a passenger-carrying rocket.
		And I've been doing this.
		My goal has been a little bit different than doing that.
		But I'm not aware right now of anyone else on an individual basis like me doing this the way I'm doing it.
		At least I have not heard.
		There are about maybe a dozen and a half or so teams right now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but nobody else singly like yourself who's been devoted to it.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, not that I know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There you go, Caller.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		And I haven't heard it, you know, and then all the media and stuff I've done in the past two years.
		Okay, thank you, Art.
		Thank you, Brian.
unidentified		I wish you good luck and Godspeed.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Godspeed.
		You always say that.
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Brian Walker.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hello, Brian.
		Hello.
		Brian, I used to hang out with you over at Scanloons.
		I'm a friend of Lee's.
		I used to work at Z21.
		I just want to tell you that everyone in Bend really supports you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bend Oregon.
unidentified		Bend Oregon.
unidentified		And I've watched your progress from a toy maker all the way to now.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		You're a friend of Lee's.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		What's your name again?
unidentified		Brian.
unidentified		I used to be a promotion manager for Z21.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I remember.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Oh, sure, sure, I remember.
unidentified		Hey, hey, how are you?
unidentified		Anyway, I just want to let you know.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Oh, thank you.
unidentified		I appreciate that.
unidentified		Now, when is the caravan when we can go down and support you?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, there again, I've pulled away from trying to live up to an established date.
		At this point, right now, my best hope is that by the end of this summer, I will have completed the test launches and gone up in the test rocket.
		And then I'm going to be taking all that data and during the next fall, winter, and spring, completing the full-size rocket.
		And I'm hoping to complete the main rocket launch sometime in the summer of 2003.
unidentified		We'll be there.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I'll be there, too.
		First time caller line, you're on the air with Brian Walker.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hello, Mr. Walker.
unidentified		Yes, Mr. Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		Good morning.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Mr. Walker, first of all, let me say I admire your adventurous and independent spirit.
unidentified		And my question is, if NASA tomorrow called you and said, you know, we like what you're doing, but we think it's far too dangerous for a civilian to be doing, and we're willing to take you up in orbit around the Earth if you just abandon your project, would you do that?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		You know, it's funny you ask that because I've given some consideration to that a number of times.
		Because, for instance, when I was training in Russia the first time in June, Dennis Tito was there at training and I had a chance to meet him and stuff.
		And I've often thought about that exact thing.
		What if someone offered me a ride in lieu of this?
		And I'd like to be able to, you know, part of me would say, no, I wouldn't abandon this.
		It would be hard to give up that opportunity.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's a $20 million ticket.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, yes.
		And I've often given thought to that exact same very thing.
		And there's a part of me that would just kind of like say, well, heck, I'll take the ride.
		But then there's the other part of the greater part of me that's like, no, I'm trying to do something here that has a little bit bigger.
		And I would almost feel like I was selling out.
		So I hope I don't, you know what?
		I just hope I never get the offer.
unidentified		So you would go independently.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I want to continue what I'm doing and finish it because, like I've said before, I've had so many people send me so many wonderful emails.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Actually, that's kind of a nasty question now that I think about it.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		It's a human nature question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but it's a nasty question in a way.
		Because I, too, oh my God, the opportunity to go into Earth orbit.
		That'd be hard to turn down.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		really hard it would it would be hard to turn out for i just uh...
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		i just hope i'm never given the opportunity You win a lottery and win a huge amount of money, and you go from one situation to the next, and it's not, it's most cases not a good thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Listen, a lot of people would love to email.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you dare give out your email address?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Well, I have this.
		People can email me through my website.
		Oh, okay.
		So there's plenty of places.
		I mean, there's places they can email me right through my website.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, we've got a link to your website, of course.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		And yeah, they can go right through rocketguide.com and I get the emails.
		And, you know, that's another thing I've discovered.
		Not only am I a dyslexic and attention deficit, but I think I also have an obsessive-compulsive disorder because I have answered 99% of my close to 10,000 emails.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that alone will keep you out of space.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's taken a huge amount of time, but the fact is, it's something that, you know, this has become part of this program is doing this.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		And people send me some incredibly uplifting.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Has it happened at all, Brian, that occasionally you've had terrible misgivings, you've been ready to throw in the project, but you know that if you do, it's so public now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		People are so depending on you for whatever perverted reason they have to go ahead and do what you said you're going to do, that is a lot of pressure.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		You know?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's a lot of pressure.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		It is.
		There's been a number of times where I have literally hit.
		I mean, I have a tendency that I can fall into fits of depression because sometimes to see how much I have to do.
		And for instance, just so many things in my personal life I've let slip the past couple years because I'm usually up by 6 in the morning and I usually don't stop working until 10 or 11 at night, and that's an early night.
		And there's times when I felt like giving up completely.
		And part of it, sometimes at times, yeah, there's going to be a whole lot of people I let down.
		But then at the same time, it's like I actually thought one day, what if, what if this whole, I never would have gone to Russia and met Natasha if I hadn't been doing this project.
		And I often thought, what if that was the entire reason for doing this?
		Would I give this all up and consider the fact that I met Natasha and Sergei and consider that reward for this project?
		And I think I would.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Natasha might put it to you that way.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		But I don't, at this point in time, no, I haven't reached that point of doing that.
		But I do a lot of self-examination, believe me.
		Like I said.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So what is going to happen if Natasha says, uh, nyet?
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Um, I'll get, I'll, I'll deal with that if and when that happens.
		And I don't expect it to.
		I know that she is worried from the sense of not wanting to see me die, obviously.
		But I also know that she is very...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, you're a big poster boy for that, that's for sure.
		Listen, we've done a program there, buddy.
		We're out of time.
		It's been wonderful.
		You're just a great interview, and you know I'm coming to see the first test, so you've got to keep me totally informed.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I will do that.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		I will let you know when that's going to happen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, we'll bring our land yacht up and do a broadcast and stuff, all right?
		There you go.
		Take care, Brian.
brian walker ▲ ● ▼		Thanks, Arch.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's Brian Walker, Rocket Guy.
		Only in America, folks, from the high deserts, where it's just beautiful, spring is on the way.
		I'm Mark Bell.

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