3 ms·
Reminds me of the Darwin Award urban legend: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JATO_Rocket_Car https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JATO_Rocket_Car
by carapace 6y ago
Reminds me of the Darwin Award urban legend:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JATO_Rocket_Car https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JATO_Rocket_Car
- hinkley 6y agoI recall reading an article by a guy who suspected a project he worked on might be the highly twisted origin of that story. He (and a friend?) did in fact mount JATOs on a vehicle, but they were really rather mature about the whole process. It was a rocket sled, not a car. It ran on rails extending from an abandoned mine shaft. They aimed the sled toward the mineshaft so it had a hard stop, and they built gravity-fed brakes into the sled: Between the wheels they cemented tire treads to the frame, then hydraulically lifted the entire chassis. Dump the fluid, and the entire sled weight settles onto the rails. The main things I don't recall are how the hydraulics get cut (dead man's switch?) and whether they managed to stop the sled before it slammed into the mine entrance.