Despite his best efforts, he wouldn’t even qualify for a Darwin Award. He apparently had two children. To be eligible for a Darwin, you have to die before having reproduced.
For me, the combination of idiocy plus hubris is what makes it a fun conclusion.
I saw claims somewhere that he had backup chutes, and speculation that he didn’t deploy them because the acceleration at launch knocked him out.
I’m not sure how much redundancy you get when the entire budget is $18k. I will say that being knocked out at launch is a much better way to go than what I thought would happen - a pressure vessel failure that would flash cook him with steam. Or for that matter injure anyone else close by. People seemed too damn close to the launcher in the video.
Playing ‘Yakety Sax’ while watching the video is oddly satisfying. The only thing missing is a coyote costume and ACME painted on the rocket.
As idiotic as all of this might be, he died doing what he loved. I can only wish I go out that way too.
…now if I could just figure out what I loved
…
<clipped>
Waldo has been found!
What, the “sn” doesn’t stand for snu-snu?
To be fair that’s what the Apollo astronauts were thinking on their way up. Mainly because of the violent shaking.
A crushed pelvis doesn’t sound too pleasant. Although it might be right up until it’s not.
1800’ isn’t all that high. He’s got the weight of himself + the rocket & he already lost some slowing capability in the chute he lost at launch. Even if he was conscious to pull the chute at the apex (& who knows if he would have been able to manually deploy it at apex as opposed to already on his way down where he now has less altitude & more vertical speed), I wonder how well it would have deployed & how banged & bruised he would have been upon landing without as much slowing as calculated?
Here ya go; fast forward to 6:06.
You cannot fix stupid, but it can be flattened.
Fätãl Ørgåsm – I think I saw them open for Joan Baez once.
It’s ironic that his strategy to get money to do something stupid was to claim an even more stupid motivation. But that raises the question of what his real motivation was. Was it just the excitement of flying in a home-made rocket?
I don’t think there’s really a lot of glee. The Darwin Awards are essentially dark humor, and it comes not from celebrating anyone’s demise but from marveling at the sheer stupidity of what some people will do. Even so, many of them are sad rather than funny. One of the funniest Darwin stories of all, about the guy who attached a JATO (jet assisted take off) rocket to a Chevy Malibu, went very very fast and eventually ended up in small pieces a hundred feet up a mountainside, is mainly funny because it’s fake; it never happened, but one can laugh at speed-demon car idiots who one imagines might just want to do such a thing.
But then there’s this guy. A professional welder who got a brilliant idea: instead of hauling around two tanks, oxygen and acetylene, for oxy-acetylene welding, why not premix them in just one tank? So he did, using an empty propane tank with no regulator on it. When he tried to help a friend repair his car, his friend told him several times he was crazy, and then got the hell as far away as he could. When the guy lit the welding tip, the resulting explosion destroyed the car, the building the car was in, and shattered windows in houses some distance away. The sheer stupidity is at least worth a chuckle, but in any case, earned the ex-welder a Darwin Award.
This may be the only time I’ve seen someone’s death basically being applauded on YouTube and in discussion forums such as this.
While I’m totally opposed to his stunts being done in the name of a stupid, anti-science organization, I have to say…yeesh folks.
I’m not surprised, but also not thrilled that he killed himself doing this. I’m not about to mash the “like” button.
I don’t see anyone applauding his death
Post #80.
Moron dies moroning. Film at 11.