Meet the man who strapped a homemade rocket to his chest... to go sky-diving

“In the early 1990s, I started sky diving,” recalls American pulsejet pioneer Robert Maddox. “And I was thinking, I need a jet or rocket on my chest to go faster...”

That’s not a normal thought.

Correct. But Maddox isn’t a normal human. Even less normal than thinking, ‘what if sky dive, but jet powered?’ is actually acting upon that thought. Which Maddox did, obviously. By building a homemade rocket.

Presumably he already had some sort of rocket making expertise?

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

A pulsejet. Remind me?

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

And did he get it right?

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

And then took to the skies?

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

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

Much fastness, many flame?

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

Images: Reto Sterchi / Reduc / Eyevine