Build Date: Tue Sep 23 07:30:13 2025 UTC
You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.
-- Frank Zappa
Have Rocket, Will Travel
2000-06-28 19:04:32
A man in Oregon wants to blast himself into space, and he's got the means to do so.
Brian Walker, resident of Bend, Oregon, is building a rocket in his backyard so that he can be the first private citizen in outer space.
He bought off-the-shelf rocket engines, a couple of parasails, and a lot of hydrogen peroxide for fuel. He estimates that his rocket can get him up to 30 miles above the Earth's surface. Once all of the fuel burns up, the rocket separates into two parts. The engines will deploy a parasail and be guided back to the Earth by remote control from the ground. The capsule has its own separate parasail which will be controlled by Brian himself, from inside the capsule.
With a Russian pressure suit and a lot of determination, Brian hopes to make the flight sometime this summer.
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The IBM Selectric Typewriter Changed My Life
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