Given the prominence of privately funded space programs in the news these past weeks, this week's collection of whimsical and curious stories will once again take a look at space travel. However, in keeping with the theme of this series, we will ignore the billionaire-driven ventures and instead cast the spotlight on a man who built his own spacecraft from a double garage in California in the 1980s and almost made the famous daredevil Evel Knievel the world's first private astronaut.
Bob's space program - Whenever we think of men (and let's face it, they are mostly men) who try to build a submarine or nuclear reactor in their backyards, we might be drawn to the cliché of the lone oddball who ends up with more cats than viable machinery. Robert "Bob" Truax was no such man. In fact, he had a long and successful career designing rockets first for the US Navy and the for the American Rocketry firm Aerojet.
Evel Knievel - In 1966, as the space race was approaching its zenith, Bob Truax filed patent No 3029,704 for a steam-powered rocket engine and set out to start his own company to develop reusable rockets. However, unlike the billionaires of today, he was short on cash and publicity and had to start small. First, he strapped his new rocket engine to a drag racing car called the Neptune 1. Having proven that he could launch cars at tremendous speeds, he was then approached by daredevil Evel Knievel who wanted to jump across the Snake River Canyon in Idaho (on a motorbike with a couple of flimsy wings). The rocket worked, the parachute did not*.
Evel Knievel's 1974 Snake Canyon jump attempt
The Volksrocket - Once Knievel had been pulled from the wreck at the bottom of the canyon, Truax proposed to launch him 100km up into space on a new rocket (later dubbed the "Volksrocket") to become the first private astronaut. All he needed was a $1M to build it. Knievel gave him $3000. In his efforts to raise money, he toured late night shows and even posted newspaper ads**. Luckily, Truax knew how to improvise (and lived close to the scrapyards of Vandenberg Air Force Base where he acquired seven Rocketdyne LR101 thruster engines for $25 a piece). Unfortunately, he did not live to see his rocket fly before he passed away in 2010. However, his son Scott managed to revive the initial canyon-jumping idea and managed to complete and successfully launch a rocket-propelled contraption called the "Evel Spirit" in 2016.
Robert Truax in Saratoga, Calif (Terrence Mccarthy/New York Times/File 1981)
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*the parachute deployed too early causing the vehicle to impact at the bottom of the canyon
**an ad in the Wall Street Journal read: "Wanted: Risky capital for risky project"
Here is a New York Time article from 1981
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