Posted on 04/06/2016 12:38:47 PM PDT by Gamecock
Authorities say two Southern California high school students attached a homemade model rocket to a skateboard before it exploded and killed one of the teens. The blast Monday evening in the courtyard of a Ventura County elementary school killed 18-year-old Bernard Moon, the AP reports. His 17-year-old friend was injured and is in stable condition. Sheriff's Detective Timothy Loman says the teens built the rocket and attached it to the skateboard as a propulsion device. Authorities say the experiment wasn't sanctioned by the elementary school. The teens attended Thousand Oaks High School, which said in a Twitter post: "Our hearts are broken."
Investigators will try to piece together the homemade rocket. Capt. Garo Kuredjian says the two high school seniors apparently were experimenting with "some sort of chemical combination" before the accidental blast Monday. Investigators will try to determine the size and shape of the rocket, which blew apart. Kuredjian says the fuel wasn't propane, as officials initially reported.
Beavis or Butthead?
Yeah, weed is harmless...
.
Seriously, I did a lot of dumb things at that age, some might have gotten me killed. Sad story.
There is a reason it is called rocket SCIENCE. Morons shouldn’t be messing with them.
Stupidity is rapidly becoming the national pastime.
Fortunately, my related attempts were limited to a CO2 cartridge.
I don’t know details, but when we were kids, we were constantly experimenting (acting stupidly?) with things that shot projectiles, chemicals, and motors.
sadly stupidity occasionally has consequences. Too bad Bernie and Hillary voters don’t blow themselves up. They’re certainly stupid enough.
Sad story.
That’s how JPL got started. (Yes. The movie, The Martian had it correct.) “Back in the 1930s, a group of graduate students known as “the rocket boys” set off a small explosion in their dormitory building during a fueled rocket test, according to NASA’s history archive.”
I have the same drive as they do: to experiment. I planned on being an astronaut. I’m a power supply design engineer instead. I’ll do the rocket thing in retirement.
Did he get the rocket from Acme? Sounds like a Wile E. Coyote stunt!
(Insert Stupid Games / Stupid Prizes meme here.)
Chemistry class in HS (Me) Hey is there a possibility this could blow up?
Of course.
Then let’s do it outside. (It blew up)
My friend and I used cardboard TP tubes, sections of rubber tire tubes (the part with the valve) and gasoline siphoned from Dad's car. I'm still amazed I'm still alive.
I am saddened by the lack of sympathy in some of the remarks posted here.
While in elementary school I had a classmate who blew a hole through his heart trying to make a bomb out of a CO2 cartridge.
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