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.
Exactly. If I got the consequences of my choices at that age, I’d be screwed. Condolences to the family.
AGM-12 BULLPUP
We used to strap these to the bottom of our P-3. Didn't hit much, but then, we didn't blow ourselves up, either. Gave a great 0-G delivery ride back in the galley.
I once launched a large homemade “space shuttle” from Lauderdale By The Sea beach.
We used pipes and made our own propellant from homemade black powder. We rolled it in toilet paper and shoved it up the pipes.
We launched just after dawn. We used an electrical trigger and were about 100 feet away, hunkered behind a concrete seawall.
The sucker shot into the air maybe 200 feet and then exploded. Loudly. Very loudly. We heard pieces of it ricocheting off nearby hotels.
There was a news report of a mysterious explosion that night on the Ralph Renick report, but authorities had no leads or clues as to what it was or who caused it.
Thank God!
Whatever happened to JATO rockets and Chevy Impalas? More proof of our national decline.
You are so busted now, though.
Like on Mythbusters?
I got to mess with poly butadiene and ammonium perchlorate. Under the science teacher’s supervision. The static test was outside behind a wall.
My 90+ year old Uncle strapped a rocket to his wagon back in the Thirties. To this day, he has no eyelashes!
Uncle Leo??
LOL. But he lived to tell a great story. Probably brings a smile to his face. :)
I don’t think I like his attitude!
I’m writing something in his medical record!
I don’t know the statute of limitations on some of the stuff I did so I’m not posting. I would, however, like to apologize to the Warren school district for the gaping, charred hole in one of the gradeschool basketball backboards.
I strapped my leaf blower onto a three-wheeled kids toy and fired it up to see how fast it would go. Pretty darn fast until it hit the curb and tipped over. (And looking back, glad it didn’t launch into a parked car or something!)
Sadly, my son had just got one of those razor scooters with the handlebar. He tried to chase after my contraption and got going to fast and stumbled and fell head first to the asphalt. His helmet was broken and probably saved his life. His collar-bone was broken also.
I wasn’t able to convince my wife that it really wasn’t my fault at all!
Yes - too bad about the kid. I had numerous chances to kill myself as a kid.
‘You still have that school bus video?
It was our 7th grade science teacher that taught us how to make gunpowder.
He mixed up a little in the classroom and set it off.
We took good notes.
I'd place this kid very high in the running for the highly coveted Darwin Award. Kid went out with a bang, didn't he?
sounds like wiley coyote
If id had the money i would have built a liquid fuel rocket engine. Would have killed my most likely. Had plans drawn up. Werner von Braun was my hero.
Rocket or bomb? I kept hearing it referred to as a rocket, but the reports were that they were fueling it with propane, I did model rocketry with my kids, I have watched programs of competitions of high powered rockets and don’t recall ever seeing propane used as a fuel. It’s sad that there was a death and injuries, but these kids were in a high level Darwin Award competition.
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