MADEONEARTH
Report from the world of backyard technology
It’s difficult to match the sophisticated and subtle weight is liquid accelerant, which will be expelled humor of throwing a dummy off something really forcefully within a second or so of launch. high and watching it fall to the ground, but to be fair, “The hardest part is getting a good seal,” says it’s a low-tech laugh. Arnold. “Once you have a seal, you’re 90% there.”
Luckily, Nathan Arnold of Seattle has discovered After Johnny and the jetpack are set up, pointed that strapping a dummy to a compressed-air jet- skyward, and a good seal allows the bottles to be pack, launching it more than 100 feet in the air, and charged with water and compressed air, Arnold then watching it fall to the ground is three times as has only to pull a pin to initiate the launch. funny and provides some geek appeal on the side. Johnny accelerates rapidly once the jetpack
Arnold’s performance-art dummy show and his is activated. His head, filled with cattails, lolls eternal desire to maximize mayhem led to the idea forward from the force, and a Rube Goldbergian of launching the thing — Johnny, by name — as sequence of events is set in motion. As the liquid high in the air as possible in 1983. “It turned out to drains from the main chamber, the drop in pres-be more spectacular than I thought it would be,” he sure triggers the parachute ejection device. The says, and after more than 100 launches, he hasn’t removal of the parachute initiates the separation stopped laughing. of Johnny from his jetpack, and an “explosion”
Johnny looks surprisingly substantial on the of cattails blows Johnny’s head off. More com-launch pad, so much so that you’d never guess pressed air chambers in Johnny’s chest cavity that he weighs in at a svelte 8 pounds. The jetpack cause his arms to flail while a parachute deploys — a hodgepodge of carbonated beverage bottles to return the jetpack safely to the Earth. Mean-and tubing strapped to a bamboo frame — tips while, Arnold and whoever is lucky enough to be the scales at 30 pounds, but the majority of that present laugh at it all.
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