The account of the JATO Rocket Car was one of the original Darwin Awards winners: a man who supposedly met his death in a spectacular manner after mounting a rocket engine on a common automobile. It was originally circulated as a forwarded email.
In 1996, after numerous inquires, the Arizona Department of Public Safety issued a news release posted on their website concerning the story. It termed the story "an Arizona myth."
The story was also debunked in 2003 on the pilot episode of the Discovery Channel show MythBusters, titled "Jet Assisted Chevy, Pop Rocks and Soda". They replicated the scene and the thrust of the JATO with several commercially available amateur rocket motors. The car did not go anywhere near the 300 mph (500 km/h) reported in the original story, and failed to become airborne.
Read more about JATO Rocket Car: Jet Assisted Take-Off, History
Famous quotes containing the words rocket and/or car:
“A rocket is an experiment; a star is an observation.”
—José Bergamín (1895–1983)
“One way to do it might be by making the scenery penetrate the automobile. A polished black sedan was a good subject, especially if parked at the intersection of a tree-bordered street and one of those heavyish spring skies whose bloated gray clouds and amoeba-shaped blotches of blue seem more physical than the reticent elms and effusive pavement. Now break the body of the car into separate curves and panels; then put it together in terms of reflections.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)