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:
“Along a parabola life like a rocket flies,
Mainly in darkness, now and then on a rainbow.”
—Andrei Voznesensky (b. 1933)
“I marched in with the men afoot; a gallant show they made as they marched up High Street to the depot. Lucy and Mother Webb remained several hours until we left. I saw them watching me as I stood on the platform at the rear of the last car as long as they could see me. Their eyes swam. I kept my emotion under control enough not to melt into tears.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)