My apologies if someone posted this before...

but this made me giggle a lot. (except for the MINIs getting completely destroyed)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5geyN...=mini%20cooper

 

thats awesome!

 

WHOOOOA! That was awesome!

A moment of silence for the MINI's that lost their lives in this stunt...

 

That second one was CRAZY!

 

oouuuccchhh, that hurt

 

Ky Michaelson will strap a rocket to anything. Maybe next time he will strap a pair of rockets to his **** and see how well he holds up after a CATO like that. Both crews should be banned from Both TRA and NAR for safety violations. I wonder if they had a LEUP for those motors? Both orgionazations have rules against launching at angles more than 2 degrees from vertical. NAR specifically says no metal air frames.

 

I think I got all of them:

CATO: Catapult Assisted Take Off
TRA: Tripoli Rocketry Association
NAR: National Association of Rocketry
LEUP: Low Explosives User Permit

DrDiff -
It seems that you are educated on rocketry - I didn't realize much of what they were doing was against organizational rules/US laws. Also seems like you don't appreciate Ky Michaelson's antics either. How come? (aside from his destroying of our beloved MINIs)

 

Amongst TRA NAR folk a CATO is a CAtastrophic Take Off

I am TRA L2 Certified. I was a founding member of Tripoli QuadCities (TQC) TRA#39. As a pre-teen I got interested in model rockets, then came cars, movies, other things that I spent money on. After college I re-discovered rockets and High Power Rocketry. DESTRUCTION is not what the hobby is about. It is the safe launch and recovery of rockets.

TQC had a rocket come down with out a parachute and it went through the steel roof of a barn. The owner of the rocket paid for repairs to the barn out of his own pocket. One member was comming to a launch with a 10 foot plus rocket strapped in the bed of his pickup. He stoped by a McDonalds Pre-911 and they freaked out. They called the police and he was pulled over. They pulled him out of his truck and then he ate asphault with a Glock against his head and hands in handcuffs! It took over a hour of him (on the ground still in handcuffs) trying to explain who he was, what club he was with, and why he had a cardboard mislle in the back of his truck.

Ky is rocket Crazy. He will stick a rocket motor on anything. I don't have a problem with that but when you spend HUNDREDS of dollars on fuel alone and THOUSANDS of dollars on your airframe. You want to recover it Safely and intact so that you can fly it again. Clearly the producers wanted to show the destruction of the two cars (MINI's none the less!). At least the Mini Ski Jump had protection to stop the car. Ky's reckless in clearly shows the dangerous side. And he clearly was not concerned about the re-launch of these "rockets". This does nothing to promote the hobby.

Not only did the show destroy a MINI, it gave rocketry a black eye. That is my beef.

 

"got some energy, you think?"
-rocketry guy #4

 

I was into model rockets, Estes Pershing with an F motor is the biggest I've launched.
And I had to try an AA in a Porsche 911 model. It was on a parkinglot, worked okay under thrust...

 

so some guys are like...well, we have these rockets...and this huge ramp...what should we.....AH YES...lets wreck 2 MINI's...

 

Scion xB the boxy one. or an Aztech... I might not have minded so much...

NAH still gives rocket people a black eye. And I forgot to mention that launching a rocket in any way so as to hit a ground mounted target, Also violates both The NAR and TRA safety codes. OK they didn't break the target, but the target was between the goal posts. All the participants should have had their LEUP's stripped for life. Then Ban them from both NAR and TRA.

 

That was tough to watch! I could think of MANY other cars to trash! How about a civic? Aren't there Billions of them?

 

Now I know that those mods absolutely voided that Mini USA warrantee.

 

After watching it again, it looked like the second one had a custom roof graphic.

So not only are they trashing MINIs... they're trashing customized MINIs!!!

After what DrDiff wrote about all the violations... and after them trashing awesome MINIs... I would LOVE to b*tch-slap every one of them.