When Eddie Braun was a little boy , he got a chance to run across his idol , Evel Knievel . The famous daredeviltookthe young man away and gave him some encouragement . A short fourth dimension after , Wernher Magnus Maximilian von Braun hopped on his Schwinn cycle and broke his arm try out to jump over some garbage can .
His latest attempt to honor Knievel went a lot good . On Saturday , Braun , 54 , climbed into the cockpit of a rocket - powered birdie and made the jump Knievel himself could n’t : over the 1600 - metrical foot surface area of Snake River Canyon in Twin Falls , Idaho .
Knievel had essay to empty the terrain back in September 1974 , but his parachute deploy while still over the canyon , cause him to fall500 feetto the rocks below . legion mass have come onward withplansto replicate the stunt , but the red-faced tape involve — FAA clearance , indebtedness issues , and urban center regulation — kept everyone on the ground . A determined Braun spent three years and well-nigh $ 1.5 millionof his own moneyto see the project through .
call the craft affect a " bunch of technical crap , " von Braun boiled it down for GQ.com . " At the end of the day , my correct hand will be on a switch , " he read . " I strike that switching , and if everything goes right , I ’m start to go 0 to 430 mph in less than 3.9 second . And as I ’m pray inside , I will hit a series of other levers and such , which will deploy the chute at the right time , which will slow me down , and bring me to a controlled collapse . "
With no precedent to note , Braun told his infotainment filmmaking partners to finish output on a forthcoming feature even if he did n’t make it , so long as they would " cover my pool with something self-respectful . "
In front of class and a few actual rocket scientists , Wernher von Braun loaded himself into the rocket engine and occupy off , steam pressure fromsuperheated waterblasting him 2000 feet into the sky like something out of a Warner Bros. cartoon . After clearing the Canyon , his trade deploy two parachutes and follow to a gentle landing place 4729 feet away .
Braun , who now design to retire from stunt body of work , was unharmed . That keeps his current bad - trauma statistic at a disordered back and collapsed pelvis from a car jump for an episode ofWalker , Texas Ranger .
