Rocketman: My Rocket-Propelled Life and High-Octane Creations

Air Power History, Spring, 2009 by Rick W. Sturdevant

Rocketman: My Rocket-Propelled Life and High-Octane Creations. By Michaelson. St. Paul, Minnesota: Motorbooks, 2007. Photographs. Appendices. Pp. 240. $27.95 ISBN: 0-7603-3143-9

Building rocket-powered vehicles to achieve ever more speed, sometimes associated with climbing to ever higher altitudes, has a long history. Some enthusiasts might trace the record back to sixteenth-century Chinese aristocrat Wan Hu's disastrous attempt to propel himself into space by strapping 47 black-powder rockets to his chair and having 47 servants simultaneously light the fuses. Other speedsters likely would point to Fritz von Opel's and Max Valier's experimentation with rocket-powered automobiles and aircraft in late-1920s Germany. Michaelson will tell you, however, that the golden age for "throttle junkies" occurred during the 1960s and 1970s when he designed streamlined chassis and rocket engines that burned hydrogen peroxide to accelerate "land pilots" beyond 300 miles per hour.

As Michaelson reveals in this autobiographical book, he became obsessed with speed in "very early childhood" and was privileged to participate in a phenomenon that lasted only about a decade. In the early 1980s, the supply of hydrogen peroxide that fueled the phenomenon began to disappear. But by then, the new breed of racers to which he belonged had set numerous track and land speed records that remain unbroken to this day. Using rocket engines he designed to produce 3,000-7,500 pounds of thrust, Michaelson built a series of dragsters and other types of cars for himself and others: Pollution Packer; "Gator Man" Jim Hedges' Alabama Express; Miss STP Rocket Dragster for driver Paul Murphy; Jerry Hehn's American Dream; Fred Geeske's Funny Car and Plymouth Arrow pickup truck; Allen Hudson's Texas Starship; Dave Henderson's and Ed Ballinger's XL-14 Galactic Crusader and Astron Invader; and Kitty O'Neil's Rocket Kat 1977 Corvette. Ms. O'Neil claimed two world records in Rocket Kat, running 365.21 mph in 3.58 seconds in the El Mirage Desert, while the Pollution Packer dragster set thirteen state, national, and international records.

To complement his "extreme rocket-powered vehicles," Michaelson crated an almost endless variety of what he categorizes as "Rocketman's toys." These include a rocket-powered motorcycle labeled Gizmo, plus a snowmobile, mountain bike, tricycle, go-kart, outboard boat motor, Flexible Flyer sled, luge, scooter, and skateboard. Among his more bizarre rocket-powered creations are a chair, wheelchair, belt, blender, toilet (dubbed SS Flasher), and outhouse named Our Stinkin' Rocket. After visiting a scuba shop in the early 1970s, he even conceived and built a rocket backpack that his son, Curt, demonstrated in the guise of "Captain Roller Ball" at various racetracks and on The Mike Douglas Show.

Definitely bitten by the bug to go faster, farther, and higher, Michaelson set his gaze on outer space in the mid-1990s. With his wife, Jodi, and a handful of close friends, he formed CSXT--the Civilian Space eXploration Team. Their launch attempts in 1995 and 1997 receive little more than passing mention, accompanied by a half-dozen color photographs, but CSXT's goal of reaching space "on a shoestring" began to seem more achievable in 2000. Even then, obtaining the necessary government permits and dealing with Mother Nature's wrath at the launch site in Nevada's Black Rock Desert posed serious challenges. Although their Space Shot 2000 rocket achieved an altitude of only 40,000 feet and their Primera rocket exploded shortly after clearing the launch tower in 2002, the team persisted. Finally, on 17 May 2004, CSXT's Go Fast climbed to an altitude of 72 miles, becoming the first amateur rocket to exceed the 62-mile international definition of space.

While Michaelson's autobiographical account lacks such useful, scholarly accouterments as an index and annotations, it offers anyone curious enough to open its cover a delightfully entertaining, generally informative narrative. For the technically minded, an appendix explains, in "innermost detail" complete with schematics, how hydrogen peroxide rocket engines work. When they turn the last page of Rocketman, some readers might even wonder what Michaelson currently is building in his home workshop at Bloomington, Minnesota.

Dr. Rick W. Sturdevant, Deputy Director of History, HQ Air Force Space Command