The Origins of Mythbusters Rocket Cars: A Behind-the-Scenes Look

Just what is that thing I'm required to pull you over for, just to ask about this new TV show? And then we said we're making this new TV show and he was like okay sure whatever. And let us go so this was the first rocket car episode there was a second rocket car episode.

We did in the middle of Mythbusters run and in this we were able to afford much bigger rockets. I think we only needed two at that time, that's what the R-motors were right they were really long and really powerful. There's just this thing which is uh rocket fuel solid rocket fuel which is what these were built with um is made in batches and when you have rockets made out of solid rocket fuel you want to make sure that the batch you got is a good batch and so there are two prices in some of these rockets one price is they make a batch and they just sell you those rockets and that's the inexpensive version another one is they make a batch, they fire off every other rocket in the batch thus the ones that remain you are far more assured that they come from a working chemistry. The problem is those rockets cost twice as much so in that middle Mythbusters rocket car episode this is the first one this is the last one the middle one the rockets don't exist because we bought the inexpensive rockets and they blew up on the stand they detonated before they ever got to launch our Chevy Impala.

And this is one where technically that's a disaster right, Discovery has paid $150,000 extra for this episode because we've told them of Chevy Impala is going to fly across the desert and the not only does it not fly across the desert but it eliminates any possibility of flying across the desert this impala which we dragged with cables with a mechanical switch that would fire the rockets at the exact moment it was the bottom of the ramp to get the speed up so that when left the ramp would actually be flying all of our systems that Jamie and I arranged and engineered worked perfectly. The only thing that didn't was the one thing that wasn't our purview which was the actual rocket motors.

Cut two a couple years later we convinced Discovery to pony up the doe for a third rocket car episode this is in the final season and this time we paid for the good rockets that we came from a batch we knew you could see it here on here it says rocket motor and then it says uh lot number right doesn't it say lot yeah lot 97 yeah this is this is what we're talking about this is really specific like you pay for the ones where you know that batch has been fired um we busted it again we busted this myth three times but these six these two rocket stacks of six motors really sort of exemplify to me the whole history of the engineering, the scientific exploration, the aesthetic exploration and the crazy stunt heavy excursions we went on ah yeah like I said I almost kept this because I love it but I decided it should be auctioned off as part of this auction I hope you want to put it in your house I do not want you to bolt either of these things to any car you might have and I will not help you just to state that out at the front but yes two lots of rocket motors at your disposal you can own a genuine piece of Mythbusters history.

I will sign both of these and uh yeah don't try this at home thank you guys so much I will see you next time oh I forgot one last thing sorry come on back uh the url is propstore.com mythbusters all proceeds from the sale go to benefit the Grant and Mahara Steam foundation there you go now I'll see you later.

Auction Details

The two rocket motors being auctioned off are genuine pieces of Mythbusters history, signed by the engineers who worked on them. The motors were used in a final season episode where the team paid for good quality rockets that had been fired before, ensuring they came from a working chemistry. These rocket motors exemplify the engineering, scientific exploration, and aesthetic exploration that defined the Mythbusters series.

The auction is part of an online sale benefiting the Grant and Mahara Steam foundation. The proceeds will go towards supporting educational programs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: engreetings everybody adam savage here surrounded by mythbusters props for an excellent reason  uh the props behind me have spent the last decade touring as part of a traveling mythbusters the  explosive exhibition exhibit and i hope you got a chance to see it i am very proud of  that exhibit and the ways in which it broke new ground for traveling museum exhibits  but if you didn't get a chance to see it you won't because it's not happening anymore um  but that's the bad news the good news is is all these props are now going to be auctioned off by  prop store uh to benefit the grant maharashtrian foundation so it's your chance to get a piece of  mythbusters history into your collection and the piece i want to highlight in this video  might not look like much but it is a super vital and important piece of mythbusters history and  it's all about the rockets what we have here are two triple rocket stacks that it's not going too  far to say that they represent the entirety of mythbusters run between these two objects um okay  mythbusters owes i think it's early success to the popularity socially of the idea of a darwin award  back in the early aughts in the early days of the internet's popularity there was a lot of attention  paid to the darwin awards these are awards given to people who supposedly helped darwin out by  thinning the herd by removing themselves from the gene pool because they were dumb or stupidno judgment really but the most famous early darwin award was about a a guy who supposedly  found what's called a jado jet assisted takeoff rocket these are used to help giant transport  planes get enough forward momentum to leave a short runway and he took this genesis to take off  rocket bolted it to the top of his chevy impala and supposedly took off at 350 miles an hour  across the desert hit a ramp flew a mile through the air and embedded into a cliff where he became  some tiny chunk of metal to be discovered and unpacked by some sheriff years later  totally not true completely didn't happen but a very testable set of assertions uh and in fact the  rocket car episode was the final episode we shot in the summer of 2002 for the mythbuster pilots  it was the first time i'd ever been to the desert let alone filming in the desert it was so early in  mythbusters history we didn't know that when you go to the desert you should bring a lot of easy up  tents so you have some shade that's how ridiculously naive we were about filming  back then um and to be clear we could not get the military wait wait i'm getting ahead of myself we  made the rocket car episode three separate times in mythbusters history it is without a doubt the  most expensive set of experiments all told when you join them together that we ever conducted  uh and it was both awesome and a spectacular failure in some regards um but it all begins  with these guys this is the rocket stack i built in 2002 uh and it's made to house three  if i remember correctly their n motors i can't quite remember the size um just remember when  you were practicing with your little estes rockets and those are like b's and c's and d's  the letters keep going i think these were m's or n's and these are r's if i'm not incorrect  so the reason we used uh uh commercial motors was because the military wouldn't give us a  genesis and take off rocket in fact um in a classic uh a depiction of military efficiency  they said no to us three times we called them they said no we called them again they said no and then  six months after they said no that second time they called us back to say hey we're just letting  you know no again they're just very very thorough so we couldn't get a jado we had to invent our  own and what we needed to do was we needed to replicate both the amount of power the jado had  and its firing time so the jado fires for like 15 seconds or something like that so what we  decided to do was to take these commercial rockets stack them on top of each other and  stagger their release so we get both the power we wanted and the length of time of the burn i welded  this together in jamie's shop i specifically remember it had been a long time since i had done  a lot of welding and it it is really delightful when you've got some heavy steel tube and you've  got this nice angle to go in there and lay the speed i just remember an entire day of  how much how satisfying it was to lay down the beads on all of these and then to design this  frame to bolt to the top of the chevy impala and when i did it i was embarking on a practice that  i would do countless more times in the course of mythbusters which was trying to picture  all of the forces that would be on this thing and how to counteract them right so this is bolting  to the roof of a chevy impala if it's going to go at 350 miles per hour that's a certain amount of  torque i needed to build this frame to be able to accommodate that amount of torque without tearing  itself off the car and flying into the into the ether or into us this was my attempt to do that  um i will tell you that when we got to the mojave desert we had a guy out there who was known as the  mayor of mohave back then and he took one look at this he'd been part of several rocket cars out on  the flats and he was like that's not going to work that's going to tear right off the roof of the car  and my producers were like adam is that true is that going to tear off the roof of the car and i  looked at it and i looked at all of the thought process i had about spreading the load and  it wasn't just this frame there was a whole internal frame in the car that this bolted to  so i was spreading the look i built this so that you could have lifted the car up  by this rocket stack and turn it vertically and it wouldn't have affected its movement on the car  that's the strength i built it to have and so when my producers came to me and said dude this  guy who's supposedly an expert is telling us this won't work what do you say and i said i think it's  going to work just fine i disagree with him it was a difficult moment to disagree with the expert  and yet reader i was right i almost kept this piece for myself i have a great love  and affection for this this typifies the kind of unbelievable scope we were able to do in  those first three pilots um it is a spectacular execution of a story we were in a helicopter  chasing this thing across the desert it didn't get to 350 miles an hour it got to about 130 140  which is still pretty significant um we got pulled over on the way to los on the way south  to the mojave desert we got pulled over by the side of the road by a cop who just said  what is that what the hell is that i'm required to pull you over just to ask what that is  um and then we said we're making this new tv show and he was like okay sure whatever  and let us go so this was the first rocket car episode there was a second rocket car episode  we did in the middle of mythbusters run and in this we were able to afford much bigger rockets  um i think we only needed two at that time that's what the r motors were right they were really long  and really powerful there's just this thing which is uh rocket fuel solid rocket fuel which is what  these were built with um is made in batches and when you have rockets made out of solid rocket  fuel you want to make sure that the batch you got is a good batch and so there are two prices  in some of these rockets one price is they make a batch and they just sell you those rockets  and that's the inexpensive version another one is they make a batch they fire off every other  rocket in the batch thus the ones that remain you are far more assured that they come from a working  chemistry the problem is those rockets cost twice as much so in that middle mythbusters rocket car  episode this is the first one this is the last one the middle one the rockets don't exist because we  bought the inexpensive rockets and they blew up on the stand they they yeah they detonated  before they ever got to launch our chevy impala and this is one where technically that's a  disaster right discovery has paid 150 000 extra dollars for this episode because we've told them  of chevy impala is going to fly across the desert and the not only does it not fly across the desert  but it eliminates any possibility of flying across the desert this impala which we dragged  with cables with a mechanical switch that would fire the rockets at the exact moment it was the  bottom of the ramp to get the speed up so that when left the ramp would actually be flying  all of our systems that jamie and i arranged and engineered worked perfectly the only thing  that didn't was the one thing that wasn't our purview which was the actual rocket motors  cut two a couple years later we convinced discovery to pony up the doe for a third  rocket car episode this is in the final season and this time we paid for the good rockets that we  came from a batch we knew you could see it here on here it says rocket motor and then it says  uh lot number right doesn't it say lot yeah lot 97 yeah this is this is what we're talking about  this is really specific like you pay for the ones where you know that batch has been fired  um we busted it again we busted this myth three times but these six these two rocket stacks  of six motors really sort of exemplify to me the whole history of the engineering  the scientific exploration the aesthetic exploration and the crazy stunt heavy excursions  we went on ah yeah like i said i almost kept this because i love it but i decided it should  be auctioned off as part of this auction i hope you want to put it in your house i do  not want you to bolt either of these things to any car you might have and i will not help you  i just want to state that out at the front but yes two lots of rocket motors at your disposal  you can own a genuine piece of mythbusters history um i will sign both of these and uh  yeah don't try this at home thank you guys so much i will see you next time oh i forgot  one last thing sorry come on back uh the url is propstore.com mythbusters all proceeds from the  sale go to benefit the grant and mahara steam foundation there you go now i'll see you lateryou\n"