OFF: Re: Nominee for this year's Darwin Awards

[Stephen Swann]

M Holmes writes:
>
> Rocker22 at aol.com writes:
>
> > It seems that nowadays, ANYONE can be a rocket scientist.  However, according
> > to this story, one's career as a rocket scientist can be somewhat short...
>
> Short but spectacular. The guy must have got quite a rush. I
> particularly liked the part about him braking. At 350mph he might as
> well have flashed the hazard lights.

A guy that I know (the father of one of my friends) built a working
scale model of a jet engine as an after-hours project, when he was
working at Being or some such aerospace corporation.

When he and his co-workers fired it up, the tail flame burned a giant
hole in the wall, and the force of it tore the top off the workbench
it was bolted to, and bounced it across the room, before the casing
cracked open and the whole thing went up in a fireball.

He claims their supervisor just looked at the wreckage the next day,
said, "I don't want to know," and walked away.  :-)

Steve
swann at panix.com