Rocket PoweR, InteRstellaR tRavel and eteRnal lIfe
Rocket PoweR, InteRstellaR tRavel and eteRnal lIfe
Rocket PoweR, InteRstellaR tRavel and eteRnal lIfe
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
Perhaps the last documented demonstration<br />
use of the rocket engine was<br />
that photographed in 1934 at Colussy’s<br />
Airport in Coudersport, Pennsylvania.<br />
116 Hungerford was accompanied<br />
by Charles A. Osman (? – before 1963)<br />
inside the rocket car with the temperature<br />
reaching 140 F inside the car as it<br />
rocketed along the l<strong>and</strong>ing field. 117 An<br />
undated clip from an Elmira newspaper<br />
shows the rocket car in operation at<br />
the Colussy Airport. The caption says<br />
Osman, “kept one h<strong>and</strong> on a fire extinguisher,<br />
which he was ready to use if<br />
necessary. Mr. Hungerford is fitting his<br />
car with a larger vaporizing pump to<br />
increase the efficiency of his rocket<br />
apparatus.” 118<br />
Cliff Towner recalled a story told to<br />
him by Daniel Hungerford about being<br />
stopped on a return from Coudersport<br />
by a state trooper on a motorcycle.<br />
He said the trooper didn’t believe<br />
the car would actually run under<br />
rocket power <strong>and</strong> insisted on a<br />
demonstration. Reluctantly, Dan<br />
said he complied with the trooper’s<br />
request <strong>and</strong> proceed to give<br />
him a demonstration on the highway.<br />
Unfortunately, the uneven<br />
roads of the time, combined with<br />
the thrust of the liquid fuel, caused<br />
considerable vibration resulting in<br />
a very large bolt flying through the<br />
side of the rocket car <strong>and</strong> narrowly<br />
missing the trooper, who was riding<br />
alongside on his cycle. 119<br />
The Potter County, Pennsylvania<br />
Enterprise in 1958 noted that the<br />
Hungerford rocket car had been the<br />
first car “to be licensed by the State of<br />
Pennsylvania to operate by rocket<br />
power.” It is possible the newspaper<br />
reporter confused New York <strong>and</strong><br />
Pennsylvania registration for the vehicle.<br />
In any case, after interviewing<br />
Daniel Hungerford in 1958, the paper<br />
learned that the Hungerford brothers<br />
valued the vehicle at “easily a billion<br />
dollars” with the Smithsonian<br />
Institution having made bid for it.<br />
Twenty-fours years before the Potter<br />
Enterprise ran an advertisement indicat-<br />
Figure 15. In a letter addressed December 29, 1933 to Daniel Hungerford from<br />
“Buck Rogers,” a writer complemented Hungerford “doing humanity a real service.<br />
<strong>Rocket</strong> airplanes, rocket automobiles, etc., will undoubtedly be the great important<br />
development in transportation.”<br />
26 Daniel <strong>and</strong> Floyd Hungerford: <strong>Rocket</strong> Power, Interstellar Travel <strong>and</strong> Eternal Life, by Geofrey N. Stein