Posted September 24, 2009

Another day we were looking for a new way to launch a vehicle, to store energy - but not a flywheel or a spring. Suddenly we hit upon making hydrogen from water (H₂O, as you may recall from 7th grade science class. I was the one that sat up front with the thick glasses and pocket protector. I love this stuff.)

We tried it, running the juice from several D-cell batteries through water, just like in science class, and using a barbeque grill spark mechanism to ignite it, and BOOM!!!! It explodes. Wow, or rather “Eureka!”, as one is supposed to exclaim at such moments, "That was cool." What can we do with this?" we asked ourselves. 

            

We had been here once years before, and not answered this question, or maybe we had failed to ask the question at all. This time it seemed instantly obvious: a rocket! In an afternoon or so, we had the world’s first hydrogen-powered toy rocket, and within weeks we had it licensed to Estes, a company known for selling black powder rockets pretty much since the Chinese first invented them. It was the quickest we ever licensed a product.

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