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Hydrogen !!!
Early to mid 1960's South of Houston. Put one large roll of Dry Cleaner's plastic bag material, a continuous "tube" of the plastic material that dry cleaners use to cover clothes, with 2 LARGE rolls of commercial grade aluminum foil and several kids that have way too much time on their hands. We added several 5 gallon glass water bottles, a fair quantity of lye and some H2O.
We were attempting, with the "Prototype", to fill a small sized envelope with the Hydrogen, that was generated in a Bottle from strips of the foil, lye and H2O when the WHOLE GARAGE WENT BANG !!!! Luckily, it didn't set fire to the house, but it blew all of the windows in the garage out. After we replaced all of the glass, we held some very long "Think Sessions" to prevent this from happening again.
(You must keep in mind that this took place in the immediate vicinity of the Houston NASA facility and several of the participant's parents worked there .)
Once we got the Hydrogen generation system worked out, we assembled a VERY long/tall balloon from the "Laundry Bag" material. Inside of the envelope were the 2 rolls of Aluminum Foil (Radar Reflectors), attached to the top and unrolled inside the tube. We filled the tube with enough Hydrogen to lift it, attached ballast weights to keep it vertical and then attached a chemical delay ignition system, of my design, to it and let her fly !!!
It was at about 2200 when we released it and it went way the hell up, and then it ignited!! Huge fireball and then LOTS of Jets flying all over the place.
There were rumors of UFOs etc, but it has been a mystery..... until now.
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Martin sends.
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