Tomorrowland: Frank and Athena

Chapter 4 - Dreams of Fancy Flights

The greyhound bus rolled down the highway, Frank looking out the window and reliving the memory of testing his peroxide rocket. A week ago Saturday, he pedaled his bike at 4am to a remote location out of town. A rickety trailer was attached to the bike, built out of spare lumber and wheels he scavenged from the junkyard. Within the trailer was his peroxide rocket and his Launch Control Center – which was a battery and a large button reclaimed from an old radio. By 8am, he'd been rolling back to the farm chock-full of the joy of triumph in his heart.

Fortunately, the weather cooperated with unseasonable February warmness with barely any snow on the ground. The launch had been a complete success, with the Rocket Gods smiling on him as they even allowed him to find the rocket with a couple of hours of searching. Frank knew recovery was often the most difficult part of a rocket launch and he was very happy that he found it with minimal trouble. The fact that the rocket had worked was a relief, not only because it represented a lot of hard work, but also because he now saw it as stepping stone to other things. Bigger things.

On this note, he was heading to the nearby University library hoping to do some research. There was a device he'd been watching for several years, hungrily looking at various science magazines, hoping for more news. It was a rocket worn on people's back that allowed them to fly. Fly like Superman or something. They were called "jetpacks," and the idea had set his imagination ablaze.

But he'd been very frustrated, because while there was much talk and lots of excitement, there was very little actual results. He read about some development here, or a little demonstration there, but he wanted jetpacks he could use. Frank would daydream about flying to school, casually landing in front of his classroom with the other kids staring open-mouthed at him.

"Morning, guys," Frank would say casually in his daydream. "Nice day for flying, eh?" He'd hang up his jetpack on a rack, like a coat. There couldn't possibly be anything cooler than this.

Several weeks ago, however, he spotted something that had to be an omen of some sort. He'd read about one version produced by Bell Aircraft that used hydrogen peroxide as a fuel, and suddenly the idea of a jetpack seemed real. Not just real in the sense that someone else might have jetpacks, but real in the sense that he could have a jetpack.

Now his rocket launch a week ago wasn't just about launching a rocket. It was about whether he had a working rocket engine that just might be adaptable to personal jetpack flight.

Since he'd read about the Bell jetpack, he'd scoured books and magazines for anything he could find about how to build one. Unfortunately, information was sparse and engineering diagrams nonexistent. He did find some pictures, however, and traced diagrams as best he could from them, but it was definitely difficult to get information out of that.

He made a plan to take the bus to the University library about forty miles away, which was much bigger and would have a better selection of books on control systems that he could use to develop his jetpack. The local library didn't have much in the way of deep technical books, which he knew was needed if his project was to be a success.

The bus rumbled down the road, Frank alternating between thinking about plans for his jetpack and imagining himself flying with it on his back, until he finally reached his stop mid-morning. He exited the bus near the university, bright sunshine and a cool breeze hitting him in the face, feeling like it would be a great day for flying – if only he had a working jetpack. He started off toward the campus; he'd been here before when he needed more information, so knew just where to go. Surely a full-blown university library would have something about building jetpacks.

Several hours later, Frank sat in the library, surrounded by various books on rockets and how they were controlled. Unfortunately, he wasn't finding anything particularly useful for jetpacks. He wasn't expecting a book like How to Build a Jetpack in Five Easy Steps, but he'd hoped there might be something on the subject. However, eventually he had to face the reality that information that specific simply didn't exist.