Eponymously Yours, W. Skeffington Higgins

I am grateful to someone named John, who posted interesting news to sci.space.history. Good old archive.org has dredged up a scan of A4 Fibel, the A-4 (V-2) missile operating manual, decorated with cartoons and poems to keep the German Army rocketeers entertained.
The A-4 is better known as the V-2. Over 3000 were fired during World War II, delivering a 1-ton warhead to targets over 300 kilometers away from the launch site. It represented a huge advance in rocket technology; postwar long range missiles and space rockets evolved from the A-4's design.

The manual is a curious artifact. Drawings of the A-4 and its launch equipment are mingled with cartoons featuring German soldiers and their sexy girlfriends. The unsubtle metaphor is that you should treat the missile with the care and attention you would give your favorite woman.

I imagine this is a common theme in military manuals. Though I am not familiar with much of the literature, it put me in mind of my first encounter with DA Pam 750-30, The M16A1 Rifle: Operation and Preventive Maintenance , which was illustrated by the great comics artist Will Eisner. (Eisner's drawings were MUCH better; though it must be conceded that the 1969 US Army also used better-quality reproduction than the 1944 Wehrmacht.)

The back cover features a poem exhorting the A-4 crewman to "Hold Your Tongue!" and keep quiet about the information he has learned. Interestingly, it also contains an apology, reminding the reader that, although it has been presented with jokes and cartoons, this is a serious subject.

Halt Deinen Mund!
Hast Du die Fibel mit Verstand gelesen
und bist dabei recht aufmerksam gewesen,
so denke stets daran, mein lieber Leser,
der hier gebot'ne Stoff ist ein gefährlich böser!
Ein einzig Wort in froher Tafelrunde
und aus ist's mit der Ruh' seit dieser Stunde!
Dich flieht der Schlaf, und rub'los denkst Du nachts im Bette
wenn ich Kamel doch nur geschwiegen hütte!

Siehst Du, so ist die Sache nicht etwa gedacht,
deswegen haben wir die Fibel nicht gemacht,
wir wollten nur die Schwierigkeiten mildern
durch amüsanten Text mit vielen Bildern;
doch diese leichte Form, das musst Du stets beachten,
gibt Dir kein Recht, das Ganze witzig zu betrachten!

Vor allem dient der Inhalt ernsten Zwecken
und ist vor Freund und Feind gleich peinlich zu verstecken.
Kein Wort darüber, wenn Dich auch der Hafer sticht,
Dich schnappt man dann sofort, sobald der andre spricht!
Drum präg' Dir ein, ganz fest, zu jeder Stund'
Wer Dich auch immer fragt:
Halt Deinen Mund!!

(Here's Google's crude machine translation of the poem.)

I suppose there must be scholarship somewhere that considers the military training manual as literature. This was, at the time, by far the most complicated rocket ever built, and hundreds or thousands of soldiers were trained in transporting, preparing, fueling, and firing it. That's a tall order for the author of the manual.

Mac Montandon's new book Jetpack Dreams has just been published. I met Mac at the Rocketbelt Convention in 2006, and since then we have corresponded occasionally. He set out to chronicle the past and future of the jetpack, and emotions about the jetpack.

It's being promoted very effectively, having been reviewed by Wall Street Journal, Time, and GQ. And it popped up at Boingboing yesterday.

Mac has also started a Jetpack Dreams blog and you can read excerpts from the book at his site. I liked this:

As I began telling friends and colleagues about my plan, I quickly realized that I was far from alone. In fact, just about every (male) friend I told, regardless of age, responded with what can only be called spazzy enthusiasm. One guy, a majestically ironic twenty-something magazine editor, confessed manically to me: “Yes! Yes, totally. I remember sitting in class when I was a little kid just wishing I could blast off with a jetpack and get out of there.” He gripped the side of his chair to demonstrate and shook like a hipster epileptic while making throaty blast-off noises: “Shhhhrrrrrruugghhhh!”

We were having lunch in one of those Manhattan restaurants where the wait staff consists entirely of supermodels, and by acting so publicly geeky, he was ensuring that he would never get to date one. By extension, my friend was basically telling me that he’d rather talk about jetpacks than have sex with a supermodel.

I am braced for the possibility that Jetpack Dreams will not be entirely flattering. One review quotes a description of rocket belt enthusiasts: "These are the anonymous, doughy faces of obsession." But since the book does seem to address certain aspects of the twenty first-century Zetgeist, it may prove to be popular.

The most remarkable thing about the launch (sorry, I can't help myself) of this book is that it comes with a trailer. That's right, a trailer.


Jetpack Dreams Trailer from Mac Montandon on Vimeo.

More books should have trailers, I think.

You may recall that I attended the Rocketbelt Convention last year, had a wonderful time, met old rocket belt hands and new inventors, and (twice) watched GoFast rocket belt flights.

On 11 and 12 August-- the weekend after next-- a second Rocketbelt Convention will be held in Niagara Falls, New York. It will be part of the Thunder of Niagara Air Show that weekend, at the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station.

I understand there will be talks in a building on the airbase. Once again, former Bell Aerospace rocket belt pilots will be speaking. These guys were involved not only in the rocket belt, but in X-planes, Rogallo wings, VTOLs, and the Apollo program. Their stories are well worth hearing.

Even more next-generation belt builders will be on hand, along with some of their hardware. And there will again be rocket belt flights by the Jetpack International folks, sponsored by GoFast energy drink, still my favorite energy drink (though I've never tasted any).

If you like, while you're nearby, you can visit the Niagara Aerospace Museum in downtown Niagara Falls, which is mighty good.

This is your chance to see a man fly. Along with a bunch of more conventional aircraft. And to meet some peroxide-powered legends. Tell 'em I sent you. And spread the word.

Every night of the rocket belt conference, I worked to put a selection of photos on the Web and to write a little bit about them.

Last night Make magazine asked permission to post my photos to their blog.

New Scientist has linked to my Flickr photo collection.

Yesterday I wrote a posting for sci.space.history on Usenet. The Make editor liked this enough to run it.

And Xeni Jardin at Boingboing points to one of my Livejournal entries.

There's another account of the Rocketbelt Convention by Billy Paul at Gizmag.com. It's good.

The mother lode of this stuff is Peter Gijsbert's site. Peter has also used one of my photos on his main page.

I see Lockport paper covered Saturday's flight.

I think there are about 100 people attending. Today: juicy talks about Bell history, then a flight in the street outside the Niagara Aerospace Museum.



( More words and pictures )
Go Fast, by the way, is an energy drink. It is the only energy drink that has arranged for me to witness a rocket belt flight. At the moment, it is my FAVORITE energy drink. I wonder what it tastes like.

There will be another flight tomorrow on Third Street, immediately north of the big Seneca Casino.

Get to downtown Niagara Falls by 3:30 PM and you can see it.

In 1992, somebody asked about jetpacks, and I dipped into my Aircars And Other Weird Flying Vehicles file to explain them. Here is that posting, with addresses redacted by latterday Google archives.

( Rocket Belt and WASP (was Re: Jetpack) )

I can scarcely believe this:

A convention for rocket belt enthusiasts is being organized.

Niagara Falls, New York. Saturday and Sunday, 23 and 24 September, 2006.

Four Bell Rocket Belt pilots have committed to appear.

A bunch of new-generation rocket-belt builders will attend.

Wow.

Thanks to Peter Gijsberts, who runs a Web site on all matters rocketbelty.