Here is the “modern” version of the Sky Cycle as built by Scott Traux. The vehicle will be powered by a steam rocket like the original. Some safety changes have been made but overall this thing is very true to the original Sky Cycle.

We’re not sure how we have missed this story for so long but the long and short of it is that within two months, there’s going to be another attempt made to jump the Snake River Canyon in Idaho. Evel Knievel was the guy who made the first attempt 40 years ago and failed to clear the gap as the parachute deployed early (by what means have never been determined) and the “Sky Cycle” plummeted to the canyon floor roughly a quarter mile below. Knievel narrowly escaped death as his belts would not release. The whole thing was a bit of a circus with Hell’s Angels providing security and a generally wild scene happening all around the jump site. There was a massive closed circuit television feed run in movie theaters across the country which did not live up to expectations and the peak of the launch ramp both physically and metaphorically represented the height of Knievel’s career. After the Canyon jump failure, his career declined precipitously…..but that’s the past.

The current effort is headed up by Scott Truax, the son of Bob Truax who was the engineer that designed all of the “science” aspects of the original jump. Truax built the Sky Cycle, the ramp, and the rocket that powered the craft itself. He was a brilliant mind who worked in the defense industry for years on advanced projects and stuff that would spin normal guys like us out pretty much instantly. Scott’s motivation is to illustrate that the engineering and principles behind the original jump were sound and things just didn’t go as planned. This isn’t a “we hope to do this” type thing. The ramp is built. Literally. The rocket is all but finished. They have even found a guy to ride/drive/fly the thing in the form of Eddie Braun, who makes his living as a Hollywood stunt man.

Propulsion will come from a steam rocket just like the original and the landing area is the same bean field that Evel was supposed to “touch down” in back in 1974. We have a video of Braun below that gives a quick glimpse into the project and some of the things he says and does are eerily similar to the statements and private thoughts of Knievel in 1974. Having just read a book that spends a great amount of time on the details of the jump, we’re as familiar as we can get with the whole setup and cannot wait to see this happen….and succeed. That’s right, we think that they are going to do it. Why?

While the original Sky Cycle wasn’t anything that would carry a man to the moon, the vehicle was designed for one purpose and that was a pretty short (relatively speaking) flight over a canyon. The rocket was a proven commodity having been tested many times for power and reliability, and the actual jump math with respect to trajectory and other elements was done by an actual rocket scientist who had been on projects of far greater technological magnitude. In short, Bob Traux was the best part of then original effort and there’s not a lot of reason to doubt his work. While the men on the current project may not want to say it, we think that the meat in the seat was the problem on the first jump.

The story has been making the rounds on the local news and in the general area but we only learned of it when we saw some photos of the launch ramp being built pop up on Facebook. Once we saw those we went face first into the whole thing and discovered that this isn’t some lame brained deal, these guys have the plan, the gumption, and the chutzpah to pull this off. As we mentioned earlier, the attempt will be made in September or October of this year.

WE’LL KEEP YOU POSTED AS WE LEARN MORE ABOUT THE RETURN TO SNAKE RIVER CANYON JUMP BUT PLAN ON THIS BEING FLIPPING AWESOME – WE THINK THEY CAN DO IT!

Here’s the ramp, which is eerily similar to the first one…because it should be. Bob Traux’s math is what determined the launch angle and all. The team is sticking to those calculations.

Here’s the business end of the machine that Eddie Braun will “fly” over the Snake River Canyon. If successful, it will be a validation of Bob Traux’s design work and it will be confirmation that Eddie Braun has the biggest balls of any man who has ever walked the face of the Earth.