Do not try what you're about to see at home.
We're what you call experts.
On this episode of Mythbusters,
the Hyneman and Captain Red Beard
take a swing at a pirate movie myth.
It is another remote control rig for making Jamie dance.
Knock yourself out, buddy.
Imprisoned inside a bone-cage,
can you swing across a ravine...
I think I'm gonna throw up.
and climb to safety?
Meanwhile, Kari, Tory and Grant,
roll out the mythical barrel.
It's a whole new meaning to "fire in the hole", doesn't it?
Testing the urban legend
that a drum, methanol, and a flame
could send a barrel of ballistics...
That thing might explode.
and turn a gocart turbo.
Who are the mythbusters?
Adam Savage...
I reject your reality and substitute my own.
and Jamie Hyneman.
We're gonna have an adventure.
Between them, more than 30 years of special effects experience.
Together with Tory Belleci...
Let's torch this thing!
Grant Imahara...
Save yourselves.
and Kari Byron.
Best job ever!
They don't just tell the myths,
they put them to the test.
First up, Adam and Jamie get savvy with a movie myth.
Oh, great, pirates again.
Yes, pirates.
What could be the matter with that?
Well, what's the story?
All right, the story we are dealing this time
comes from "The Pirates of The caribbean 2".
There is a sequence in which our heros
that's hanging in a ravine.
It's quite similar to this toy, released in conjunction with the film.
And anyway, they start using body weight
to swing this bone cage over to the side of the cliff
and catch onto it, holding onto vines.
Then they're able to climb the cliff using the vines,
and engineer their escape.
That's what we've gotta do.
You're not gonna be using that pirate voice the whole time, are you?
I don't have to, but I like to,
some of the time at least.
By rattling their cage,
this band of buccaneers swings to the cliff.
But do the film-make physics check out?
Could you really create enough momentum to swing high
and then peg-leg it up a precipice?
So what's the plan?
Well, everything about this story involves the bone cage.
So I think we need to start there.
And it's got to be pretty strong,
because in the movie,
it's holding up to six people.
And I think we should plan for that.
And it's gotta to be really light,
because we're gonna have to hall it up a cliff.
Exactly, and it should look like bones.
I think we can achieve that.
Let's go downstairs and build it.
All right.
Ultimately, the mythbusters
will be incarcerated inside a bone cage.
Right, Jamie, I'm ready for testing.
But first, they've got to create it.
That is beautiful.
105.
Great.
8 struts are bent and welded together
to form a pumpkin like globe.
This is our sphere, or at least it will be.
You know, right now it's kind of flimsy.
But by the time we're done with it,
we're gonna triangulate all over the place,
and it will be kind of like a organic geodesic dome,
and it should be quite sturdy.
Yep, the lattice work of steel support
is welded into place to strengthen the ball.
And although it looks simple,
it's engineered to ensure that failure is not an option.
We've gone with this construction method,
the light-weight thin-wall steel tube
and washers at every A-packs
to make this thing super strong,
cause we're gonna to hang six people in it.
But we also want it as light as possible.
We gotta try and walk it up the wall at the end.
When I am the evil overlord,
I will certainly keep my prisoners in something just like this.
And I think we have done it.
But, to make sure we are gonna hang it from the ceiling,
Jamie and I are gonna get inside of it, and see how we feel.
We are also going to try and swing it, and see if that is possible.
Like a stink punk Cinderella,
Adam needs to test out his giant pumpkin
and before the pirate ball.
Oh, holy crap!
Haha, yeah, all right, come on in.
This is a crucial proof of concept...
Well, it certainly seems like it's supporting us.
And it's so far so good.
And back.
So now, will it swing?
And back.
And out, it's swinging.
Yeah.
Hey, it's working.
Surprisingly, getting the cage to move appears to be child's play.
This is like my dream jungle gym when I was ten years old.
But will it be this easy when they take it full scale?
This isn't bad.
Jamie and I have run our bone cage through enough paces.
We're really confident in it from mechanical and safety standpoint.
Now the only question is,
it doesn't quite look like a bone cage.
So, now we're gonna do a little aesthetics of it.
Seems like we're spending a lot of time
pulling tape off rolls these days.
And been giving us some paddings,
so we are not beating our heads against the steel.
And once the cage is padded,
it's time to bone up.
The skulls and cross bones give it that cinematic, cannibalistic feel.
Here, man, that tells a story.
And before long, the cage is fit for a pirate.
It's done?
It's done.
Can we get it out of here?
Sure.
Now, to get to the bottom of a ballistic barrel.
Okay, so I've got a myth about
oil drums, gocarts, and jet fuel.
Gee, sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.
Pretty much!
Okay, this is a myth that comes from some of our European fans.
Apparently this guy was watching a video
about whoosh rockets on the internet.
Oh yeah, those are the things
where instead of using water pressure for thrust,
they use jet fuel, right?
Yeah. Well, this guy was watching something like you describe,
but he decided he was gonna take it up a notch
by using a 55 gallon oil drum,
strapping it to a gocart, and adding jet fuel.
And don't tell me, he jumps on, lights it,
and goes for the ride of his life.
At crazy speed.
Well, if this works, I say we all go for a ride.
Of course you do.
The details of this urban myth are surprisingly precise.
4 gallons of methanol inside a 55 gallon drum,
plus a flame,
and you'll get the rocket ride of your life.
But is a break neck barrel run realistic,
or is it all hot air?
All right, on the surface,
it sounds straightforward to test.
We take a gocart, strap a 55 gallon drum to it,
fill with fuel, jump on it, light it and go.
Or we don't jump on it,
we light it remotely, we stand really far back.
Yeah, that's probably safer.
It's not all that outlandish to think that someone would super size
this concept into a full-sized barrel.
Cause the whoosh rocket
is a fairly common science demonstration.
I'm gonna show you.
It's your methanol, agitate, and ignite.
Just like that.
What happens is that
you ignite the vapor inside the bottle,
those expanding gases push out of the nozzle,
that creates thrust and sends you right across the parking lot.
But the question is,
if you super size those ingredients,
will you get the crazy speeds of the myth?
Okay, get off, the rollers does work.
This could be awesome!
To get that drum rolling, it's off to location.
A jet gocart with methanol.
I love it!
We've come out to the alameda county sheriff's bomb range,
so we can test our methanol gocart,
which basically requires a 55 gallon drum,
So it rolls.
fashioned by the gocart,
and powered with four gallons of methanol, as per to the myth.
I'm really curious to see if this is gonna shoot down the road
or possibly just blow up into a million pieces.
Don't worry, this ain't gonna hurt a bit.
With a risk-taking rider strapped on,
it's time to add that mythical methanol to the mix.
All right. That's four gallons.
Agitate it a little bit.
Just like the mini whoosh rocket, the fuel needs a nudge...
Looks like you have done this before.
Agitate?
Yes.
to create a potentially explosive mix with the air.
Finally, Grant fits a flare to a remote control car to trigger ignition
and possibly send the barrel rocketing.
All right, here we go.
This is barrel gocart in 3, 2, 1.
We've achieved the hole.
The fire is in the hole.
Doesn't looks like it is going in the hole.
No ignition.
Fire in the hole!
I think it is in the hole, guys.
Unlike the myth,
the flare doesn't ignite the fuel,
and the cart goes nowhere.
That was anti-climactic.
Anti-climactic is an understatement.
Oh, the car maybe on fire.
But if at first you don't succeed...
Maybe the guy in the myth just got lucky.
And had the right air-to-fuel ratio,
so that when it did introduce the flame, it took off flying.
Here you go.
So, we're gonna reset this time,
we're gonna agitate the barrel a little bit longer,
and we're gonna put the flare inside the barrel.
Gives a whole new meaning to "fire in the hole", doesn't it?
Hopefully, this time we'll get enough thrust,
and this thing gets fired up.
In theory, more agitation should mean
a more explosive mix of fuel and air.
But will it get them a rocket barrel?
Fire in the hole. In 3, 2, 1.
There is a little bit move.
It's still going! It's still going!
Push the barrel out.
And it actually ran up to the road a little.
It's not gonna beat any land speed records.
But the team has not even scraped the bottom of this ballistic barrel.
You know what I would like to see now,
I think we should take this to small scale,
and find out if we have the perfect amount of fuel.
Maybe less, maybe more.
And we could actually get enough thrust to make the gocart go.
All right, so back to the shop.
Back to the shop!
Coming up.
Well, our bone cage is full of pirates!
We're gonna do some scientific experiments on them.
And later.
This thing is going to be insane!
At the end of their rope,
six scurvy dogs sway themselves to freedom.
But is this daring film feat a swing or a myth?
To find out, Adam and Jamie have picked their bones,
so now, to get them suspended.
If we are gonna to test this "ball of bone" swing
from "The Pirates of the Caribbean",
we're gonna need a big cliff.
Found one!
All right, dude!
I am standing in the fire training tower
in the Santa Rosa fire department.
This is the building they were repeatedly set on fire,
and then put out.
It's 75 feet tall,
and it makes a perfect configurable cliff face
for our swinging bone cage experiments.
What's next?
Well, this is about pirates, isn't it?
Yeah.
I don't see any pirate costume.
You little faith. Give me a second.
Right, Jamie, I'm ready for testing.
What, no gold teeth?
Oh, crap, I forgot about that part.
- All right, let's get in! - Okay.
What, are you gonna try your swing thing like we did in the shop
with your legs dangling through?
- Yeah. - All right.
- Ready? - Yeah.
Freshly imprisoned, the scurvy dogs
try to strike up some momentum.
This is without a doubt
the strangest dance we've ever done.
By moving back and forth,
they should create enough push to get to the wall.
Come on. Come on!
But unlike their success in the shop,
they're not budging.
I have an idea.
So they change tactics to the standing swing.
I almost lost me hat.
That would have been ugly.
Grab my arm like this.
Now, what if I went like this,
and then you came like that, and let go over there.
In theory, to get the bone cage swinging,
Adam and Jamie need to raise and lower the center of gravity of the ball
by using their own mass.
Come on.
We don't seem to be moving at all.
Though we are pushing in the right direction.
It's not working.
However, so far,
no matter how they throw their weight around,
it's not enough to get a significant swing.
Adam even tries thinking outside the cage.
That's more promising.
But cheating still doesn't get the ball rocking.
I'm not sure, Jamie.
We seem to have a lot more luck in the shop than we are here,
and I thought it would be easier on the longer arm.
Yeah, it seems like it might actually be harder.
It does!
And the lack of swing isn't the only problem.
I think I'm gonna throw up.
I am having a kind of powerful, nauseous reaction.
- Why wouldn't you hop out? - Yeah.
With Adam benched for ball cage duty,
it is over to Jamie to swing solo.
Well, Adam threw in the towel,
he got a little sea sick, I guess.
So, I'm gonna see if I can do anything by myself.
The idea of being in it, if you removed variables,
maybe you can figure out what actually makes this thing work,
Adam being a variable, which he usually is.
And although Jamie experiments with a variety of techniques,
the problem remains the same.
I don't seem to be having a lot of luck
getting this thing to swing from a dead stop.
But then, it weighs more than I do.
So, maybe the problem is
that there's not enough mass move around to dominate what it does.
In the movie, after all,
they had a number of people doing this.
And so, maybe that's what we need to do.
Maybe, because although the dimensions match the movie,
their mass doesn't.
What's next?
Next is more bodies.
More bodies. More bodies!
Inspired by the internet,
supposedly, this drum dare devil filled his barrel gocart with fuel,
lit a match, and took off at incredible speed.
But so far, getting that rocket powered rush...
That's kind of anti-climactically.
hasn't been that easy.
So the mythbusters have come back to the shop
to replicate the barrel rodeo in small scale,
and test the parameters one by one.
Starting with fuel.
How much methanol gets optimal thrust?
Let's agitate it a little bit.
First off, they're trying the same ratio with the myth, 7%.
Fully agitated.
Here we go, in 3, 2, 1.
We got some thrust.
Just like the range test,
7% didn't send the cart far,
but will halving the fuel change that?
All right, 3.5%, here we go in 3, 2, 1.
We got about the same.
Yeah, not much difference.
3.5% gives them the same result,
so they take the fuel ratio all the way down.
You know, in the past when we used gases
to create some sort of a thrust, like a propane rocket,
we found once we got down to just fumes with just a little bit of fuel,
we usually got a lot of thrust.
So I expect, the less fuel we used, the more fumes,
and we're actually gonna see this rocket shoot down the track.
In 3, 2, 1.
All right. Well, it went about two feet.
So, we got some thrust.
The good news is that less than 1% double the thrust,
the bad news is that
it was still more of a putter than a projectile.
No matter what kind of air-to-fuel ratio we come up with,
this thing is not rocketing like the myth talks about.
I don't want to stop here.
I want to see a rocket gocart.
I mean, can't we make some modifications?
Let's try some stuffs and see what happens.
I like it!
Yep, although the myth clearly states
that the barrel was unmodified,
to give this rocket a fighting chance,
it is time to bend the rules,
and bend number one is to transform the liquid fuel
into that flammable fuel vapor.
We're gonna try a new technique of agitating methanol
using air.
Now, it's gonna do two things.
It's gonna introduces more oxygen
and it's gonna creates more fumes.
Hopefully that combination will give us more thrust.
But that's not the only modification the guys have in mind.
We're gonna add a nozzle.
This should accelerate the escaping gases, and gives us more thrust.
With a built-in agitator and thrust-focusing nozzle,
will this mini barrel go ballistic?
All right, here we go. Bottling up!
At 5 psi.
Hit it again!
Yeah, that nozzle's great.
It's a thrust in the right direction for the barrel.
The modifications triple the distance.
The only problem is
after making it down the track in three blasts,
it sets everything on fire.
It's still going!
Oh, no!
Luckily, the safety officer is on hand to diffuse the situation.
Well, that was exciting.
That thing could have kept going
if the track hadn't caught on fire and everything got really dangerous.
Dangerous? Yes, but also a good start.
So, now the team can focus on
making their model safer and more efficient.
Now, my theory is that we're losing a lot of energy
as expanding gases have to turn this tight corner,
and then come out of the nozzle.
So, what I'm gonna try is to make a funnel shape,
and relocate the bung hole to the center,
that way the gases can expand smoothly, accelerate,
and then come out the nozzle with even more thrust.
And while Grant is working on a more efficient nozzle,
Tory is injecting some oomph into the fuel injection.
And this is what's gonna be going on inside the barrel.
Now, originally we had the fuel in the bottom of the barrel,
and we pumped air through it, creating vapors.
But I thought it would be kinda cool
if we introduced the fuel through an auto-body-spray gun.
That way, we're getting air,
and we're automizing the methnol, making it much easier to ignite.
After optimizing the design,
the barrel gocart is rolled out once again.
This is longer nozzle with aerated fuel, and cone.
Here we go, in 3, 2, 1.
Amazingly, the combination of nozzle and aerated fuel
propels that barrel 15 feet down the track.
We got some serious distance.
I think it is time we take this full scale.
Yeah, I think that is the winning combo.
I've got the long nozzle,
the aeration, the crazy cone shape,
this is gonna be so cool when we're on large scale.
I think it's gonna work.
How we're gonna to stop it, that's the question.
After a lot of testing and several new improvements,
we have gone from the simple barrel gocart
to this crazy thing here.
We actually added a nozzle,
a cone shape and an aeration system for the fuel,
so that we could propel this little dude down the track,
15 times the length of our gocart.
I think when we take this to full scale,
we've got a really good chance at some really sick thrust.
Swinging.
It is so easy, even a dog can do it.
Come on.
But that's not the case for our scurvy dogs.
I think I'm gonna throw up.
Which is why the mythbusters
have drafted some help into service.
Well, we just assembled a new crew
to escape from the bone cage.
They've got over 53 years of circus experience.
Among them, the live, the limber, the scurvy dogs
and they're ready to help us get swinging.
Earlier, Adam and Jamie were a few mate short
of a 34 foot swing.
Come on up and try to exercise.
But now with four trapeze professionals and two mythbusters,
they've got the six man crew of the film.
The pirate potsy start with the movie method.
- You all right? - Yep, I've got knee pads.
But that technique doesn't seem to have legs.
- You OK? - Yep.
All right.
One more time, let's go back.
All right, so the movie technique of running side to side is
totally not working here.
First of all, we can't do it within unison,
and we keep falling through the holes.
So it's not very safe and not very effective.
But we do know in order to get this thing moving,
we need to concentrate our efforts on changing the center of mass,
like a kid on a swing.
We need to raise the center on the up swing,
and lower on the down swing.
That way we might be able to build the momentum we need,
to get the distance we want.
Yep, and to get to grips with that center of mass,
they enlist a tie strap,
Push.
creating a coordinated rhythm
either side of the center of gravity
that seems to get them swinging.
Will this work out ever?
Bend your knees. Push.
But after over 40 minutes of the old heave ho,
they're nowhere near the cliff.
At this point, we have had some success
but eventually we lose the battle.
The cable and sphere seem to be
absorbing all of our energy into
flexing and twisting and bobbing around
instead of letting us focus it
in one specific direction for the swing.
So the only thing that we can think of to do is
to shorten the cable.
Hopefully that gets us where we want to go.
Shortening the cable makes the change to
center of gravity, in comparison to the length, larger,
and should amplify the swing.
But will it be enough?
We've shortened the cable and see if it swings.
Push it. Push it.
Initially, it seems that building up power is easier.
Push!
Oh it seems to be working.
Yeah.
That's it, you scurvy dogs. Sway.
Bend.
But after another hour of effort,
it's clear that they're sustaining
rather than gaining momentum.
Getting any higher?
Never.
Guys, that was a fantastic effort.
I feel like we're just not gonna get that thing swinging.
So it's just not your average trapeze swing.
With this big heavy cage, to try to move it, it's just not possible.
Yeah, it's not gonna get any lighter than that.
Now, if we can't make it work with these guys,
we can't make it work.
Think it's safe to say that swinging a bone cage
with six people from inside, busted.
It's busted.
Busted, but there's still more pirate pandemonium to come.
Everyone knows things are better when they're turbo charged.
But the Mythbusters' first ballistic barrel was anything but.
And nothing is happening.
However, after a few small scale modifications,
they've upped the thrust
and they're ready to take this myth full scale.
So now with modifications in small scale,
we've gotten the gocart to rocket across the shop.
But our design has evolved,
from a woosh rocket into what's called a pulse jet.
We know that a woosh rocket ignites fuel in a chamber
and gas expanding creates thrust.
But after one big burst, it is pretty much over.
The difference with the pulse jet is that
the thrust is continuous.
The escaping gases create an air of low pressure in the chamber,
air's that sucked in to fill the gap, start the bashing again.
So that the cycle of thrust will repeat as long as there's fuel,
and a source of ignition.
Indeed, but to supersize their pulse jet gocart
there's a lot to do, starting with portable fuel injection.
Now for this to work, we need constant air entering the barrel.
So, to make it portable,
I am gonna use a scuba tank.
The air pressure comming out of here is 3000PSI.
I need to get it down to 100 psi,
so it actually pumps fuel through our spray gun.
So what I'm gonna do is take this old regulator,
put it to this regulator,
and hopefully get it down to a safe enough pressure,
so we get the fuel injection into the barrel
and this thing gets fired up.
We're about to go diving into science!
Come along for the journey!
We have portable air.
With the fuel injection invention sorted,
Kari gets on a roll with the gocart.
I'm designing the cart.
Now I want this to roll really really easily so that
all the thrust can make it shoot down the runway.
To do that, I'm going to use tires from a bicycle.
I figure that has a low rolling resistance,
it will be a lot easier to just push it.
Now I also want to make the cart really light weight,
So I'm going to use a minimal amount of material
to try to create a cart that
actually will have no problem turning into a rocket.
Kari streamlined the design,
but the main element of turning the gocart rocket
is the back end.
Now given the success of the cone
and the long nozzle in small scale,
we're gonna do exactly the same thing in large scale.
Looks like a donut now,
but soon it will be a cone.
And while Grant gets bent out of shape,
Tory creates the nozzle.
That's one big nozzle.
With the nozzle and cone complete and the barrel on board,
Kari decides to add a little personality.
Demon doll.
Drum roll please.
Meet the rolling drum rocket,
or the Mythbusters' pulse jet gocart.
Oh, my god. That is insanity.
You know one thing we forgot?
Brakes.
Where we're going, we don't need brakes.
Coming up on Mythbusters.
Can you make a gocart out of a barrel?
You not gonna wanna miss this.
At Alameda, the team's arrived
lock, stock, and pulse jet barrel.
You know after that first test,
I really didn't think this had much promise.
But after building this thing, I cannot wait to see what it does.
Come on. This is Mythbusters.
You knew how this is gonna end.
It's either gonna explode or it's gonna zoom down the runway.
That's the plan, the team is feeling optimistic.
After going through our small scale test,
coming up with modifications to give more thrust
and then finally getting to this stage,
where we have this crazy vehicle,
I think we have a very good chance of replicating the results today.
Just like last time, the cart gets an uneasy rider.
Those eyes are creeping me out.
I'm gonna make him look more scary.
Nice touch.
That's perfect, cause it wasn't weird enough.
With the rider on board and fuel fueled.
All right, let's light them up.
Tory takes care of their sophisticated ignition system.
Run.
Lighting the blow torch and running for it.
Yeah!
- Here we go, in 3, 2, 1. - Fire.
Hey, we got some thrust.
Look at that!
Yeah, it's working.
Do you think it will just keep adding speed and adding speed.
It's starting to pick up speed.
Come on!
All right, it is not the fastest vehicle in the world,
- but it's working. - That's not bad.
It's getting you down the runway.
The pulse jet is pulsing
but it is not the maximum thrust they hoped for.
I don't know about you,
but I wouldn't traded my car for this.
We are just not getting the thrust that we expected.
If you look at the initial pulse,
you'll see it's not like a "waa", it's like a "poof".
Now what we think is happening is that
somethings just don't scale up.
This large diameter nozzle and this cone,
they're in scale with the small scale,
but when we moved up to the bigger barrel,
we didn't necessarily get a bigger explosion.
And so we think some of that energy is being lost
in this large diameter, it's allowing too much gas to escape.
So what we need to do is go back to the shop,
cut this off, and put a smaller diameter nozzle on it.
and see if that hold more gas in,
and from that, we'll get more thrust.
The Mythbusters have the technology and quick as a flash.
Bang, just like that.
They have rebuilt it.
Back at the runway, the question is,
will the smaller nozzle on the pulse jet get it rocketing?
Fire in the hole.
Here we go, 3, 2, 1.
Ignition.
- Oh we already got some movement. - All right.
A lot better than before, I like it.
It's a good sign, and it is more thrust than previous tests.
But only marginally.
- That is hysterical. - Adorable.
It is adorable really.
Look out, people, it's coming through.
I was worried how we were gonna stop it.
After the slowest fence collision on record,
the cart is spent.
-That was hilarious! - That was funny.
We gave this the best possible chance of working.
We added a fuel injection system, low rolling resistance tires,
continuous triggering, and still, with all of that,
we couldn't go very far or very fast.
This one is well and truly busted.
Their pulse jet barrel may be busted,
but as Kari said earlier.
It is either gonna explode
or it is gonna zoom down the runway.
There are only two ways this myth can truly end.
After the break,
can six dirty seamen swing and escape?
This is dangerous jungle gym antics for adults.
Please do not try what you are about to see at home.
We're what you call experts.
Can't you tell?
We have thoroughly tested
the first part of the story which is the swinging,
and we came up totally busted.
You can't get six people in here
and get them to move it, it is just not possible.
But there's a second and third part to the story.
And that's where we're going now.
Yep, there still the cling and climb.
If they make like pirates and cheat swing,
can they cart the cage up the cliff?
First, they need something to get a grip on.
Are you happy with it?
Yeah, we're done.
This crash mat rigging combo will stand in for the movie vines.
There it is, a skull fit for a pirate.
Topped off with a flag fit for capture,
they're ready to get all hands on deck.
All right, lads.
It is time to get swinging.
Now, to be correct to the movie,
we reextended our cables to be 80 feet long.
The building behind me is a cliff.
The netting is the vines.
We're gonna get in our ball and start it swinging.
Inside the ball, it's still the same six savvy seamen.
But more importantly,
this time they're getting a lift from some land lubbing muscle.
- Wholly crap. - Here we go.
And 3, 2, 1, go!
Rather than risk a full speed cliff collision,
the tug squad start the swing gently.
This is fun.
This is really fun.
This is dangerous jungle gym antics for adults.
All right, maggots.
Let's swing toward that wall.
3, 2, 1, go!
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
And finding that sweet swing spot takes brains and brawn.
Well this swing testing was exactly what I wanted to see.
Because the fact that it is taking four strong guys
with all their strength to pull us back means
that's about what it's gonna take to hold on to the rope
when we get to the other side.
But with a little more heave ho,
the muscle manages to give them the swing they need.
We got it.
Give yourselves a round of applause.
Wait, no, you can't! All right,
let it go on the count of 3, 2, 1!
Let go!
It is an arrgh-ha moment.
A round of applause for the pirates.
To the crew's surprise,
hanging on wasn't as difficult as expected.
So we were successful swinging up to the wall and holding on,
and it requires quite a bit of strength,
but at least we aren't having to support our own weight
and the weight of the ball.
We're simply restricting ourselves from swinging back.
When we start to have to climb the wall,
that's when we're gonna have to pull out this weight up
and that's gonna be a different story.
Personally, I don't think
we're gonna be able to do it.
Well, now to put it all together.
Right, crew, are you ready?
They'll swing, they'll cling,
and attempt to capture the flag.
In 3, 2, 1, go!
Yes, I've grabbed.
Now.
Try to climb.
With the crew clinging on harder than star-trek extras,
the climb commences.
It's hand over hand as everyone pulls their weight.
We're going up!
It's working!
And to both Mythbusters' surprise,
the 1500 pound cage ascends.
It's working!
And the ball climbs first one story and then two.
Grab the flag!
After climbing a vertical 12 feet,
victory is theirs.
In 3, 2, 1, let go.
Nice work!
How about that.
We were totally able to climb!
I love being wrong!
Indeed, because you can't argue with that success.
So I grabbed the vine I'm holding on to,
which is a vertical rope.
And I still am thinking at this point,
there's no way in hell this is going to work.
And then I start to be able to pull on some rope,
and I noticed that everybody else is pulling, too.
And all of a sudden we are climbing,
one foot, two feet, three feet,
and I look up and the Jolly Roger here is within our grasp,
and it was a success.
And after all the efforts of their muscly crew,
where does that leave the myth?
Swinging a bone cage under your own power from inside.
Busted.
Catching on the vines on the side of the ravine
once you swung over to it.
Plausible.
And climbing out of that ravine once you caught on to those vines.
Surprisingly plausible.
Who would have thought.
Next, does this noise mean
"Make or Break" for the ballistic barrel?
On a runway in San Joaquin County,
the barrel gocart myth is about to go ballistic.
We're at the New Jerusalem airport runway.
Why?
Because we're Mythbusters, and we're not going to be satisfied
with that 5 mile per hour run we saw with our barrel rocket.
And that's being generous, we wanna see something impressive.
And that is where Bob Maddox comes in.
Absolutly, because if Bob's propulsive prowess
can make a push bike jet propelled,
imagine what he can do with a barrel.
This thing is going to be insane.
Bob is one of the few people in the world
with the job title professional pulse jet builder.
He's been designing and buildings these jets for over 20 years.
He's taken our barrel rocket design and highly modified it.
It may look the same on the outside,
but inside, it is completely different,
and it's gonna be totally bad ass.
But just what exactly are these bad ass modifications?
Now tell us what some of the differences are
between ours and yours.
Well, the difference is mostly is
we have a one way reed valve in the front.
When the explosion goes off,
it makes the gases go out the tail,
and won't go out the front.
The one way valve focuses the thrust more efficiently,
but the major change is that
this pulse jet pulses at heart stopping speed.
That happens 70 or 80 times a second inside this one,
where yours was only once every four or five seconds or whatever.
Let's see if yours
will match our wapping 5 miles an hour speed.
Bob's about to fire up the barrel rocket cart for the first time.
Now it's going to be tethered, we're gonna turn it on,
just to make sure everything's working.
All right, Bob fire it up.
All right let see if we can tear up this runway.
It is an important tethered system's check.
Because of the subtitles made clear,
70 pulses a second is a lot more powerful than expected.
It is a little bit louder,
maybe a little more powerful than ours.
That's scary. That's a little scary.
Maybe we should have some safety precautions
to keep this thing from flying off into who knows where.
Maybe we should cable it down.
It's awesome.
Now we know Bob can build a pulse jet engine,
but he has never attached it to a gocart
made out of a barrel and four bicycle wheels.
So we have no idea what's gonna happen.
I mean this thing could explode,
it could go flying out of control.
We have taken some extra safety precautions
to make sure nothing bad happens.
One, we have a steel belted cable
that will be running down the length of our runway,
so our cart stays on track.
We also added a kill switch,
so if it does fly out of control,
we can shut it down whenever we want.
At the end of the runway, we have k-rail set up,
so that if it does get out of control,
it has a barrier to crash into.
We will bebined the blast sheild while this all takes place.
This is gonna be awesome, but most importantly,
it's gonna be safe.
4,000 feet of cable.
That should keep our cart in line.
It should.
But the pulse jet gocart
won't be the only thing on the line.
There's also their previous record.
We're going to have to
surpass the record here
of the last barrel rocket,
5 miles an hour.
So for this to be impressive,
I wanna see highway speeds.
Now Bob has been perfecting his engine for years.
Now we had three days to build ours,
and we're able to get it to go with 5 miles an hour.
I'm hoping his can go faster than ours.
I'm pretty sure it will.
Let's go.
Ok, I'm gonna measure the speed,
cause I have a feeling he's flying.
All right.
The team retires to a safe distance.
And it's over to Bob to initiate launch.
And run for his life.
All right, this is pulse jet
barrel rocket on steroids.
Here we go in 3, 2, 1.
Then the barrel is unleashed.
There it goes!
And it thunders down the runway at speed.
Yes!
50 mile per hour.
Dude, that was awesome!
You know what, this myth is still busted.
I mean look what we had to resort to to make this work.
A professional!
Bob, that was awesome.
Nice work.
Finally, after a string of failures,
the Mythbusters have gotten their happy ending.
The cart jetted a mile down the runway at super speed.
The thing you don't get,
and you probably not gonna get to experience this in full at home,
is the sound this thing makes!
It's like "Moooooooooooooo".
Finally we got it to work.
We got our barrel jet to go down
the runway at 50 miles an hour.
Ok, so we had to bring in an expert
with a completely different jet engine.
But still, we got a barrel
with a guy on it going down the runway
at 50 miles an hour.
This is still busted, but it's pretty asoweme.