What You Get After 20 Years Of Working On A Travel Trailer
Dennis Schaller was a rocket engine mechanic in the Air Force and an electrical engineer on the Apollo missions. So, it’s not surprising that he ended up with this thing after 20 years of working on a travel trailer.
“Most people think it’s a spaceship,” Schaller said of his silver creation that measures 56 feet long, 20 feet wide and 17 feet tall. “It was originally designed to be a hovercraft. Now it looks like it’s going to end up as a houseboat. I won’t live long enough to get enough money to make it a hovercraft – not unless I went back to work full time; and then I wouldn’t have the time to work on it.”
Much of the vessel is constructed out of found materials—like a travel trailer he found in the woods, a former acid dipping vat from the Piper Aircraft plant and an old satellite dish. It’s brilliant—like a free association sculpture from a genius engineer. Seriously, this guy built his first solid-fuel jet engine in a high school shop class. I built a toolbox. Advantage: Schaller. [TCPalm via Fark]
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
@DreamTheEndless: Solid-fuel after-burner, maybe? Interesting idea!
@surfjim: YES, you are.
Pixlmonkey
@incubushead: Y acht
@dcartist: Have you ever even seen a houseboat?
TheGerk
@gunluva listens to Top Gear, watches Fatboy Slim: or a Tourette's gun, that would tell everybody to fuckoff, shit, fuck, shit, fuck, shit, motherfucker
@GitEmSteveDave_HasAFrenchLoaf: It looks like it would be loud as hell, seeing as it's just the SS skin beyond the bracing. Pretty sweet, and it will last forever. It would be sweet with some monster truck tires cruising the wastelands, pluggin' zombies.
Goondocks
@gunluva listens to Top Gear, watches Fatboy Slim:
Moar torrentz 4 teh pr0nz? Who needs that when you got the friggin' bangboat.
spline9
If it was designed as a hovercraft, it will obviously make a TERRIBLE houseboat, prone to flip over and drown all occupants.
dcartist
@Navin R Johnson:
:)
Thanks -
For the record, the typo was not the fault of Gizmodo - it was in the original article. I couldn't help but think it an interesting concept though...
(Anyone want to see what happens when you force a few hundred pounds of non-dairy creamer into a turbine and light it? I kind of do... Anyone friends with bored postgrad students at someplace like Purdue, Cal-Tech, MIT, etc?)
DreamTheEndless
@Indigen:
A torret gun to shoot Combines with.
@DigitalPasture: Needs a what?
Indigen
Its like something out of an H.P. Hovercraft novel!
@The Analrapist: Sounds like someone's got a case of the Mondays
@DreamTheEndless: +1 for the feasibility study of a typo.
This needs to go to Burning Man.
wezelboy
@BasicBlack: a place to stay / enough to eat /
somewhere old heroes shuffle safely down the street...
I'm pretty sure that's the Proteus from "Fantastic Voyage". Shrunk to the size of an RBC its not so fugly.
DoctorEcks
At 20 feet wide, I'm not sure where the 'travel' part of 'travel trailer' comes in.
@Parapraxis: even the original design didn't use Mr. Fusion. remember, the trick is to start with plutonium until you can get to the future and bring back a Mr Fusion...
ephdel
Can't you just picture June Lockhart standing in the doorway? I can hear her calling, "Flipper!"
Spiny Norman
@Bedheadjc: Speed holes.
@SuperTuna: Well now I do. Jeez, you might wanna warn a guy.
Lupus_Yonderboy
This guy will die before this ever turns into anything then homeless people will squat in it.
jet engine in high school shop ehh...
My son was making black powder at age 10, he moved on to jellyfied rocket fuel (and put a hole in my f'n trampoline).
I had to draw the line when I busted him making nitroglycerin though...I'm not going through that again. No way, not in my house, it was bad enough when I went through it in my dad's house. That was a nice house too.
jchasse
"...this guy built his first solid-fuel jet engine in a high school shop class."
I don't think "solid-fuel" and "jet engine" go together. A jet engine uses a fan to force air into the (liquid) fuel where they are burned together.
A "solid-fuel" engine is one type of rocket engine that's basically a slow bomb with a solid oxidizer mixed with a solid combustible.
Just playing with the words - you could almost have a solid-fuel jet engine if you had some sort of aerosolized combustible powder that did NOT have an oxidizer mixed with it and instead got its oxygen from air forced with a turbine... That would be an interesting engineering exercise to see if it was even possible, but not something that anyone would bother making for any other reason.
That's all - thanks.
DreamTheEndless
@SuperTuna: No.
that's awesome
pwnerjam4.0
@Ryanraven: That's flames your thinking of. Shiny things distract people, which is why Queen Amadilla's ship was full chrome. The idea was to blind your opponent with luxury.
Needs a turrent... And flames on the paintjob (to make it go faster of course).
DigitalPasture
@Lite: killed Dumbledore: I predict a Futurama appearance in just such a venue!
anderlan
Not many old engineers' retirement farting-arounds end up in something this visually beautiful.
anderlan
Eventually this will end up on blocks, in some space redneck's front yard I tell you.
If he was using flux instead of TIG in that enclosed trailer it could explain his loopiness. He's obviously got some kind of stainless steel welding addiction.
Ray Crucet
@Parapraxis: Oscillation Overthruster.
Bedheadjc
This kind of sweet and innocent madness gives me hope for my own future. Here's to things that need no reason!
@GitEmSteveDave_HasAFrenchLoaf: however, it's missing the very vital Mr. Fusion device.
Parapraxis
@GitEmSteveDave_HasAFrenchLoaf: not to mention I hear shiny things makes you go faster
Did anybody else have the Flash Gordon song pop into their heads?
SuperTuna
Nice design. I bet the stainless steel construction will make the flux dispersal work better.
This could have been a "what's this?" The title is the answer...or we could play jeopardy: "this what an apollo 11 engineer ends up with..." bbbzzzzzt "what is this?"
TheCrudMan
Paint it yellow and we can all live in the submarine!
BergenCountyJC
@incubushead: "Y"es
surfjim
Somebody needs to sponsor this guy...
Invisiblemoose
Wow, a hovercraft was actually the first thing I thought of when I saw that. That's pretty impressive work. I hope someone funds him to complete it, cause I'd love to see a house-hovercraft!
Dennis Schaller was put on Earth to do one thing.....make AWESOME. Mission accomplished.
To boldly go where no travel trailer has gone before...
F unctional
U nderfunded
G igantic
L aughable
Y ?