YouTuber Launches Out of a Rocket-Powered Ejection Seat

A pilot shoots off into the sky attached to his ejection seat, a parachute unfurls behind him, the seat drops away from the pilot — everyone and everything lands safely to the ground. 

So why not create your own mini model version of an ejection seat? Especially one that involves using rockets to power the system. 

British YouTuber known as ProjectAir demonstrated his rocket-powered 3D-printed model version of an ejection seat. It's fascinating listening to him describe his first two, failed, attempts, to ultimately watch the final version of liftoff from the plane drone in perfect fashion. 

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No demo test is ever worth it without a little action figure. Or at least, that's what we think, so we're grateful for James from ProjectAir's novel idea of using Action Man in his YouTube video. 

There's a number of ways for an ejection seat to propulse. For instance, springs work a treat and were used by the German military during World War Two. Other early seat ejectors used gas, which released bursts of compressed gas to eject the seat. 

The ejector of choice in this video, however, ended up being based on model rocket engines for "versatility, simplicity, and because that's what you and I both want to see," as James put it. This system has been used for a while now, read up on their development here.

The first attempt fizzled out pretty quickly in a rather anticlimactic manner, but that's to be expected with any new project. Action Man even suffered a bit of charring on his arms — something to be avoided when trying this out on real humans. 

Adding oversized motors to the ejection seat system did the trick by launching Action Man high up into the air, however, it was in a complete twist and twirl — something that wouldn't work if a human were strapped to the seat. The parachute wouldn't be able to open up safely and the entire system would fail.

After adjusting the thrust angle slightly and adding more weight to the seat helped to stabilize the system, minimize rocket burn time, and improve the ejection seat's liftoff.

Watch the video in full below and see what happens to Action Man once he takes off on a model plane: