I loved everything Evel Knievel as a kid, so I am looking forward to watching this re-creation of the original stunt. Thanks New Atlas for bringing it to my attention.

Evel Knievel is the original super hero!

What caused Knievel to beat his ex-press agent half to death with a baseball bat and end up broke, disgraced and in jail?

Nik - the guy wrote a book about him, and Evel didn't like it. Even though by all accounts the book pulled a lot of punches and showed things in a very rosy light, in fact the guy claims Evel proof read it before it went to press, fact is Knievel was an arsehole, and didn't like having that out in public. He went into a rage and came after him, and the guy was actually happy to see him until he was grabbed from behind by two men. Knievel wailed on him with a metal baseball bat and nearly killed him. In court he said he'd do it again.

> Screw it, I'm going over to see this in person. See you there!
Sadly, no. Even though I live within easy driving distance... the $1,000 cost of an admission ticket will prevent me from attending.

Thanks Loz. Seems he proved his agents assessment to be correct. Maybe we will get to see the 'splat' mark on google satellite sometime in the future, if it fails. Also seems a bit pointless to copy everything from a failed attempt, rather than redesigning and improving on that.

Except for the early parachute deployment, there was noting wrong with the original design. In fact the rocket made it over the canyon, but was blown back by the wind; if the parachute had deployed when it was supposed to, it would have been a success.
He still could have been killed in the landing.
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I THINK a lot of the appeal of the original jump is that it was publicised initially, and everyone thought, that the rocket was going to take off from one side and land on the other. Scores of engineers and scientists demonstrated how this would have been fatal. So a lot of the macabre fascination with the event was that the pilot was going to be killed - barring some kind of miracle. On the other hand, Knievel and his team never had any intention of trying a landing and always intended deploying the parachute. However the intention was that Knievel would deploy the chute, the craft would still semi crash-land, and he would tell everyone that the parachute deployed accidentally. As the whole Snake River situation was shrouded in secrecy, a lot of the facts only came out after the jump. According to different accounts from different team members, the so-called 'parachute failure' with Knievel on board never happened, he pulled the chute prematurely and like many of his other misjudgments, it ended in him being dumped in the canyon. This jump was about banking serious money, and they knew the public would not be rapt in the parachute bailout option. So they were quite pleased when the thing ended up really crashing into the canyon so that much of the original 'scam' could be covered up and Knievel would earn the sympathy vote. The fact that Knievel's press-agent got beaten up is an indication of how seriously the secrecy of missions like this were taken by Knievel. He apparently often threatened supporters with dire consequences if they leaked any information.

$1000 a ticket? Nah. And same with the 1974 stunt! The "bike" clearly has no landing carriage. There is no intention to actually "land the jump" they're just going to shoot across and pull the chute. What's so great about shooting a rocket across a canyon, even if somebody is on board. They're not actually driving it or even piloting it. And it's not even a rocket! It's a hot water tank. Honestly I see this as less of a stunt and more of a guy who wants to go for a ride, and wants everybody else to pay for it. Sure I'll watch the youtube footage - for free. (speaking of free footage - look for something actually worthwhile to watch: Kenny Powers jumping a rocket powered Lincoln in 1976).

And the irony of happening 42 years later. Adams would be proud.
Sure its just a spectacle to celebrate a staged spectacle. As long as one realizes this fact, it can still be fun to watch. After all, I have only seen one hot water tank being propelled over a canyon in my life anyway when EK did it years ago.