Rocket Man!

Hollywood stuntman Eddie Braun finishes what Evel Knievel started by successfully leaping the Snake River Canyon as an homage to his childhood hero. In an exclusive interview, he tell us exactly how, and why, he did it.

“Essentially, I was riding a controlled explosion”

Eddie Braun

Words: Stuart Barker

Some 42 years after Evel Knievel's failed attempt to leap over the quarter-mile-wide Snake River Canyon in a steam-powered rocket, Hollywood stuntman Eddie Braun has finally realised his childhood hero's dream by safely landing his replica rocket on the far side of the iconic canyon.

            The figures detailing Braun's leap are truly staggering. When he pushed the launch button he unleashed 10,000bhp instantaneously, was subjected to a near-intolerable force of 8 G's as he soared up the 122-foot ramp - set at a 56-degree angle - reached 420mph and a height of 2,000 feet in just 3.9 seconds, and successfully guided his 'Evel Spirit' craft to safety some 4,826 feet (0.91 miles) from his launch point.  “Essentially, I was riding a controlled explosion” Braun said.

            Perhaps even more astonishing is the fact that Braun did not use a modern, updated and re-engineered version of Knievel's famous Sky Cycle X2, he used an exact replica of the 42-year-old craft, built from the 1974 blueprints and even incorporating some genuine spare parts from the original Sky Cycle. The 'Evel Spirit' was built by Scott Truax, son of the late Bob Truax – the rocket scientist who designed and built Knievel's craft.

            So how on earth did a 54-year-old Hollywood stuntman who has worked on more than 258 films and TV shows (including 'Sully: Miracle on the Hudson', 'Avengers Assemble' and all three of Jackie Chan's 'Rush Hour' movies) end up self-financing a $1.6 million leap across a canyon to finally complete his hero's dream? The story starts at Ascot Park Raceway in Gardena, California, in 1971 when Eddie Braun was a ten-year-old school kid. 'Like every other child across America back then, I wanted to be like Evel Knievel' he says. 'I was fortunate enough to meet him at Ascot Park when I was ten and the man had a cape on – I mean, he was a super hero! He put his arm around me and was very charismatic and friendly and all I wanted to do was be like him. Not long after meeting him I got my first proper injury when I broke my arm trying to jump my Schwinn Sting-Ray over trash cans and I never looked back.'

Eddie Braun with the Evel Spirit

            By the time he was 17, Braun had gotten into the Hollywood stunt business in order to emulate his hero and over the last four decades has worked on some of the biggest movies and TV shows as both stunt man and stunt co-ordinator. It was only when he started winding down his career about four years ago that he started thinking of a way to bow out with one last hurrah and the idea of leaping the Snake River came about. 'I never understood why Evel never went back to the Snake River to finish the job' Braun says. 'I figured I had the skill set, the mental fortitude, and the experience to make that jump and finally finish the job that Evel had started.'

            There were two things Braun insisted on before he would go ahead with the project: one was the backing of the Knievel family, and the other was the co-operation of Scott Truax. 'If I didn't have the blessing of the Knievel family then I would have just felt like a bad Elvis impersonator' Braun says. 'There have been too many guys who dress up in red, white and blue and wear a cape and try to be Evel. When I first contacted Kelly Knievel he hung up on me – very rudely - in less than five minutes, thinking I was just another crackpot. So I had a friend contact him and explain that I was a professional stuntman so next time Kelly listened to me. By then he had done some homework on me and realised that I was only half a crackpot!

            'I told him I wanted to name my rocket the 'Evel Spirit' because I wanted to finish the job in Evel's name. The family is quite rightly protective of Evel's name and I explained to Kelly that I wanted to use the spelling of Evel with an 'e' and not with an 'I'. He looked at me deadpan and said “What, are we playing f*cking Jeopardy here? You want to buy a vowel?” I said “Yes, I want to buy an 'e' from you and call it Evel Spirit.” I think that proved that my motives were pure and that the jump attempt wasn't about me.

            'The second thing I needed was the help of Scott Truax. He wanted to do it just to clear his family's name because his father – who was a brilliant rocket scientist – was mostly known as the guy who built the rocket that failed to leap the Snake River. Scott told me he had a lot of his father's spare parts for the Sky Cycle as well as all the blueprints so the DNA of my rocket is the same as Evel's - I even used some of those spare parts in mine.'

Scott Truax talks Braun through the cockpit

            While Knievel fired two test shots prior to his attempt (both went straight down into the Snake River), Braun only had one rocket built and that's the one he'd be strapping himself into. But there was method in his apparent madness. 'Since we were going to be precisely replicating everything that Evel did – same rocket, same ramp, same ramp angle – then Evel's test shots and actual jump attempt counted as my test shots too - they just happened to be done 42 years ago! None of Evel's attempts were successful but they gave me enough information to work on. But there were still a lot of unknowns because Evel never felt the full power of the motor – he had drag the whole time because his drogue parachute came out as soon as the rocket left the ramp.'

            Braun didn't even carry out any computer simulations – not an option open to Knievel in 1974 - before making his attempt, preferring to rely on gut instinct and hard-won experience. 'Stunts are not scientific things – there's a lot of gut instinct and best guesses involved. We don't computer simulate the stunts we do in Hollywood because that would just be impractical.'

            What his small team did do was carry out a static test to check the power output of the Evel Spirit. 'We needed to know how long it would burn for and we needed to know what kind of pressure it would exert and the numbers we got were scary. It was clear that the canyon itself would just be an afterthought – we were worried that I was gonna end up in the next county! We had well over 10,000 horsepower – delivered instantaneously. And that's in a vehicle that weighs just 1,300lbs (589kg).'

            There was no way for Braun himself to prepare or practice for the attempt either. After all, how do you practice piloting a rocket? 'I didn't know what to prepare for!' he laughs. 'I'd never ridden a rocket before! But I've spent years being very tightly confined in various vehicles and I've had to make a lot of decisions under duress. It's a very stressful thing being basically strapped to a bomb and having to think clearly about what you have to do and when you have to do it. If I'm strapped in a car that's got a bomb attached to it I have a lot to do: I have to remember to turn on cameras, I have to hit a mark, I have to be travelling at the right speed – I have to make decisions under the most stressful conditions so I'm very familiar with how uncomfortable that can be.

The Snake River Canyon: it's a long way across

            'If you watch the Snake River footage of Evel and look at his body language, he just was not comfortable in that rocket – he was completely out of his element. His family told me he wasn't happy at all and, having done it myself, I don't blame him – it sucked. I'm used to being uncomfortable and under duress but that jump was truly miserable!'

            As Knievel himself had discovered, just getting to the edge of the canyon was a hugely frustrating ordeal for Braun. 'I can't even tell you how difficult it was just to get to the edge of the canyon, never mind to leap over it' he says. 'I had so many sleepless nights and went through so many emotions, crying many times and just being so frustrated at so many things before I finally got to that moment when I climbed into the rocket.'

Houston, we are go for launch

            While Knievel's attempt at the Snake River was a masterpiece in hype and self-promotion and attracted worldwide attention, Braun's effort was in sharp contrast and so low-key that there were only a handful of spectators on hand to witness it. He even launched one day ahead of the date he had announced but this was all part of the plan as Braun explains. 'Fox TV Network wanted to do it but they wanted to change it, then Nitro Circus wanted to do it - lots of people wanted to do it but I ended up saying no to everyone and just doing it myself. I paid for it all myself and it cost me $1.6 million but that meant it was my money, my rocket, and my rules. When Evel made his attempt he didn't own the intellectual property on the jump. ABC owned those rights so they owned the rights to the footage. If I had signed with Fox or anyone else I wouldn't have owned my own footage. So, since I owned everything I had to be careful to protect my rights. We had announced we were going to make the attempt on the Saturday, September 18, which would have meant that every news crew camera would have been trained on me to film the jump. So I decided to go early and jump on the Friday to catch everyone off-guard so only we would have the footage. We had 23 cameras covering it, from high-speed cameras to drones - we even filmed it with Virtual Reality cameras so people will be able to put on VR headsets and ride in the rocket with me. It's basically a $1.6 million action sequence in one take and it's all shot in feature film quality.'

            As Braun – a keen motorcyclist who owns a Yamaha RD400 and a Harley-Davidson Softail Heritage - squeezed himself into the extremely tight confines of the Evel Spirit on launch day, the big concern was whether he would black out from the massive amount of G's he would be subjected to. 'We were not only concerned that I would black out but also that I would suffer from partial detachment of my retinas because of their soft tissue versus the hard tissue of the corneas. We just didn't know because no-one had done it before (Knievel never experienced the full power of the Sky Cycle because of the drag from his parachute which opened immediately upon launch – ed). We're still going through all the data but we think I experienced 8 G's on launch – instantly. I did start to feel a bit woozy but right about that time things started coming back to me as the thrust had run out.

            After reaching a top speed of 430mph in just 3.9 seconds, Braun's task was to wait for the rocket to stop rolling and then deploy the parachutes that would help him drift safely back to earth. With the concerns about him blacking out and feeling woozy, he came up with an ingeniously simple way to remember which order to deploy them in. 'I had one handle painted red, one white, and one blue, because no matter how dazed I am I can always remember the sequence of red, white and blue in that order. Thank God I never had to pull the blue handle – it was an emergency 'chute. If I pulled that it meant I'd survive but I'd probably be in intensive care for a long time!'

            After travelling a total distance of 4,826 feet (0.91 of a mile) and having deployed his 'chutes in the correct order, Braun and the Evel Spirit drifted down onto the far side of the canyon safely to finally realise Knievel's dream. But it was not an experience the father-of-four would care to repeat – not least because he's terrified of heights! 'Things always look easy when someone's done them successfully but there was so much that could have gone wrong. On top of that it was a very unpleasant thing to do – it was miserable. There wasn't one part about it that felt good. Even once I realised that I was gonna live I couldn't enjoy it because I was approaching the ground way too fast and thought I was going to break both of my legs. It was NOT a fun ride. Having said that, I feel very proud inside that I did something that no-one else has been able to do successfully and that I got to fulfil the dream of my hero. I could be sweeping the streets for a living tomorrow but internally I'd still be happy and proud – it's like a deep, internal joy that I achieved the near-impossible.'

            While amateur footage of the leap has appeared on Youtube and on social media sites, Braun's own feature-length film of the stunt promises to be mesmerising and has even had a helping hand from some unlikely sources – Slash and Sir Elton John! 'The minute I decided to undertake this task I paired up with some genius film-makers and we documented absolutely everything. I even called my buddy Slash to see if he would re-record Elton John's song 'Rocket Man' for the soundtrack. Slash got hold of Sir Elton and asked if he could record it and Elton said “If you want to record it, you have my blessing” so we took our film crew into the studio and shot Slash and the guys recording the song.

            'The film shows all the highs and lows of what we went through and now we know it's going to be a beautiful and triumphant movie, though at one point it might have been a tragic, poignant movie. We actually filmed an alternative ending in case I didn't make it. I spoke to the camera saying “I'm sorry I'm not there with you now but I chased the dream and I would have done it again.” I needed the movie to be finished in order for my family to have any kind of chance of recouping money so I gave specific instructions that, no matter what, they must film the ending, even if it was tragic. Fortunately we didn't have to use that ending. Slash is gonna put some more music to it and now we have our glorious ending so within the next few months we're going to have something. UK audiences can expect to see the movie in early 2017.'

Eddie with good mates Slash and Charlie Sheen

           The Knievel family were elated with Braun's successful leap – so much so that the tables have turned and one young Knievel is now aspiring to be just like Eddie Braun. 'The family was ecstatic – they're still ecstatic' Braun says. 'In fact, the best compliment I ever got was when Evel's daughter, Alicia, texted to tell me that her son Ridley wanted to dress up as me for Halloween! Can you imagine how I felt? Evel Knievel's grandson – the grandson of my hero - wanting to dress up as ME for Halloween? That's a feeling you just can't put into words.'

Happy landings: Braun see his childhood hero's dream through to a successful conclusion

Rocket Science: How does the Evel Spirit Work?

'It's very simple' Eddie Braun says of his Evel Spirit rocket. 'It's hot water – it's a steam motor. It has a tank that is filled with extremely hot water under high pressure. The water is steamed to 500 degrees so when I hit the launch button it was like popping the cork on a bottle of champagne. It all comes out at once - 10,000bhp. There's no way of regulating it whatsoever.' Even during the flight, Braun had practically no control over the craft. 'We had some little wings at the front that I had the option of controlling with pedals but I chose not to use them so we locked them in place' he says. 'I figured that all I would achieve with them was to screw the whole thing up so we never used them!'

Knievel's Attempt: What Went Wrong?

When Evel Knievel attempted to leap the Snake River Canyon on September 8, 1974, his drogue parachute (designed to slow him down once he had reached full speed) came out as soon as his Sky Cycle left the launch ramp. Without full power, he drifted down into the nearside canyon wall and caused many to say he'd chickened out and pulled the 'chute early. To his dying day, Knievel vehemently denied this and, instead, blamed the builder of his Sky Cycle, Bob Truax, saying. 'I waited seven years and then had an engineering mistake made – a malfunction – and the parachute blew out on take-off because of an electrical malfunction. The engineer didn't know what the hell he was doing.'

Knievel's chute opened on launch during his 1974 attempt

            Having now successfully made the leap, Eddie Braun is inclined to believe Knievel, although he doesn't hold Bob Truax responsible. 'I don't think he pulled the 'chute early because once you're in that rocket, you're in for a penny, in for a pound – you're not gonna sabotage something early when you've got to that point, you just want to finish it out. Besides, there's a million other safer things he could have done to sabotage the attempt. It was more dangerous to drop into the canyon than to land on the other side. He would also have known that pulling the 'chute early would have meant pulling it under thrust. He was very lucky that the steam didn't just burn the 'chute.'

* The feature-length documentary movie about Eddie and his Snake River jump premieres at the LA Film Festival on September 20-28.