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Show Exploring space from a wheel chair LIKE most residents of Delta, Colo., those two "wheel chair scientists" from Delvista Nursing Home didn't have much aerospace experience, just a little spare-time tinkering with model airplanes and pop-bottle rockets. So when Kirby Cochran and Alwin Wattenbarger ordered an $8 Marauder missile-b u i 1 d i n g kit last spring, they were looking for little more than something to do. Their $8 rocketry experiment was a bargain. It produced not only the first rocket-launching station - and two subsequent A-OK firings - in the western Colorado town, but also a VIP look at the launching of an Army-Air Force Athena missile at Green River, Utah. Who are these wheel chair scientists? Cochran, just 23, had both legs amputated after an auto accident about five years ago. His roommate, Wattenbarger, 37, is a multiple sclerosis victim. Assembling the rocket, a two-stage space vehicle about 18 inches high and an inc|l in diameter, occupied the pair for many hours in Mrs. Marjorie Decker's arts and crafts class at the nursing home. "You can put one together in just a few hours if you know what you're doing," says Wattenbarger. "We did not know what we were doing, so it took us a little longer." In late June they were ready for Delta's first space shot. It was a flop. "We started with a six-volt dry cell battery as the power source, but it didn't work out," Wattenbarger recalled. "It didn't ignite the powder. It didn't do anything." After a quick analysis, the rocketeers switched to a 12-volt car battery to ignite the propellant. It was perfect. The missile accelerated smoothly off the launching pad. The first stage was jettisoned on schedule, approximately one-third of the way to the planned 2,000-foot height. The second stage soared on, how high the space team doesn't know. "We don't have any way of judging how high it actually went," Wat- continued Two nursing home buddies, aRer firing their own rocks earn a missile base visit The Denver Post • Oct. 6, 1968 U.S. Army and Air Force photographs Lockheed engineer Ronald Garrison (left) explains the missile program to Cochran (center) and Wattenbarger. 21 |