This episode was a lot like the JATO and Jet Pack episode: Jamie and Adam against one myth. These episodes are a lot of fun because they really get into the details of the myth and the engineering. In this particular case, the episode had tons of rockets and a brief interlude of accidentally setting MythBusters HQ on fire.

Confederate Rocket

Myth: In 1865, the Confederate Army built and launched the first long-range missile (2-stage) from Richmond to DC.

Short-range rocket experiments

Jamie and Adam built two known designs from the Civil War era: the Hale rocket and the Boxer rocket. The Hale rocket was chosen because it was considered to be the state-of-the-art rocket used at the time. It featured tail fins that sacrificed range for accuracy to give it a range of 2000 yards. They probably chose the Boxer rocket because they thought it was a two-stage rocket. The Boxer rocket was a rescue rocket that was used boat-to-boat or shore-to-boat to transport a rescue line. It's range was only about 300 ft. It turns out that the Boxer was not a two-stage rocket (a rocket that separates mid-flight) but a compound rocket (burns through multiple layers of fuel).

Hale rocket (source and more info: Smithsonian):

Boxer rocket (compound) (source and more info: cyber-heritage):

Jamie welded his rocket shut: "Somehow when we screw up everyone's all over it"

Tori built a simple launcher (channel with adjustable angle) and for safety reasons they had their expert use modern motors with equivalent thrust to the black powder that would have been used in Civil War times.

Adam's percentage predictions for the launch: * 70% spins out 200 ft away * 29% it flies successfully to 3000ft * 1% that it hits the ground and bounces over to us

Launch results: * Hale rocket: It corkscrewed away but managed about 600-700 yards, lodging itself five feet into the ground. * Boxer rocket: The boxer rocket also corkscrewed but managed to fly twice as far as the Hale rocket, about 1300 yards.

Confederate rocket characteristics

They brought in a rocket scientist consultant: Steve Harrington, CEO Flometrics and San Diego State professor.

Harrington: "Unfortunately in the rocket science world there aren't that many women and they are hunted to extinction."

After mulling it over, they came up with a rocket design that could have been capable of accomplishing the myth, though they would have to validate various aspects to see whether or not they were even possible: * Launcher: tube made from naval cannons and embedded in a river bank * Ignition: Gun cotton * Rocket fuel: Powered by ethanol and liquid oxygen, the latter made by Lord Kelvin * Stabilization: Small turbine and a gyroscopic stabilizer contributed by Ernst Mach

The Nazi's used ethanol fuel to make the V-2 rocket. Due to oil-shortages they wanted an alcohol-based design.

Lord Kelvin's Liquid Oxygen

A sub-myth of this myth is that William Thompson (aka Lord Kelvin) in 1865 succeeded in creating liquid oxygen. This is highly doubtful as Thompson never claimed to have accomplished this feat and history first records the creation of liquid oxygen in 1877. In 1877 Cailletet and Pictet independently created tiny amounts of liquid oxygen using different techniques. Cailletet used adiabatic expansion and Pictet used the Joule-Thompson effect. Both relied on Thompson's 1852 observation that gas expanding in a vacuum decreases in temperature.

It was Grant's job to verify whether or not it was possible to create the liquid oxygen. First he had to produce oxygen gas by focusing the sun on mercuric oxide. He eventually gave up on converting the oxygen into liquid form as he couldn't get the gas cold enough. Oxygen doesn't become a liquid until it reaches -118.6 degrees Celsius, and neither the MythBusters HQ nor people during Civil War times possessed the technology to make anything that cold.

They decided to change the design to a hybrid rocket: the fuel is wax, the oxidizer is nitrous oxide. The technology for both ingredients was available during the Civil War. It takes 50 atmospheres to create liquid nitrous oxide versus the 400 atmospheres it takes for oxygen.

This time Grant was successful, but they censored the process that Grant used to make the nitrous oxide. Adam's sniff evaluation: "That burns"

Rocket Tank Design

They scratched the two-stage design. Instead they decide to put a tank of liquid nitrous oxide at the top with a release valve to a tank full of paraffin wax. Carbon would be added to the paraffin wax for an even burn and a graphite nozzle to