January 8, 2010 in Features

Spokane brothers’ Christmas tree rocket a YouTube hit

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This still image from John and Jeremy Ulmen’s YouTube video shows their Christmas tree rocket in midlaunch.
(Full-size photo)

Two Spokane-raised brothers have scored a YouTube hit with their experiment in Christmas tree aerodynamics.

John and Jeremy Ulmen started plotting their Christmas tree rocket launch on Thanksgiving.

John Ulmen, a Ph.D candidate at Stanford specializing in robotic control systems, did the math. Jeremy, a recent English major graduate of Seattle University, collaborated.

The launch went exactly as planned two days after Christmas on some friends’ West Plains property.

The Ulmens used the same Christmas tree they celebrated around in their childhood home during the recent holiday.

The men’s parents, Dave and Liz Ulmen, are Spokane School District teachers. They loved the post-Christmas show.

The YouTube video of the rocket had nearly 140,000 hits as of late Friday afternoon. Watch it below.

Three comments on this story so far. Add yours!

• 

  AxeIsLame on January 08 at 9:36 p.m.

  Axe, you just violated the amount of lameness that can be posted in the response column. Refer here please:

  http://bit.ly/7weSs1

• 

  axe on January 08 at 9:56 p.m.

  http://www.nar.org/NARmrsc.html

  Read it and Weep.

• 

  Morefunthanyou on January 08 at 10:35 p.m.

  Thanks Axe, It’s good to know there are people out there making sure that nobody has any fun. Way to go Spokane!