Humboldtian

A Canadian electrical engineer has figured out how to keep boredom at bay during the dreary winters north of the 49th parallel. He's made a hobby of fashioning simple model rockets out of emptied soda bottles. With a bicycle pump, water, and a small amout of dish detergent, he can routinely launch these bottles fitted with homemade fins 200 meters high, more than 600 feet. One more advanced model that apparently included instruments reached 379 meters.

Googling soda bottle rockets, I found that this is apparently a popular hobby. You can buy kits. The Boy Scouts have teamed up with NASA to teach soda bottle rocketry. Apparently, the record height for a water-powered soda bottle rocket is 2,000 feet.

But the Canadian geek dad, Ken Schellenberg, has ambitions. His next project is an even more sophisticated soda-bottle rocket that he believes will reach 5 kilometers: about 3 miles up. Apparently his ultimate goal is to launch a bottle into orbit.