Erik Gates, who is most famous for having appeared on several episodes of Mythbusters in his capacity as a rocketry expert, died in a freak accident when he apparently fell off a roof where he was working through a skylight thirty feet to his death.
Erik Gates owned a firm called Gateco Electric and was working on a site owned by Xirrus Inc., the President and CEO of which is his brother, Dirk Gates. Both Erik and Dirk Gates were active in amateur rocketry and ran a website Gates Brother Rocketry.
Erik Gates was able to use his expertise in rocketry to appear as a guest expert on four Mythbuster episodes.
The first was the pilot, when the Mythbusters tested an urban legend about a man who strapped a rocket to the back of his pickup truck and fired it off. According to the legend, the man smacked into the side of a mountain, unable to stop or turn.
The second episode was about the Ming Dynasty Astronaut, which explored the story of a Medieval Chinese inventor who strapped a number of rockets to a chair, sat it in, and then ignited the rockets to fly through the air.
The third episode explored the bullet proofing properties of water. Also the episode tested whether a person on a swing could swing three hundred and sixty degrees all the way around. At one point rockets were attached to a test dummy on the swing to make it swing all the way around.
The last episode Erik Gates was on concerned the Confederate rocket. There is a story that during the closing days of the American Civil War, the Confederates were working on a rocket with which to bombard Washington DC. The result was that, using technology available at the time, the Confederates could not have hit Washington from Richmond.
Erik Gates owned a firm called Gateco Electric and was working on a site owned by Xirrus Inc., the President and CEO of which is his brother, Dirk Gates. Both Erik and Dirk Gates were active in amateur rocketry and ran a website Gates Brother Rocketry.
Erik Gates was able to use his expertise in rocketry to appear as a guest expert on four Mythbuster episodes.
The first was the pilot, when the Mythbusters tested an urban legend about a man who strapped a rocket to the back of his pickup truck and fired it off. According to the legend, the man smacked into the side of a mountain, unable to stop or turn.
The second episode was about the Ming Dynasty Astronaut, which explored the story of a Medieval Chinese inventor who strapped a number of rockets to a chair, sat it in, and then ignited the rockets to fly through the air.
The third episode explored the bullet proofing properties of water. Also the episode tested whether a person on a swing could swing three hundred and sixty degrees all the way around. At one point rockets were attached to a test dummy on the swing to make it swing all the way around.
The last episode Erik Gates was on concerned the Confederate rocket. There is a story that during the closing days of the American Civil War, the Confederates were working on a rocket with which to bombard Washington DC. The result was that, using technology available at the time, the Confederates could not have hit Washington from Richmond.
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