Smith Journal — January 2018

025 SMITH JOURNAL

Clockwise from left
Tolyatti’s scrap heaps are perfect for sourcing new parts, such as these fuel cables.

Ildutov’s living room. On the shelf sits a model fire-fighting ship he built as a child.

The Snow Dogs race requires racing skill as well as engineering nous.

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His first engine was funded with the help of

his friends, who donated a nozzle for the rocket

worth 5,000 rubles ($112). Ildutov wanted to

test the machine a few times before he entrusted

his life to it, and used a sandbag to mimic his

body weight. As soon as the engine started it

hissed, lurched forward, and the sandbag was

flung like a cannonball. A crater formed in the

area where it landed, and the engine was buried

two metres under the snow. It took Ildutov and

his friends half an hour to dig it up. The nozzle

was never found. “I shudder to think I would

have been on that,” he says now.

Ildutov was disappointed, but his supporters

urged him not to give up. After licking his

wounds, he returned to his underground

workshop and concocted an idea to build

a turbojet engine. The search for parts was

reignited after he found a worn-out turbine

at a bus station. (Tolyatti is just that kind of

place.) Building the rocket was a painstaking

and, at times, dangerous process. The noise

of the machine, which Ildutov built at night,

attracted wardens from the nearby prison who

suspected something sinister. The first time

he tested the rocket, a three-metre-long flame

shot out of the engine, but the apparatus

didn’t work. That model was scrapped.

In 2015, Ildutov finally built a rocket he was

confident to enter in the Snow Dogs rally.

He fired up the machine, it roared – and

then promptly broke. In 2016, he returned,

hopeful but nervous. “Each time I ride this

machine it feels like the first time. My hands

shake and I drink tea to calm my nerves.” This

time, finally, Ildutov launched. He covered the

31-metre distance in a record-breaking

13 seconds, becoming a world champion.

Unfortunately for his parents, his success hasn’t

pacified his ambitions. Having completed the

race that eluded him for so long, he now wants

to ride his rocket over the frozen Volga River.

“I want the Zhiguli Mountains to rumble,

echoing the machine. I want to glide along the

river leaving a trail of fire and smoke.” •