Bruce Simpson is an engineer and a tinkerer, as well as the editor of The Aardvark Daily, New Zealands longest-running daily tech-news and commentary website. He also loves doing things that are viewed as impossible. Stuff like building a $5000 cruise missile.

The DIY Cruise Missile project was going splendidly. Thousands of people followed the progress of the missile on Bruce's Interesting Projects site. (Incidentally, that's the site to check out if you want to build your own rocket powered gokart or jet engine.) Bruce was getting his parts off of the internet and had even licensed an American company to manufacture his X-Jet engine.

Now the New Zealand Government has aparently squashed the project. They've bankrupted Bruce and nixed the engine deal to the US. This is despite receiving government permission to export the same technology to Iran and Iran sure does want it.

So why did the Inland Revenue Department kill his jet engine tech sale and bankrupt him? Bruce claims that the NZ government was responding to pressure from the American government over his cruise missile project. "The New Zealand government at first said I had done nothing illegal. But then a US official was quoted as saying it was 'extremely unhelpful'."

All is not lost though as Bruce has seemingly proved his original point "that by using off-the-shelf technology in a suburban garage a terrorist can create a weapon against which there is no effective defence."

(Tuned on to this by Dopple-G)

Posted by: Jim at 11:49 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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