"I didn't want to believe I could make that big a mistake," Brian says. "We had eleven-hundred fifty-five emails between us over a year-and-a-half period. I wanted to believe her so much that I was willing to take the chance, but as soon as we got married, on October 15, 2002, then things just got worse."
Ilena was fifteen years younger than Brian, leaving behind a 700-square-foot apartment she'd shared with seven other people in Russia. Brian had installed a swimming pool for her son. He'd agreed to pay for her $4,000 in laser eye surgery and $12,000 in dental work. He'd traded in his BMW roadster for a sedan. Still, they fought. She refused to speak English at dinner, or to get out of bed before eight in the morning.
Brian brought home a computer for her to use while Alexi was at school all day. Six weeks later, he asked her about the Web surfing she'd done…
"The worst websites were for bestiality and sex with animals," he says. "She had been spending an hour or an hour and a half at a time, several days a week, going to these sites. It was only six weeks between when we got the computer and when she left. I was severely despondent to think this woman who I had loved enough to bring from Russia and marry was that perverse. We're not talking about normal porno, I'm talking about stuff that would make you sick."
Six weeks into the marriage and she'd secretly placed online ads, looking for a new man, ideally an artsy type with long blond hair, living in a city loft-pretty much the polar opposite of brunet, bearded Brian in his log cabin.
"Ilena is a very beautiful woman, but she has no soul. She's soulless," he says. "I'm convinced I was nothing more than a ticket here. That's all."
In Brian Walker's mind, Project R.U.S.H. was connected with being Rocket Guy and being married to Ilena. "I was thinking-in my own little way-what a great way to bring the world together," he says. "To show cooperation and connection between former enemies. We used to talk about how the two of us could do a book together. We could write children's books in English and Russian. I could see a whole tree growing out of this with all these opportunities, and that was just squashed."
The first time he talked to her about her Web surfing, Ilena packed a bag, took her son, and moved in with a neighbor-a Russian man she's been living with ever since.
Brian says, "I've had a lot of guys email me, and their stories were almost identical. These guys believed there was love there, but once their wife had her residency or her green card, she was gone. Ilena didn't even wait that long. She left two months after we were married. She couldn't even play the game long enough to get legal status."
That's where everything fell apart. Brian didn't eat for eight weeks. He lost forty-five pounds, shaved his beard, and couldn't bear to work on the rocket.
"I've been working so hard for so long," he says. "You go back to before I started this rocket project and look at the fifteen years of abject failure. I built a submarine, but I never made it into a business. I'd succeed in one portion, but I'd fail at a different part. The same with my stretcher or my hundreds of other inventions. I would work nonstop for months and years on end. Then I started getting success in the toy industry, and instead of scaling back I jumped into this project, and at this point in time it's completely overwhelming me."
Another shock came in the form of the "X-Prize," an offer of ten million dollars prize money to the first private group to put a rocket into the atmosphere. And the sudden competition Rocket Guy now faces from well-funded and well-educated teams around the world.
Even the media attention had become a handicap. Some two thousand people have shown up at his door, wanting a tour. "I have a really hard time saying no to people," he says. "What's slowed me down the most over the past three years is my desire to appease people's requests. Whether it's the media. Whether it's reading and answering emails or inviting people out to see things. Or doing school fund-raisers. I go speak at schools quite a bit."
It's been quite a ride. Money. Fame. Love. All of it before the rocket even got to the launch pad.
Fast-forward to July 2003, and, day by day, Brian Walker is coming back. A friend introduced him to a woman, an American, a realtor his own age. Her name is Laura, and already her voice is on his answering-machine message. They've skydived, together. There's even talk about another wedding-after Brian's divorce is final.
And he still gets letters, hundreds of letters from kids, parents, and teachers who love his toys.
There in Bend, Oregon, work continues in the Rocket Garden. There's the centrifuge where Brian trains himself to endure G forces. There's the tower where he tests rocket engines. In a couple months he plans to launch himself three miles high in a test rocket. He plans to finish the geodesic dome he's started. And the observatory perched on top of it. Inside the dome, the rocket waits, painted two-toned, light and dark blue. Ready, on the trailer he was making back in December 2001. Back when anything seemed possible. Love. Fame. Family.
In a way, it's all still possible.
Instead of instruments inside the rocket, he only wants a flat-screen video monitor hooked up to cameras on the outside. Or video goggles he can wear.
He wants to build a rocket sled that will ramp up one side of the dome.
He wants to design a glider-type aircraft that can be catapulted from city to city.
There's a go-cart he's building, powered by twin jet engines.
And the jet engine he bought on eBay and rigged so its 1,600-degree exhaust will melt the ice in his driveway… "When this thing kicks to life, your nuts suck all the way up into your stomach," he says. "It's almost terrifying to see this thing come to life."
And there's corporate sponsorship to search for. "I'd love Viagra as a sponsor, because the rocket makes a damn good symbol for Viagra," Brian Walker says. "Much better than a race car."
There's so much work left to do.
He still needs to distill the nine thousand pounds of hydrogen peroxide. And answer the emails. In the log cabin, his Soviet-made space suit waits.
The whole world waits.
Yes, you'll be hearing a lot more from Rocket Guy.
A lot more.
If he's not the first private person into space, then he wants to pioneer high-altitude skydiving from rockets. He wants to launch space tourism, which will allow people to orbit the Earth in a station, like a cruise ship, and drop out of the sky to visit any place, like a port. He plans to write a book that explains his success as an inventor. He's designing a carbon-fiber cannon that will shoot three-hundred-gallon water balloons to put out forest fires five miles away.
Inside his forty-five-foot-wide geodesic dome, Brian Walker talks about the red, green, and yellow halogen lights he plans to install. He talks about his other dreams. Of being "Teleportation Guy" and instantly teleporting himself to Russia. Or being "Time Travel Guy."
For now, he says, "The only thing reasonable I think I can do is to shoot myself into space. I can't time-travel. I can't teleport myself."
Inside the cool, dark dome, away from the desert sunshine, alone here with his rocket, he says, "I want to have unique special-effects lighting, and I want to have speakers that will make reverberating sounds so I can do really cool presentations."
You see, the way Rocket Guy explains it, the goal-space travel, time travel, teleportation-isn't your real reward. It's what you discover along the way. The same way putting a man on the moon gave us Teflon frying pans.
"And," Brian Walker says, "I want to do my own kind of Kentucky Fried Movie type of thing. Remember the TV show Time Tunnel?"
He says, "I want to do Time Tunnel 2001 with 'Time Guy, and Time Guy's whole mission is to go back in time to nail significant historical babes so he can spread his genetic genes into the future. So he goes back to Egypt to get with Cleopatra, and the moment he arrives he turns around and he's just about to be trampled by chariots, so they zap him back to the future. And then he goes back to France to get with Marie Antoinette, and he materializes on the guillotine just as the blade is coming down. So every time this poor sap goes back in time, he arrives at a point where within seconds he's going to be dead. And, the poor guy, it ends up he never does anything…"