It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's a ... Flying Toilet?

If you happen to be in southwest Michigan Saturday, don’t be surprised if you look up and see a portable toilet soaring through the sky.

That’s if the weather permits.

The Detroit Free Press reports that a group of rocketry hobbyists got the idea to attach rocket motors to the portable toilet they found in a field to draw attention to their hobby.

Larry Kingman, 47, of Benton Harbor said the Michiana Rocketry club obtained a permit from the Federal Aviation Administration because the toilet is expected to soar between 2,500 and 3,000 feet in an event they’re calling, “Thrusting the Throne.”

The group — which boasts on its club T-shirts, “as a matter of fact, it IS rocket science” — originally planned the launch near Three Oaks on Nov. 22, but postponed it because of inclement weather.

Kingman said his group has put a great deal of thought into how to make the thing fly, because it’s “not the most aerodynamic vehicle you can come up with.”

“There’s actually a very substantial aluminum airframe that we’ve built that has motor mounts in the center of it, so we’ll have a cluster of seven motors in the middle,” he told the newspaper. “Truly, we’re not just taping rocket motors to a Porta Potty. We’ve built an airframe, and we’re attaching the four sides and a roof of a decommissioned Porta Potty to this.”

The seven motors are estimated to give the johnny rocket a thrust of about 2,865 pounds, according to member Brian Zoborosky, in whose LaPorte, IN, garage the contraption was assembled. “A lot of calculations,” were required, he told the LaPorte Herald-Argus

“There were many challenges (to building the rocket) because (portable toilets) weren’t intended to fly,” Zoborosky said. “We had to get enough fin to make the rocket stable, enough thrust from the rocket motors so it would fly straight, and the center of gravity figured out so it just won’t fall over after launch.”

The toilet-rocket will weigh about 450 pounds and is being outfitted with two 26-foot regulation skydiving parachutes to ensure a soft landing. Club members expect it to land within 1,000 feet or 1,500 feet of the launchpad.

The rocket also has a deflector designed to minimize damage to the ground when the thing falls. Two years ago, the club launched a rocket with only one-third of the thrust of the soon-to-be-flying portable toilet, and it left a gouge two feet deep and eight feet wide, Zoborosky said.

Kingman said he expects as many as 2,000 people to show up to watch the toilet fly. “It’s sort of like seeing a pig fly, I guess,” Kingman said. “People don’t expect it to happen.”

The stunt has become the, ahem, butt of a few jokes. The most frequent question:

“Is it empty?” Kingman said.

Yes. Yes, it is.