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If he's lucky, when he turns the throttle, his 90 percent hydrogen peroxide will expand to 5,000 times its size and convert to steam that will reach 1,300#730;F. If he's lucky, he will then be thrust 30 feet into the air, where he will fly for as long as 30 seconds, all while tethered to a 20-foot safety pole. If he's lucky, self-taught Mexican rocket scientist Juan Manuel Lozano will someday become one of just a handful of people in history to make an untethered flight with a rocket belt. And if he's very lucky, he'll do all this without breaking any bones—or blowing himself up.

The road to a rocket-belt flight is long. Today Lozano, 51, will attempt his 12th tethered flight since he first deemed his rocket belt ready for liftoff. That was on September 9, 2005—eight years and more than half a million dollars after he began building his device. Today and every other day that Lozano has test-flown his rocket belt in the backyard of his home in Cuernavaca, an upscale suburb 50 miles south of Mexico City, he goes through a 17-step checklist. He always begins with the fuel: Is the hydrogen peroxide distilled to the ideal 90 percent concentration? If it's less, he won't fly as long. After he's filled and checked the fuel tanks, he adjusts the nitrogen regulator and makes sure the throttle valve is free and smooth.

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