We are fans of all sorts of crazy attempts to go fast, and while muscle cars may be our favorite form of mobility, most of us would probably just at the chance for a ride in an F-22 Raptor fighter jet.

Alas, the closest most of us will ever get to rocket propulsion are a few model rockets shot off in an open field. But way back when rocket technology was first gaining followers between the two world wars, those crazy Germans attached solid-fuel rocket boosts to just about everything…including bikes.

We came across this retro-pictures of rocket bikes from Life Magazine over at Retronaughts, a website dedicated to old-yet-cool stuff. It is hard to imagine the kinds of cajones it took to strap oneself to a rocket-powered bicycle that may or may not explode.

We're not going to call this 'before and after,' but there does go to show why there's no modern rocket-powered bicycles for consumers today.

One of the leading experts in German rocket-bike technology was Herr Richter Richter strapped 12 solid-fuel rockets to his bicycle and reached an estimated top speed of 55 mph before falling and crashing.

He wasn’t seriously injured though, and was soon off rocket-biking again.

As it turns out, ze Germans even turned rocket-bike racing into a sort of death sport. The pictures at the top of the post show two well-known cycle racers, Max Hahn and Oskar Tietz, riding rocket-bikes at the Olympiabahn in Berlin, Germany in 1929.

So next time you’re bragging about all the crazy crap you do, just remember that when he was your age your grandfather was probably even crazier stuff, like riding a rocket-powered bicycle. Really, who gets these ideas?