Darwin awards candidate???

Think of him as a cross between Evel Knievel and the nutty professor — with a dash of Neil Armstrong.

An Idaho daredevil spent thousands of dollars on a spaceship in his back yard — all so he can fall 15,000 feet to Earth in it like a stone.

Maximus WillHammer, the superhero alter-ego of mild-mannered inventor George Bradley Lewis, says soon he will lock himself into his homemade rocket and have a helicopter drop it from 15,000 feet above the Earth into 60 feet of water with no engine or parachute, according to The Times-News.

The 35-year-old Twin Falls resident hopes the stunt, which he'll make crowds pay to witness, will be the gateway to performing as the rocket man for spectators around the world — and big bucks.

The starry-eyed tinkerer tested his stunt several months ago, dropping 1/4-size models of the "Dream Weaver" off a bridge with chicken eggs in the cockpits.

"Most people would test this with sensors," Lewis told the Times-News. "I did it with eggs."

The test didn't go off without casualties: One egg shattered as its rocket plunged into a river. Lewis said he jimmied his rocket design to account for the egg-pilot's problems.

Lewis, a self-educated construction worker, said he still needs around $10,000 to finish building his spaceship — the "Dream Weaver" — but is optimistic he'll get it done.

"If you want a lot of money, you have to do something crazy," Lewis told The Times-News. "And I'll bet you in the next 20 years, I'll have more than 300 patents."

The Evel Knievel inventor hopes his rocket man stunt will generate interest in his craft's potential as a military and space travel vessel if the big fall goes off without a hitch. He could endure up to 8 G's during the stunt.

"Basically, in my opinion, I know how to make UFOs. It's static generators," he told The Times-News.