from the live-streamed-or-live-steamed? dept.
"Mad" Mike Hughes plans to ascend to 1800 feet in a $20,000 steam-powered rocket.
He has flown in rockets before, mostly successfully, but was injured by the acceleration.
Despite that he claims "science is science fiction", he used documented engineering formulas because they are known to work, despite that the science behind them is bogus.
It will be live-streamed on Hughes' YouTube channel, possibly also on Pay-Per-View.
Related Stories
According to Southern California Public Radio,
"Mad" Mike Hughes, limousine driver and self-proclaimed flat-Earther, announced that he had to delay his plan to launch himself 1,800 feet high in a rocket of his own making. The launch, which he has billed as a crucial first step toward ultimately photographing our disc-world from space, had been scheduled for Saturday — before the Bureau of Land Management got wind of the plan and barred him from using public land in Amboy, Calif.
Also, the rocket launcher he had built out of a used motor home "broke down in the driveway" on Wednesday, according to Hughes. He said in a YouTube announcement that they'd eventually gotten the launcher fixed — but the small matter of federal permission proved a more serious stumbling block (for now).
Related: Flat Earther Plans Manned Steam-Powered Rocket Launch.
Self-taught rocket scientist finally blasts off into California sky
"Mad" Mike Hughes, the rocket man who believes the Earth is flat, propelled himself about 1,875 feet into the air Saturday before a hard landing in the Mojave Desert. He told The Associated Press that outside of an aching back he's fine after the launch near Amboy, California.
"Relieved," he said after being checked out by paramedics. "I'm tired of people saying I chickened out and didn't build a rocket. I'm tired of that stuff. I manned up and did it."
The launch in the desert town — about 200 miles east of Los Angeles — was originally scheduled in November. It was scrubbed several times due to logistical issues with the Bureau of Land Management and mechanical problems that kept popping up.
Previously: Flat Earther Plans Manned Steam-Powered Rocket Launch
Federal Government Denies Permission for Flat Earth Researcher's Rocket Launch
Multiple Soylentils have written in to let us know about the death of Mike Hughes:
"Mad" Mike Hughes Dies in Rocket Crash
Michael 'Mad Mike' Hughes, staunch flat Earth conspiracy theorist, launched himself into the skies above Barstow in San Bernardino county Saturday, February 22nd.
He was attempting to reach an altitude of ~5000 feet (1,500 meters). Unfortunately his parachute did not open during descent causing him to plummet to his death.
This wasn't Hughes' first rodeo, as the self-taught engineer had made two other attempts, the latest of which was supposed to launch in August 2019. That attempt was grounded by bad weather. Before that, the rocketeer had a successful (albeit bumpy) launch in March 2018, when his homemade rocket reached 1,875 feet (572 m) in altitude over Amboy, California. During that launch, Hughes had to deploy two parachutes to save himself from smashing into the desert. Even so he plummeted back to Earth at 350 mph (563 km/h). He got out of that one with just a sore back, he said at the time.
This launch was only a stepping stone to the eventual goal to proving the Earth was flat.
Would flat-Earth-believer Hughes have been able to see our planet's sphere at 5,000 feet (1,524 m)? Nope. And he knew that, saying he would need to soar past the so-called Kármán line — where the sky ends and space begins, or roughly 62 miles (100 kilometers) above Earth — to see the curvature with his own eyes.
Two other amateur rocket teams are also attempting to reach the 100 KM point.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday November 23 2017, @02:49AM (5 children)
Wow, he sounds like a real Challenger!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday November 23 2017, @03:09AM (4 children)
More like a challenged to me, but meh...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Informative) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday November 23 2017, @03:15AM (3 children)
Aw, come on, man, you got the joke, didn't you?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday November 23 2017, @03:28AM
Except that he'll go up in steam, rather that in flames.
But he's no chicken...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday November 23 2017, @07:05PM (1 child)
speaking of which, does https://youtu.be/e-Xiw5VDc0c?t=50s [youtu.be] say indeed "hotter than columbia, hotter than challenger"? Lyrics I find online are borked. If so, it's quite a bingo...
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 24 2017, @05:08AM
I'm hearing "faster than Columbia, brighter than Challenger".
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday November 23 2017, @03:04AM (14 children)
More details on Forbes [forbes.com]
The Guardian [theguardian.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday November 23 2017, @03:17AM (10 children)
Shaq is a master troll. He's as good at trolling as he is at playing street-ball. If he were president he'd basically be a Black Trump.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday November 23 2017, @03:57AM (9 children)
With a black rump...
....blump.
BrShaq Oblump for Prez!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 23 2017, @04:21AM (8 children)
But... butt... she's no woman.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday November 23 2017, @08:02AM (7 children)
Sex changes are possible today.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by unauthorized on Thursday November 23 2017, @08:58AM (5 children)
No they are not, and they never were. Your sex is "assigned" by your genetics and there is nothing you can do about it, short of perhaps developing a technique that could alter the genetic code of every single cell you have.
I'm really sorry for everyone who is not happy with the gender they are, but they deserve to be told the truth, rather than an unrealistic pipe dream. There is a very good reason why most men act like men and most women act like women, and it's not "the Patriarchy" that's doing it.
What social constructivists call "gender" is actually manifestation of what real scientists call "gendered behavior", or behavior that is dictated by one's physical gender. Now of course I wouldn't say there are people on the sides of the bell curve, there is natural variation in all human behavior and this is consistent with the fact that gender is rooted in genetics. Arguing that gender is not biological some people don't exhibit typical gendered behavior is like arguing the survival instinct is not biological because some people kill themselves.
There might be evolutionary reasons as to why some people behave uncharacteristically for their gender, or it might simply be an uncommon developmental quirk. It's hardly the most unusual form of abnormal behavior out there.
These are extremely rare conditions that have little to do with the so-called transgenderism because the overwhelming majority of people who seek to alter their gender do not suffer from such chromosomal abnormalities.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 23 2017, @06:47PM (2 children)
There are a few people out there with cells from a twin (or failed twin) of the opposite gender. Natural genetics is a weird thing [wikipedia.org]. And of course, organ transplants are often intersex. Thus, genetic code is not gender.
Biology is not genetics. The latter is only a part. We also need to consider that any human genetics contains the blueprints for both genders (aside from the small amount of stuff on the Y chromosome which isn't part of female DNA) and hence, everyone has those biological pathways not just people with the right chromosome combination.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday November 24 2017, @06:03PM (1 child)
It will be interesting to see if the advanced gene therapy of 50-100 years from now can completely replace the entire genome in every cell of the human body, including swapping in new sex chromosomes. This would probably illustrate your "biology is not (merely) genetics" point even further. In this scenario, you could walk around with the genetic code of any person in the world (or a new genome constructed by humans/computers) in 99.99% of your cells, but your body has already been built. Hormone replacement therapy results in gradual changes to the body. Perhaps a complete genome replacement would lead to more changes, but probably not that much more. The only way to truly get the results you are looking for would be to grow a replacement body and perform a brain/body transplant. Growing a clone for 20-something years takes too long and you have to deal with their brain (ethics!). Maybe there will be a way to grow large, adult-sized portions of the human body, sans brain, like we are doing with organs [smithsonianmag.com]. Including the skeleton, nerves, and vascular system (one reason why lab grown organs are currently puny). If DNA can't be programmed [livescience.com] to aggressively construct fully grown skin, limbs, bones, breasts, etc. in the correct proportions (allowing you to make a perfect doppelganger in the case of known persons), then the second best way could be to use a computer to simulate the resulting body shape from a genome and print large scaffolds that act as templates for cells. Whichever method works, you take all the pieces and put them together, preventing ugly scarring using salamander-style macrophages or another method. Then you simply have to remove the person's brain and connect it to the spinal cord of the new body (I assume that mind uploading does not work in this scenario). Piece of cake!
All of that sounds rather expensive. You'll either need to be in the rich transgendered elite or have a utopia of unprecedented per-capita wealth to participate.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 24 2017, @07:26PM
Not if they don't have a brain which isn't needed to grow the clone. That neatly sidesteps the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 23 2017, @11:06PM
Totally O/T, but I have to agree.
No matter the gear they're packing, they still act like their former sex, stereotypically speaking.
I known a few transgendered folks, and all of them are still unhappy campers after their reassignment surgery.
It's kind of sad to see their dreams not become real.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @10:19AM
There are universities that refuse to permit research in this area. There is also plenty of "research" that starts with the conclusion, rather like Rabbinical or Biblical or Koranic "research".
Given that 45% of transgender people kill themselves, and surgery makes little difference, we really ought to look into causes more.
The left wants to celebrate this condition, the religious right wants to condemn the condition, and meanwhile people are dying from a mental illness that is probably a birth defect. March of Dimes ought to be all over this.
Industry really doesn't want any research, since hormone-disrupting chemicals may be at fault. At some development stages, it takes very little to screw things up in various ways. The easy but unethical (maybe?) experiment would be to expose pregnant women to various things on purpose.
It could be mostly one thing, or a combination. Suspects include: viruses, plasticizers, fire retardants, soy, birth control (including water supply contamination), etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 23 2017, @07:10PM
Sex changes are possible today.
> Good, I want a bigger one.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 23 2017, @04:58AM (2 children)
He's got it all wrong, they all do. It's the inside that's flat. The edge is a circle so as you travel around the earth it looks like a sphere, but if you peaked underneath you'd realize it's actually a disk. This guy should be digging down not flying up. He's not going to prove anything to us true believers.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday November 23 2017, @05:12AM
You didn't pay him well enough, I reckon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Touché) by Nuke on Thursday November 23 2017, @01:32PM
Perhaps that is what will happen when his rocket hits the ground.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 23 2017, @03:26AM
... of the alt-flight.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 23 2017, @03:27AM (4 children)
We use steam engines on some of our most powerful rockets:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_IV_Heavy [wikipedia.org]
We also used steam engines to help go to the Moon and lift the Space Shuttle.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 23 2017, @04:49AM
Liar. None of what you say ever happened.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by realDonaldTrump on Thursday November 23 2017, @05:54AM
Give me goddamned steam any day! We put guys on the Moon with steam, it was good enough. It made us the greatest nation in the history of the world. It's still the best. Why do we need the digital catapult? Are we babies?
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Thursday November 23 2017, @09:26AM (1 child)
Surely when you combine LOX and Liquid Hydrogen (as used by the space shuttle) in the presence of a flame, you get steam?
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Thursday November 23 2017, @10:23AM
What's that sound? *looks up* A rocket launch over my head?
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Thursday November 23 2017, @03:37AM
It's magic! Steam magic!
Won't be surprised if he takes off, will be very surprised if he lands okay.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 3, Insightful) by idiot_king on Thursday November 23 2017, @03:40AM (13 children)
I always hated steampunk... Didn't know they were also flat-earthers.
Could've saved a boatload of money by just buying a friggin plane ticket. He'd be flying 10 times higher and might actually go somewhere and actually learn something.
(Score: 5, Informative) by frojack on Thursday November 23 2017, @04:01AM (4 children)
1800 feet. He could do better in a balloon gondola.
Its already been done in a steam powered airplane. [youtube.com]
He wants to get that high via a steam rocket.
He's too late. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skycycle_X-2 [wikipedia.org]
Evel Knievel beat him.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by aristarchus on Thursday November 23 2017, @05:48AM (1 child)
Oh, frojack! Great post as usual. A couple of things you missed. Evel Knievel was from Butte, Montana. Montanans never have to prove anything, because they are Montanans. What you have to watch out for is recent immigrants, those without three generations behind them. And really, Butte is not actually part of Montana.
Second point! Evel never ever at all aligned himself with wacko people like the Flat-earthers! I mean, there are some things that a Polack from Butte, USA, cannot possibly sign on to, and the flat-earthers is one of those. It is kind of like, for your personal registration, frojack, someone denying climate change only for the lulz, or to be controversial, or to be a Republican. Evel Knievel was no Republican!!!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday November 24 2017, @11:44AM
But he could swing an aluminium baseball bat damn'd well. Like... who?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Thursday November 23 2017, @01:55PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 23 2017, @01:59PM
The whole 1800' thing is the funniest part.
Take your GoFundMe money and have a trip to a (not recently Hurricane ravaged) Caribbean island, buy a nice video camera and get a window seat on the commercial flight, stream the whole trip - you'll get to 30,000+'.
Or, spend about $800 on a weather balloon video rig that actually gets high enough to see curvature.
I suppose if you never get above 1800' altitude or a mile downrange, the earth might as well be flat - for your purposes.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 23 2017, @05:44AM (1 child)
This is a test flight, the next one after this, if he survives, is supposed to be much higher.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Friday November 24 2017, @06:20AM
All things considered, I suspect the guy has already gone "eight miles high" and "couldn't get much higher" if you get my drift…
(Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Thursday November 23 2017, @08:05AM (5 children)
Yeah, he would "learn" that the plane windows are manipulated to distort the view, in order to make it appear that the earth is round. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 23 2017, @08:36AM (4 children)
I've been on planes several times, including transatlantic flights (which go as high as reasonable for a commercial flight).
I haven't thought of testing whether the Earth appears round from a plane, but I have looked out the windows extensively, and sphericity is not something that jumped out at me.
Obviously when I looked down I didn't see the map, but i never bothered to think about the nature of the distortions that i saw (I once flew, at night, from Belgium to Italy, and i recognized the french Mediteranean coast. I discounted any distortion to the significant "tilting" of the map).
By the way, I do believe that the Earth is round.
(Score: 5, Informative) by ledow on Thursday November 23 2017, @08:55AM (3 children)
You don't need a plane.
There's an horizon.
You can look out to sea from any beach or coastline and visibly only see about 3 miles of sea. That's a distance you can actually sail out to in order to check it.
But if something is significantly HIGHER than you are, you can see it further than 3 miles, covered by the ocean.
And a flat earth wouldn't let you do that - you'd be able to see the object AND the ocean out to that distance and one wouldn't obscure the other.
Because it happens ANYWHERE you go on Earth (i.e. the Earth is ALWAYS falling away from you, 3 miles from wherever you are), the only mathematically-possible way for that to occur is to be on the surface of a spherical object.
In fact, that's one of the ways to calculate the radius of the Earth, using maths we had 4000 years ago.
If you're getting into "proof"... try building a runway. Runways are such large pieces of straight "flat" high-precision tarmac that you have to account for the curvature of the Earth in their construction. A friend of mine used to do so for a living.
However, the second you're talking to someone who literally discards thousands of years of the simplest mathematics for some nut-job "theory", nothing is going to help you anyway.
Honestly, if you understand what a sine or cosine does, or even have enough brain to derive them from simple geometry, you can LITERALLY prove the Earth is round in a matter of minutes with any number of simple, repeatable, accurate observations.
(Score: 3, Informative) by unauthorized on Thursday November 23 2017, @09:14AM
You sir severely underestimate flat-earthers. You see, you are wrong because video games [theflatearthsociety.org]. Checkmate atheists!
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Thursday November 23 2017, @01:46PM
There's a few other different ways you can demonstrate it, also mentioned here: https://www.popsci.com/10-ways-you-can-prove-earth-is-round [popsci.com]
However I suspect that anyone launching themselves skyward at 500mph with the attitude "I don't believe in science," is likely wind up a lot flatter than the earth as a result.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 23 2017, @02:02PM
It's a gentle hill, so gentle that their brains interpret it as flat.
If there were gentle valleys to cancel out the gentle hills, then on a clear day you could see miles and miles across them, but we don't have those, do we?
The whole thing is an argument from the point of view of someone who never travels, or thinks, much.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by krishnoid on Thursday November 23 2017, @03:47AM (1 child)
In a balloon, but nevertheless [youtube.com].
(Score: 2) by letssee on Thursday November 23 2017, @08:34AM
Which proved the earth is *hollow* :-) https://youtu.be/5REsCTG4-Gg?t=95 [youtu.be]
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 23 2017, @07:47AM (2 children)
..., seriously. Multiple independent confirmations of results are an important part of the scientific process.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 23 2017, @08:08AM
Mhm. [wikipedia.org] Something [wikipedia.org] like [wikipedia.org] these? [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by letssee on Thursday November 23 2017, @08:18AM
I start a kickstarter to prove steel ships don't sink, please send me money to help me build a prototype. :-)
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday November 23 2017, @09:25AM (2 children)
Why stop at 1800 feet? Please do keep going, it might actually be a worthy project if we can get him ejected from the planet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 23 2017, @10:47AM (1 child)
Maybe he can confirm if the moon landings were real or fake as well. You know, looking for foot prints and flags.
(Score: 2) by SpockLogic on Thursday November 23 2017, @05:33PM
He only has to ask Wallace and Gromit who will confirm that the moon is made of cheese.
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday November 23 2017, @10:35AM (1 child)
'nuff said.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 23 2017, @02:04PM
People screwing up on purpose, for entertainment. It makes money.
https://youtu.be/X8Y2F1320QI [youtu.be]
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mrpg on Saturday November 25 2017, @09:37PM
Canceled: http://www.desertsun.com/story/news/2017/11/25/mad-mike-hughes-cancels-rocket-launch-prove-earth-flat/894587001/ [desertsun.com]
Not having the required federal permits plus mechanical problems with his "motorhome/rocket launcher" have forced self-taught rocket scientist "Mad" Mike Hughes to put his experiment on hold.
The United States Bureau of Land Management "told me they would not allow me to do the event ... at least not at that location," Hughes said in a YouTube announcement, amid international attention over his plans to launch into the 'atmosflat.'