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posted by martyb on Tuesday November 28 2017, @09:39AM   Printer-friendly
from the the-truth-is-out-there dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 5, Funny) by bradley13 on Tuesday November 28 2017, @10:15AM (13 children)

    by bradley13 (3053) on Tuesday November 28 2017, @10:15AM (#602449) Homepage Journal

    Why not let him launch? He may prove two theories at once: Copernicus and Darwin.

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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @10:46AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @10:46AM (#602462)

    A rocket launch is... pretty destructive. Even if it succeeds. I'd imagine that a Bureau of Land Management is kind of supposed to stop random idiots from burning down and exploding public land.

    There is absolutely no reason to let him use public property. He can use his own land, or find a flat-Earther with a ranch or something that would be willing to help.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @11:31AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @11:31AM (#602470)

      ( from a Southern California resident )

      If he wants to go blow himself up in the desert, I think he's picked a great place. There's wide open spaces out there where he won't do much harm.

      If he proves something to himself, fine, but I'd rather see a guy die doing what he wants to do, than live an unfulfilled life where he did not do what he felt he had to do.

      Sports people do really risky things too, but if we call it "sport", its OK for people to do really risky things for the thrill of it... but if this guy wants to do this, we tell him he can't?

      Just one meth lab in a residential tract will expose somebody to far more harm than what this guy is gonna try.

      My take: Same as we had in High School where we had ambulances parked around the football field before a game. Supervise the guy so he will land in an open space, and maybe have someone with a 4WD chase vehicle standing by just in case Newton's law of gravitation ( which also causes the Earth to be spherical ) proves again to be correct.

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @04:12PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @04:12PM (#602544)

        You're completely misunderstanding the situation here.

        Sports people do really risky things too, but if we call it "sport", its OK for people to do really risky things for the thrill of it... but if this guy wants to do this, we tell him he can't?

        Go and burn a forest, and see how much it will help you with the authorities if you call it a "sport".

        They didn't tell him he can't launch his rocket, they told him he can't do something that destructive on public property. Apparently he managed to find a private property nearby, moved the rocket there, and now he's free to go.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @08:21PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @08:21PM (#602644)

          Burn a forest in the desert?

          • (Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday November 29 2017, @09:58PM

            by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Wednesday November 29 2017, @09:58PM (#603204)

            Burn a forest in the desert?

            There is vegetation in the desert and when it burns it may take centuries or more for the climax vegetation to grow back. If you are ever in Las Vegas with time to kill, take a drive out to Red Rock Canyon where you can see the results of one such fire.

  • (Score: 2) by Nuke on Tuesday November 28 2017, @10:49AM (7 children)

    by Nuke (3162) on Tuesday November 28 2017, @10:49AM (#602463)

    He may prove two theories at once: Copernicus and Darwin

    Don't know about Copernicus - didn't he show that planets move in ellipses? This guy will not get that far up to check. He'll verify Newton's theory of Gravity though, probably in spectaular fashion.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @11:31AM (6 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @11:31AM (#602469)

      Don't know about Copernicus - didn't he show that planets move in ellipses?

      No, that was Kepler. Copernicus said that the Sun is in the center instead of the Earth. But he still assumed circular orbits.

      The spherical shape of the Earth was already known to the old Greeks.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @11:40AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @11:40AM (#602473)

        And Ptolemy was the guy who kept working with all these crazy "epicycles" to try to explain a lot of crazy heavenly body trajectories observed with the assumption that they were all going around the earth. I guess another guy embodying the "flat earth" no matter how much scientific evidence would be presented to the contrary.

        The religious leader's treatment of Galileo has highly influenced how much credence I place in religions. Which is about how I view this guy too. The aviation he is messing with is terribly unforgiving of ignorance.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @12:37PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @12:37PM (#602482)

          no, he used the prevalent model of a friction-free firmament of crystal spheres. flat earth died a long time before he ever lived.

      • (Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday November 28 2017, @11:47AM (3 children)

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 28 2017, @11:47AM (#602475) Journal

        Copernicus said that the Sun is in the center instead of the Earth.

        Shame on you, you have the very person [soylentnews.org] to first establish, about 300 BC, the heliocentric model [wikipedia.org] here on S/N.
        Even Copernicus credited him.

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @02:02PM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @02:02PM (#602503)

          Interesting. On the Wikipedia page about Copernicus, I find first (emphasis by me):

          Nicolaus Copernicus (/koʊˈpɜːrnɪkəs, kə-/;[2][3][4] Polish: Mikołaj Kopernik;[5] German: Nikolaus Kopernikus; Niklas Koppernigk; 19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance- and Reformation-era mathematician and astronomer who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than the Earth at the center of the universe, likely independently of Aristarchus of Samos, who had formulated such a model some eighteen centuries earlier.

          but later (again, emphasis by me):

          Copernicus cited Aristarchus of Samos in an early (unpublished) manuscript of De Revolutionibus (which still survives), though he removed the reference from his final published manuscript.

          Very strange, that.

          • (Score: 2) by The Archon V2.0 on Tuesday November 28 2017, @03:53PM (1 child)

            by The Archon V2.0 (3887) on Tuesday November 28 2017, @03:53PM (#602533)

            > Very strange, that.

            That Wikipedia isn't able to maintain logical and factual consistency across a single article? Sadly, that's not strange at all.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @04:15PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @04:15PM (#602546)

              > Wikipedia isn't able to maintain logical and factual consistency across a single article? Sadly, that's not strange at all.

              It's almost like it's being written by multiple people, some of whom are not even experts on the topic.