Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/11/26/self-proclaimed-rocket-scienti.html
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While this guy is a twit, I don’t know that I’m a fan of this “I hope he dies!” thing.
Incidentally, if you follow his whole story, he didn’t become a flat earther until his initial kickstarter failed.He was just an Evil Kenevil wannabe who needed some casth. THEN he suddenly was a flat earther when he realized their gullible asses were a good source of funds. So hey, maybe he’s onto something.
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The truly disturbing part about this is not only do people like this breed…they typically vote as well.
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What proof does he expect fo find at 1800 feet? That’s like walking to the top of a moderately sized hill. Just get on any Southwest flight and they’ll take you 17 times higher than that. He’s just looking for publicity.
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Doesn’t he know that Elvis is watching!?!?
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“Mad” Mike Hughes
Not as mad as I need him to be…
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If this was in Canada, I’d be worried that he’d badly hurt himself and cost the public a bundle in healthcare costs.
In the US, his provider would probably say that being squashed was a pre-existing condition.
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Seem a bit odd that the whole Maker spirit of Boing Boing isn’t enthused about his home made rocket and mobile home launcher. Being a new convert to the Flatties makes me wonder along with other posters if he isn’t taking the lot of them for a ride with him at their expense. I’m hoping he makes it and comes back laughing telling them "opps kids, it’s round after all.
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At 61 years of age, Mad Mike is likely already out of the gene pool. His death wouldn’t do anything to improve it, and would traumatize his family and friends (assuming he has any). Also, his death would be seized upon by flat-earthers as some sort of conspiracy theory: an effort by nefarious elites to keep the truth from the people, or something.
The best anyone can hope for is that he fails to carry out his hair-brained scheme and fades completely back into obscurity.
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Nah, but Andy Kaufman probably is…
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It is amazing that with all our various modes of transportation, planes, trains, automobiles, rockets, bikes, hand gliders, that no one has ever taken a picture of the edge of this flat earth that we are all living on.
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Rocket scientist? I thought he didn’t believe in science?
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It’s incredibly stupid if Hughes’ plans to go through with his mission and this isn’t just a minor publicity stunt being picked up by major news outlets
He does plan to go through with it, but it is just a publicity stunt. There is no experiment here, or any dream of finding proof.
From the horses mouth! His 2016 kickstarter sets out his goal:
Mad Mike Hughes always wanted to be famous so much that he just decided one day to build a steam rocket and set the world record.
And his 2017 GoFundMe sets out the funding:
for which he said he wanted to promote flat earth awareness with our sponsorship. He wants the flat earth community to sponsor his next event.
(emphasis mine)
The GoFundMe does not claim it’ll discover anything, prove, anything, etc. It only sets out how large the logo will be, and promises that it’ll be covered by the AP. So the sponsorship have already got what they paid for.
It’s just one man with an expensive hobby and some gullible sponsors. The press put 2+2 together and got 22.
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It looks he’s delayed the launch by only one week, so evolution’s opportunity is not gone.
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Transparently so. Given that, as you say, in the US mountains are generally defined as more than 1000 feet, hot air balloons go above 3000 feet, commercial airlines go above 39,000 feet and, in fact, the only reason an aircraft an aircraft would go below 3000 feet would be to observe details on the ground (i.e. sightseeing). So obviously this doesn’t allow him to see anything, much less prove anything. He got the funds to realize his daredevil ambitions from flat Earthers because they were too dumb to realize that.
There’s a reason why they placed the “edge” of the Earth down at the South Pole - because no one ever goes there. Even commercial airline flights avoid it because of the impossibility of mounting any kind of rescue if a plane went down, so the only people to be personally anywhere near the “edge” are a small group of polar researchers (who are obviously in on the conspiracy). Never mind that this “South Pole = edge” model means that the distances between everything in the Southern Hemisphere are so crazy huge that flights from one part to another would necessarily have to fly over the entire Northern hemisphere for the shortest route (which would still be enormous).
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Actually, the best we could hope for is that he succeeds spectacularly in launching his rocket and comes back home safely to admit that the earth is, in fact, spherical.
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Looks like he had one launch in 2014 without the Flat Earth tie-in
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Is this guy still limo’ing people around, because… you know.
