‘Mad’ Mike Hughes
Daredevil BORN FEBRUARY 9, 1956 – DIED FEBRUARY 22, 2020, AGED 64
HE was the self-taught rocket scientist who wanted to make history by being launched into space to prove the Earth was flat.
Daredevil “Mad” Mike Hughes will be remembered for taking off in his steampowered rocket and then plummeting straight down to Earth again in a crash which ended his life.
Hughes’ fatal attempt near Barstow in the Californian desert was being filmed for a new TV show, Homemade Astronaut, on the Science Channel. He had been attempting to reach 5,000 feet without using advanced technology before his parachute appeared to malfunction.
His eventual aim had been to get to the Kármán line, the 62-mile barrier defined as the edge of space to take a picture and show the world was not round.
Speaking ahead of a previous attempt, which failed in 2018, he said: “It’s scary as hell, but none of us are getting out of this world alive.”
The stuntman considered himself to be the “world’s top daredevil” as an eccentric adrenaline junkie who thrived on danger.
Born in California, he used to watch his father race cars. He began riding motorcycles aged 12 and turned pro six years later.
He set the world record for the longest jump in a Lincoln Town Car stretch limousine at 31 metres in 2002. Hughes loved engineering but was openly disdainful of science, likening it to nothing more than “science fiction”.
His launch was sponsored by a dating app, which used the line, “Dating isn’t rocket science”.
His former representative Darren Shuster said “he wouldn’t have gone out any other way”.