FAREWELL, ROCKET MAN
'Mad'Mike Hughes finally falls to Earth
‘MAD’ MIKE HUGHES
American daredevil ‘Mad’ Mike Hughes died in February 2020 when his homemade rocket crashed as he attempted to propel himself one mile (5,300ft) high. Hughes was fired into the air aboard a steam-powered projectile which crashed back to Earth a few seconds later. A video of the ill-fated launch shows a parachute dangling behind the rocket, apparently deployed too early.
The two-month-old Mike Hughes was taken by his father to watch car races in Oklahoma City, and commenced racing motorcycles at the age of 12, turning professional at 18. Five years later he became the USA’s number one Ice Speedway motorcycle racer. Moving to Las Vegas in 1994, he became a limousine driver and daredevil. In 2002 he made the Guinness Book of Records by jumping a Lincoln Town Car stretch limousine 103ft (31m) at the Perris Auto Speedway, California. This was the longest limousine ramp jump, beating a previous 75ft (23m) jump he had made in Las Vegas. The stunt severely injured his back when he crashed into a wall; a mountain of car tyres intended to cushion his landing had come apart. The next year,
he tried for a new record of 125ft (38m), covering his body in bubble wrap and driving a 3 ton (2,700kg) white Cadillac limousine up a ramp at 65mph (105kmh). The car flipped over before reaching a cushion of tyres but Hughes was unhurt.
As a self-taught engineer, Hughes constructed his first manned rocket in 2014, the ‘X-2 SkyLimo’. He travelled a quarter of a mile (1,300ft) in it, reportedly collapsing afterwards and requiring several days’ recovery time. In subsequent interviews, he proclaimed a desire to go into space to ascertain if it was the case that, as he believed, the Earth was flat. Whether he genuinely believed this or was merely saying so as a PR stunt is not clear. In 2018, he successfully launched himself in a rocket 1,875ft (570m) in the air, landing in the Mojave Desert [FT368:10].
His last and fatal launch was intended to be a trial run for something even more epic; he wanted to blast himself 62 miles (100km) into the air to the Karman Line, the border between the Earth’s atmosphere and the beginning of space – where he had intended to gather evidence that the Earth is flat.
“Sometimes, I feel like the
cartoon character Wile E Coyote, when he suddenly runs off a cliff”, Hughes once said. “But it’s the price I pay for a life that’s not boring.”
Michael Hughes, racing motorcyclist and daredevil, born Oklahoma City, 9 Feb 1956; died Barstow, California, 22 Feb 2020, aged 64.
DOROTHY MACLEAN
Best known for having established the Findhorn Foundation spiritual community in Scotland together with co-founders Eileen and Peter Caddy, after taking a degree in business at the University of Western Ontario, Dorothy Maclean began working in New York as a secretary for covert intelligence organisation the British Security Coordination Service (BSC) during World War II. There, she met BSC officer John Wood, whom she married in 1941, and who introduced her to the teachings of Hazrat Inayat Khan, founder of the Sufi Order in the West. Moving to London with her husband, Dorothy joined a spiritual group established by self-styled ‘sensitive’ Sheena Govan. In 1954, Dorothy had her first mystical experience of “the God within”, described by her as a “vast unity”.
Sheena’s behaviour became increasingly bizarre; she ordered Dorothy to clean her rooms, and told her then husband Peter Caddy, whom she had married in 1948, that she had received a spirit message saying she was no longer his “other half”. Accordingly, he began a relationship with Eileen Combe, a married mother of five, who moved in with himself and Sheena. When Eileen became pregnant by Peter, Sheena announced that the child, born in 1955, belonged to her. Peter was exiled to Scotland and Eileen sent to live with Dorothy. After being reunited, the three adults and children moved to a primitive cottage on Scotland’s Isle of Mull. In 1957, Peter became the manager of the Cluny Hill Hotel at Forres, near Inverness, in the Scottish Highlands. Dorothy became the hotel’s receptionist and secretary. Making contact with a mothership from Venus, Eileen instructed Peter to clear a landing strip in the hotel grounds, an act which caused the hotel owner to fire them.
In 1962, following instructions from Eileen’s ‘inner voice’, Peter, Eileen, their three children and Dorothy moved into a caravan at Findhorn Bay
Caravan Park, six miles (3.7km) north of Forres on the coast of the Moray Firth. Struggling for money and at times surviving on benefits, they began growing their own vegetables. Eileen Caddy continued to receive spirit messages, and Dorothy discovered an ability to communicate with nature spirits (or devas, a name and interpretation derived from the Theosophy movement), specifically those of vegetables. Soon, the local area was alive with stories of 40lb (18kg) cabbages, enormous broccoli, and winter-flowering roses. Visitors began arriving to see these wonders for themselves. By the late 1960s, the focus changed from vegetable cultivation to “growing people”, and so the Findhorn community began. The Findhorn Foundation was established as a trust and charity and bought up nearby land, purchasing the Cluny Hill Hotel which was to become Findhorn’s College. The community grew over the next 20 years to encompass around 300 members, with celebrity endorsement from Burt Lancaster, Hayley Mills, and Shirley Maclaine.
In 1973, together with other community members, Dorothy travelled to the USA where they established the Lorian Association, a spiritual education community based in Wisconsin and Washington State. Dorothy continued to publish books relating the messages she received from devas, angels and other spirits; her writings on the “intelligence of nature” displayed a concern for the environment and exemplified the ‘Gaian hypothesis’, the interconnectedness of everything in nature. “We are the skin of this world; take us away and the complete planet, no longer able to function, dries up and dies,” a Cypress tree deva had told her. For more on Findhorn, see Andy Roberts, “Saucers Over Findhorn”, FT217:44-49.
Dorothy Maclean, author and educator, born Guelph, Ontario, 7 Jan 1920; died Findhorn, Scotland, 13 Mar 2020, aged 100.