Rocket man aims to prove flat Earth theory with flight
UNITED STATES: Seeking to prove that a conspiracy of astronauts fabricated the shape of Earth, a California man intends to launch himself 550 metres high on Sunday in a rocket he built from scrap metal.
Assuming that the 800kmh, 1.6-kilometre flight through the Mojave Desert does not kill him, Mike Hughes’ journey will mark the first phase of his ambitious flat Earth space programme.
Hughes’ ultimate goal is a subsequent launch that would put him several kilometres above Earth, where the 61-year-old limousine driver hopes to photograph proof of the disc we all live on.
‘‘It’ll shut the door on this ball earth,’’ Hughes said in a fundraising interview with a flat Earther group for the flight, which ranged across theories that Nasa is controlled by round Earth Freemasons, and that Tesla founder Elon Musk makes fake rockets from blimps.
Hughes has promised the flat Earth community that he will expose the conspiracy with his steam-powered rocket, which will be launched from a heavily modified mobile home - though he acknowledged that he still had much to learn about rocket science.
‘‘This whole tech thing,’’ he said in the June interview. ‘‘I’m really behind the eight ball.’’
That said, Hughes isn’t a totally unproven engineer. He set a Guinness World Record in 2002 for a limousine jump, and has been building rockets for years, albeit with mixed results.
He built his first manned rocket in 2014, and managed to fly it 400m over Winkelman, Arizona. As seen in a YouTube video, the flight ended with Hughes being dragged, moaning, from the remains of the rocket. The injuries he suffered put him in a walker for two weeks.
Hughes only recently converted to flat Eartherism, after struggling for months to raise funds for his followup flight over the Mojave.
It was originally scheduled for early 2016 in a Kickstarter fundraising campaign that mentioned nothing about Illuminati astronauts.
‘‘We want to do this and basically thumb our noses at all these billionaires trying to do this,’’ Hughes said then. ‘‘They have not put a man in space yet. There are
20 different space agencies here in America, and I’m the last person that’s put a man in a rocket and launched it.’’
The campaign raised only
US$310 of its US$150,000 goal. Hughes made other pitches, including a plan to fly over Texas in a ‘‘SkyLimo’’. But he complained about the difficulty of funding his dreams on a chauffeur’s meagre salary.
A year later, he called in to a flat Earth community web show to announce he had become a recent convert. ‘‘We were kind of looking for a new sponsors for this. And I’m a believer in the flat Earth,’’ he said. ‘‘I researched it for several months.’’ A GoFundMe campaign subsequently raised nearly
US$8000.