Published in Transportation

"Mad" Mike Hughes fails to prove flat earth conspiracy

by on24 February 2020


But helps Darwin along

A bloke who didn’t believe in gravity and was hoping to prove the earth was flat has been killed by reality.

Daredevil "Mad" Mike Hughes died Saturday when a homemade rocket he was attached to launched but quickly fell to earth in the California desert

"He was working on a TV show, Homemade Astronauts, when his craft crashed in the California desert", reports NBC. Four different Slashdot readers shared the news.

The stunt was part of a forthcoming television show, "Homemade Astronauts", that was scheduled to debut later this year on Discovery Science Channel.

Discovery confirmed the 64-year-old's death in a statement. "It was always his dream to do this launch, and Science Channel was there to chronicle his journey", which in this case was to the afterlife.

Hughes, who also thought gravity was not real, had been trying to prove the world was “frisbee” shaped by flying a rocket to get an “unbiased” look. Of course, he could have sent up a rocket with a camera, he didn’t need to go himself, but that apparently didn’t occur to him.

To be fair it was amazing is that Hughes managed to get off the ground high enough to kill himself. In 2018, he successfully launched himself about 1,875 feet into the sky above the Mojave Desert via a garage-made rocket. His landing that year was softened when he deployed a parachute.

This time it looks like his parachute fell off the rocket shortly after blast-off and he was left with “faith and prayers” until he hit the ground.

The US press is hailing his death with some sympathy and no one outside the comments boxes uses the words “stupid” or “pointless”.

 

 

Last modified on 24 February 2020
Rate this item
(3 votes)