🐱 Flat-Earther to blast off in homemade, steam-powered rocket

Flat-Earther to blast off Sunday in homemade, steam-powered rocket

A Flat-Earther is looking to blast off toward space in a homemade, steam-powered rocket, in a launch he’s dedicating to U.S. President Donald Trump.

www.ctvnews.ca

A Flat-Earther is looking to blast off toward space in a homemade, steam-powered rocket, in a launch he’s dedicating to U.S. President Donald Trump.
Self-taught scientist “Mad” Mike Hughes plans to launch himself more than 1,500 metres into the sky on Sunday.

The 62-year-old limo driver and amateur rocketeer has gained attention in the past for his launches. He had several failed attempts before his first successful launch in March of last year.
Hughes successfully launched his rocket off a ramp made from a mobile home and scaffolding, making it 572 metres into the sky on the rocket before deploying his parachute and gliding back to Earth.
Amazingly, he walked away from the launch with only a sore back.

This time his sights are set even higher, tripling the height of the previous launch with an upgraded version of the rocket that he launched last year.
Decked out with emojis and the logo of the mission’s primary funder hud, a “hookup and casual dating” app, Hughes is looking to blast off to new heights.

Hughes says that Sunday’s launch is the first step towards his eventual goal of reaching the Karman line, which is the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space.
While there is no universally accepted number for the Karman line, NASA’s standard is 80 km above sea level.
To get to that point, Hughes told The Associated Press in 2017 that he was working to design and build a “rockoon” – a rocket that is carried into the atmosphere by a gas-filled balloon before being launched – theoretically taking Hughes the 109 kilometres he would need to see the curvature of the Earth.
Hughes is an outspoken flat-Earther, telling The Associated Press: "I don't believe in science … There's no difference between science and science fiction."
"Do I believe the Earth is shaped like a Frisbee? I believe it is," he told AP back in 2018. "Do I know for sure? No. That's why I want to go up in space."
Hughes is dedicating the launch to Trump, saying he hopes inspire Americans to make the “country great again.”
The launch is set to be filmed as part of a new Science Channel show titled, “Homemade Astronauts.”

 

[saisegeha]

This is why I love the Flat Earthers. They don’t care what anyone else tells them, they need to see it themselves.
They want to find the truth so bad, they will start their own space program to get the answers they need.
I respect that a lot more than I do the people who sperg out over the notion that someone else thinks the Earth is flat.

Same. Their point of view may seem incompetent to us, but they've got an incredible willpower to prove all of us wrong and that's what keeps them going. You can only respect that.

Let's hope his rocket doesn't explode, since that happened to so many individuals who either decided to fly in their own rocket (RIP) or send it off for a longer duration of time.

 

[Kaede Did Nothing Wrong]

This is why I love the Flat Earthers. They don’t care what anyone else tells them, they need to see it themselves.
They want to find the truth so bad, they will start their own space program to get the answers they need.
I respect that a lot more than I do the people who sperg out over the notion that someone else thinks the Earth is flat.

yes, there are reasons media likes to talk about flat earthers instead of astrology or whatever. but these people aren't rational skeptics and this guy isn't running an experiment. this is a faith-based publicity stunt.

"I don't believe in science … There's no difference between science and science fiction."

the moment anyone runs a real experiment is the moment they're exiled from the community.

 

[Safir]

It amazes me that flat earthers have the mental capacity to put something like this together

I know the guy who invented the concrete for the Chernobyl sarcophagus. He was going to buy a magical device to test food for poisons, GMOs, polonium and alien tard cum, and asked my opinion.
Me: "Dude wtf it's trash."
Him: "But it says it's certified right here! It must be true! They wouldn't lie, would they?"
Me: "Dude, google the cert type ID, it's electrical safety certification, it says this thing won't zap you, which it won't because it's 12 V. And holy shit you can't do mass spectrometry with 12 V, dude are you for reals."
Him: "Very informative, thank you." *buys it anyway*

And that's a mild example, lots of physicists are absolute fucking nutters who don't wear tinfoil hats because they know tin isn't conductive and thick enough to protect from alien mind rays, it should be either copper foil or a tin bucket. Hard sciences are as full of nutters as Beyonce Studies. In my experience (I'm a particle physicist, and man the field is absolutely crawling with Orthodox born-agains) the only reasonably "hard" kook-resistant field is molecular biology: it touches so many disciplines that it doesn't allow for knowledge gaps for kookery to hide in. Otherwise, you've got to go outside and talk to people. If the field allows success without going outside and talking to people, it will accumulate kooks.

 

[WhoIsSutterKane]

Tomorrow's headline: "Flat-earther dead after trying to launch self in homemade rocket"

 

[Clop]

"I don't believe in science … There's no difference between science and science fiction."
"Do I believe the Earth is shaped like a Frisbee? I believe it is," he told AP back in 2018. "Do I know for sure? No. That's why I want to go up in space."

Fuck does he think he's flying to space with? Magic dust and unicorns?

 

[Niggernerd]

The earth is neither round or flat.
It's the shape of the KF logo

 

[Jmz_33]

Bruh what if he flies so high he clips into the skybox, god help us.

Spoiler: His POV from the rocket

 

[Cedric_Eff]

I’m supprised he hasn’t built a rocket like the Little Joe or even the Redstone rocket. That dinky Rocket isn’t going to get him anywhere.

 

[Easterling]

If he doesn't play this on launch im gonna be pissed.

 

[KingCoelacanth]

you can get a weather balloon, affix a phone with gps tracking and set the camera to autoshoot and release it into the near atmosphere to get photos of the curvature of the earth.
As long as you put the phone in some kind of protective case, it'll be fine when it returns to earth.
We did this in high school as part of club project.

 

[Buster O'Keefe]

I hope he meets Evel Knieval up there and they have a good laugh at the roundies and their gay 'laws of physics'

 

[Diana Moon Glampers]

1500m? Is there a reason basic aviation is all a lie or something and commercial aircraft aren't good enough? Forgive me if this is answered by this man, I can't bring myself to read the ravings of the flat-earthers.

 

[Buster O'Keefe]

you can get a weather balloon, affix a phone with gps tracking and set the camera to autoshoot and release it into the near atmosphere to get photos of the curvature of the earth.
As long as you put the phone in some kind of protective case, it'll be fine when it returns to earth.
We did this in high school as part of club project.

But MacGyvering a steampunk rocket and blasting yourself into the air is the less soy-based option

 

[LocalFireDept]

Looks like Team Crackpot is blasting off again.

 

[kcbbq]

you can get a weather balloon, affix a phone with gps tracking and set the camera to autoshoot and release it into the near atmosphere to get photos of the curvature of the earth.
As long as you put the phone in some kind of protective case, it'll be fine when it returns to earth.
We did this in high school as part of club project.

All you have to do is look at aircraft flight paths on long enough flights. On a flat map the flight paths are arcs because that's the shortest distance. A straight line would, on a flight from, say, Charlotte, NC, to Minneapolis, MN, would pass south of Chicago by a good distance, yet the flight crosses Lake Michigan almost halfway up the lake. Cheap ass airlines aren't going to waste fuel just to uphold some conspiracy that the earth is an oblate spheroid.

 

[Tasty Tatty]

This is why I love the Flat Earthers. They don’t care what anyone else tells them, they need to see it themselves.
They want to find the truth so bad, they will start their own space program to get the answers they need.
I respect that a lot more than I do the people who sperg out over the notion that someone else thinks the Earth is flat.

Agree 100%. That's the basis for any scientific method and thinking: verify yourself.

 

[Buster O'Keefe]

Will there be a live stream? I assume he'll be launching near dusk for maximum effect.

 

[NerdShamer]

Reminds me of that rocket-powered glider that the Nazis built.

 

[usernames can change now!]

This is why I love the Flat Earthers. They don’t care what anyone else tells them, they need to see it themselves.
They want to find the truth so bad, they will start their own space program to get the answers they need.
I respect that a lot more than I do the people who sperg out over the notion that someone else thinks the Earth is flat.

tbh when their experiments inevitably confirm the earth is indeed round (like when they spent $30k on laser gyroscopes to measure the precession of the earth) they tend to just ignore those results or make up an excuse

 

[Karl der Grosse]

This could finally be the crucial step that revolutionizes steam-powered rocket travel.