A Steam Powered Rocket Sponsored by Research Flat Earth and a Ghost Town

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

all joking aside - his words and actions are mutually exclusive :

“It’ll shut the door on this ball earth,” Hughes said in a fundraising interview with a flat-Earth group for Saturday’s flight. Theories discussed during the interview included NASA being controlled by round-Earth Freemasons... Source

like all idiots - he talks big

but his plan - is incompatible with his stated objective

his maximum, altitude will be 600m [ there are several buildings higher than this ]

his " rocket " will carry no scientfic instruments - nor is it a viable platform for any useful science [ WRT the alledeged flat earth ]

g force and velocity will preclude mr huges making any usefull observations

so - what is the purpose ? - even by the slack jawed " resurch " standards of previous flat earth idiots - huges is a grade 2 moron

so what is the point ?

send answers to the " care bears " - they apparently giive a damm

I would have donated to this guy to build a steam powered rocket to prove the earth is flat however I already donated all my money to a pop star so he can build a warp drive.

a reply to: kamatty


Tom got you too, huh?

Looks like Mad Mike couldn't launch due to no permit to use public land for his rocket. I guess we'll have to wait a little bit longer before we find out what shape our planet is.

a reply to: LogicalGraphitti

as my earlier question has been unanswered - i shall ask you directly :

how is a rocket flight with an intended altitude of 600m [ max ] and a flight path < 2km - going to reveal anything about the " form factor " of terra [ ie - is it a spheroid or a flat plane ]

originally posted by: ignorant_ape
a reply to: LogicalGraphitti

as my earlier question has been unanswered - i shall ask you directly :

how is a rocket flight with an intended altitude of 600m [ max ] and a flight path < 2km - going to reveal anything about the " form factor " of terra [ ie - is it a spheroid or a flat plane ]

Don't ask me. I have no clue. I read this thread a couple of days ago and wanted to see what happened to this guy. I expected it to end in tragedy.

If those homemade looking parachutes don't employ he's spam in a can with no plan!

Hughes's ultimate goal is a subsequent launch that puts him miles above Earth, where the 61-year-old limousine driver hopes to photograph proof that it's a disk we all live on.

"It'll shut the door on this ball Earth," Hughes said in a flight fundraising interview with a flat-Earth group. Theories discussed during the interview included NASA being controlled by round-Earth Freemasons and Elon Musk making fake rockets from blimps.

ScienceAlert.com - Flat-Earther's Plan to Launch Himself in Homemade Rocket Just Hit a Problem.

Mad Mike, I can save you internet famedom on a stupendous death and for less money! All I need are two long sticks, some good weather, and a little help on spelling Eratosthenese (that is it, I think). He stuck a stick in the ground in one location and another a few hundred miles away. Take a measurement of the shadow's at the same moment, like noon, do some thing called "math" and you can get a rough estimate of the earth's circumference. Better measurements (using frikkin' lasers, for example!), GPS, an atomic clock, and perfectly metered sticks, and you can drive down the error percentage!

No need to shoot yourself into the sky to only find out we live on a sphere!

PS - The article is a good read to start your day off laughing!

a reply to: ignorant_ape

This 600m flight is supposed to be a test flight. He's planning on a higher altitude flight (if he survives this one) at a later date. It should also be pointed out that he only turned to the flat earthers when his GoFundMe and other funding attempts failed. He found the FES, was 'suddenly converted', and they agreed to fund him. How convenient.

a reply to: ignorant_ape

It is NOT. Typical flat earther is not willing to go the extra mile (pun intented) to seek proof

originally posted by: Zelun
a reply to: amazing

Yes, respect is due. However, his experiment is poorly conceived. 1800 feet? Isn't the cruising altitude of a passenger jet around 40,000 feet? A better experiment to prove(or disprove) flat earth would be to buy a decent camera, a compass and a ticket to Brazil. Take some time-lapse footage of the "northern and southern skies." In a flat-earth situation Polaris will be visible in both hemispheres, and the stars will "turn" the same way. That, in the business, is known as a "falsifiable assertion."

Oh I agree with you, but at least he's attempting some research on it.

My money is on gravity.

a reply to: JIMC5499

It's been a long time coming, but it looks like Gravity did indeed win

Sky News

"The daredevil blasted off shortly after 3pm local time with no countdown or fanfare.

Mr Hughes reached an estimated 350mph before activating his parachute.

He was forced to deploy a second chute as his rocket, emblazoned with the words "research flat earth", was falling too fast.

The daredevil landed bluntly with the rocket's nose breaking in two places - as it was designed to do.

"Am I glad I did it? Yeah. I guess," he said.

"I'll feel it in the morning. I won't be able to get out of bed. At least I can go home and have dinner and see my cats tonight."

Mr Hughes uses his Facebook page to address those who doubt his rocket-making skills and his theory that the Earth is flat.

"Do I believe the Earth is shaped like a Frisbee? I believe it is," he said in one video. "Do I know for sure? No. That's why I want to go up in space."

Mr Hughes had converted a mobile home into a ramp and worked on the rocket in his garage.

The launch had been scheduled for November last year, but issues over land management and mechanical problems pushed the date back."

a reply to: Mikeapollo

So he didn't die.

I'm kinda surprised. But, good for him!

Flat Earth nonsense aside, that takes a special kind of madness.

a reply to: Lysergic

He won't even come close to doing this because in order to see the curvature even assuming a full 210 degree panoramic view available to you in said rocket, you'd still need to get substantially higher in altitude than even the most optimistic expectations say this rocket will achieve.

Part of this has to do with the fact that human vision is an absolutely piss poor measurement device because we just don't possess the actual ability to resolve much less repeatably or accurately perceive subtle indicators of curvature or deviations from a straight line etc...

We literally developed instruments to measure this stuff because we quite frankly suck at it because of inbuilt physical limitations and beyond that our abilities as a species to talk ourselves into believing wacky s***!

Remember that any time someone tells you that they don't believe anything they can't see with their own two eyes.

Hell, keep it in mind any time someone tells you "I can tell x just by looking at it!"

Flerfers are not only some of the stupidest people alive for this among a million other reasons, one of which is mad Mike isn't a flerfer and essentially scammed the scammers to fund his rocket project by calling it flat earth research only AFTER he had multiple previous crowd funding campaigns fail!

He's just a bored older guy that wants to have a little fun in life!

Now, if random ass ATS people can find all this out without actually trying anything like hard maybe people should ask why the media is trying so hard to make this something it's not...

That's way more interesting than a limo driver who conned morons into funding his swan song

a reply to: amazing

No he's not...

He milked the stupid lolcow flat earthers (usually only suitable for getting lolmilk from) for actual money to do something he wanted to do for his own reasons bad enough that he was willing to go about the dirty business of milking dirty flerfer lolcows to pay for it.

In a way this is beautiful and poetic and a pleasant reversal of the usual turn of events where the stupid cost everyone else money and otherwise prevent them from doing what they want to do in life because we have to tax and legislate everything so heavily in order to fence in and otherwise cover the staggering amount of cost the stupid saddle humanity as a whole with!

I salute you mad Mike you crazy rocket riding dirty flerfer lolcow milking mad bastard!!!

"Do I believe the Earth is shaped like a Frisbee? I believe it is," he said. "Do I know for sure? No. That's why I want to go up in space."

That's his project for down the road. He wants to build a "Rockoon," a rocket that is carried into the atmosphere by a gas-filled balloon, then separated from the balloon and lit. This rocket would take Hughes about 68 miles up.

He has a documentary crew following him around to record his ambition, with a planned release in August.

LATimes.com, March 25, 2018 - Flat-Earther's steam-powered rocket lofts him 1,875 feet up into Mojave Desert sky.

Well I'll be! He did it! No countdown either. He may need to work on those landings.

Regardless of the reasons, it nice to see somebody actually do what they set out to do. Glad that it did not end in tragedy.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

I'll second that glad it didn't end in tragedy sentiment.

Hard landings suck

originally posted by: seasonal

“I don’t believe in science,” said Hughes, whose main sponsor for the rocket is Research Flat Earth. “I know about aerodynamics and fluid dynamics and how things move through the air, about the certain size of rocket nozzles, and thrust. But that’s not science, that’s just a formula. There’s no difference between science and science fiction.”

This quote made me laugh. Aerodynamics and fluid dynamics are science disciplines/branches. All of the formulas, that are there are derived using scientific principles, just as the same method is used, when deriving gravitational formulas. Without the work of scientists, nothing he is trying to achieve would be possible. Trying to prove scientists are wrong, while using the methods created by them.

I truly do not understand, whether there are really people out there that ignorant or whether he just wants to make money off the other flat-earth believers.

His attitude is quite funny, he's got stubborn old man syndrome or something.
I hope he doesn't get hurt and has fun doing what he seems to like doing.