Keith Girard
Mad Mike Hughes, who’s determined to prove the earth is flat, blasts off in homemade rocket. (Photo: ScreenCap)
Mad Mike Hughes, who is determined to re-write history by blasting off in a rocket to prove the earth is flat, finally soared into the sky after many false starts. He didn’t quite reach his goal, but proved his homemade rocket could fly.
The flight lasted less that a minute and only reached about 1,800 feet above California’s Mohave Desert before deploying a parachute and floating back to earth. It wasn’t exactly a soft landing.
Hughes was carted off on a stretcher after he landed.
“Am I glad I did it? Yeah. I guess,” he told The Associated Press. “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.”
The blast off culminated several aborted launches that made him an Internet laughing stock last year. The 61-year-old limo driver said he hoped to shut up his critics with the flight.
“I’m tired of people saying I chickened out and didn’t build a rocket. I’m tired of that stuff. I manned up and did it,” he proclaimed. “This thing wants to kill you 10 different ways … This thing will kill you in a heartbeat.”
Hughes actually believes the earth is shaped like a frisbee with a curved surface, which would explain the curvature seen from space.
“Do I know for sure? No. That’s why I want to go up into space 62 miles up to settle this thing once and for all for people who want to know,” he said.
The ancient Greek Pythagoras first proposed that the Earth was round sometime around 500 B.C, according to NASA.
Around 350 BC, the Greek philosopher Aristotle declared that the Earth to be a sphere.
Needless to say, flat-earthers have been around at least as long.
Check out his rocket ride below.