Mad Mike
For years, a daredevil named Mike “Mad Mike” Hughes has been trumpeting his plan to launch himself in a homemade rocket in order to prove that Earth is flat.
This weekend, Hughes finally launched himself in his homemade rocket — and crashed a minute later, dying in the wreck.
Ignoble End
Had he survived Saturday’s launch, the 64-year-old Hughes’ eventual plan had been to float his home-brewed rocket miles-high from the ground, using a balloon, then launching it to a height of 62 miles in order to film evidence that the Earth is actually flat — a common conspiracy theory online.
“I don’t believe in science,” he told the Associated Press in 2017, as he was planning an earlier launch.
Cartoon Logic
It was a grim end for the amateur rocketeer, but in retrospect, one with an eerie foreshadowing by Hughes himself.
“Sometimes, I feel like the cartoon character Wile E. Coyote, when he suddenly runs off a cliff,” Hughes told the LA Times back in 2003. “But it’s the price I pay for a life that’s not boring.”
READ MORE: Daredevil ‘Mad’ Mike Hughes Killed In Crash Of Homemade Rocket [NPR]
More on rockets: SpaceX Is Going to Blow up a Falcon 9 Rocket Just After Launch