A US daredevil pilot has been killed during an attempted launch of a homemade rocket in the Californian desert.
"Mad" Mike Hughes, 64, crash-landed his steam-powered rocket shortly after take-off near Barstow on Saturday.
A video on social media shows a rocket being fired into the sky before plummeting to the ground nearby.
Hughes was well-known for his belief that the Earth was flat. He hoped to prove his theory by going to space.
Let's be careful out there.
One down, another billion to go.
Pictures etc taken by others who have already done this presumably fakes, then?
He was getting too close to the truth and had to be eliminated.
Fixed that for yer.
Owain
According to friends he 'pushed the edge'. Well he was too close to his 'truth', pushed the edge too far and fell off his Earth. Perhaps he's contented now.
Earlier flight looked quite impressive. I wonder how he produced his steam; at a guess, something like the hydrazine/methanol with hydrogen peroxide oxidiser in the WW2 Komet fighter?
I love this description of a British test flight in 1945 from Wikipedia:
"The day before the flight, Brown and his ground crew had performed an engine run on the chosen Me 163B to ensure that everything was running correctly, the German crew being apprehensive should an accident befall Brown, until being given a disclaimer signed by him to the effect that they were acting under his orders. On the rocket-powered "scharfer-start" takeoff the next day, after dropping the takeoff dolly and retracting the skid, Brown later described the resultant climb as "like being in charge of a runaway train", the aircraft reaching 32,000 ft (9.76 km) altitude in 2 minutes, 45 seconds. During the flight, while practicing attacking passes at an imaginary bomber, he was surprised at how well the Komet accelerated in the dive with the engine shut down. When the flight was over Brown had no problems on the approach to the airfield, apart from the rather restricted view from the cockpit due to the flat angle of glide, the aircraft touching down at 200 km/h (120 mph). Once down safely, Brown and his much-relieved ground crew celebrated with a drink."
Probably several, I suspect.
The camera never lies?
But both my brother and my contract manager are convinced that the moon landings were a hoax.
Bit late - at 64 - for a Darwin award. He'd probably already done all the procreating he planned to do.
I'd like to know what the people who say the earth is flat actually expect to see when they go into space?
If it was, the Russian would know and have blabbed.
Lots of pix on Youtube Eg:-
'tis true. But not against the rules:
And what could he do in terms of photography that a remotely operated (or automatic) camera couldn't? Could have made the rocket a whole lot smaller.
(Mr I-jumped-off-a-balloon-at-the=edge-of-space got some pretty spectacular photographic evidence.)
So was my grandma. But there again she had a lot of strange beliefs.
Bill
That is a fabulous story. It's about an RAF ground crew engineer (who had flown a Tiger Moth and a Chipmunk) who ended up taking off in a Lightning, without a canopy, while trying to do a ground taxiing test. And managed to miss two obstructions on the runway, and land the thing without realising that it had a nose-wheel rather than a tail wheel.
Didn't he believe in gravity either then? If I'd launched myself in a rocket, I'd take a parachute.
Brian
I guess if you believe in curved space but everything is flat if space was not warped, then.....
Still, you can see the moon with a simple pair of binoculars, and see its not flat. Just look at the difference in shadows across a half moon. Of course I can't do that any more, but when I could It was bleedin obvious. Brian
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