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"Mad" Mike Hughes dies in homemade rocket
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SiliconWizard:

--- Quote from: Bud on February 23, 2020, 04:20:35 pm ---
--- Quote from: mcovington on February 23, 2020, 04:05:31 pm ---Answering my own question, news reports indicate that the rocket flight was something he was doing for its own sake, or as a fund raiser, not directly connected to the flat-earth theory.

--- End quote ---

Check out the photo in the OP link, the rocket has " Flat Earth research" painted on it.

--- End quote ---

Yup, this was discussed a while ago. The project was definitely at least partially funded by some flath-earthers, but as we said at the time, it's likely that the guy just didn't care who the money was from and it just allowed him to pursue his "passion".
Cyberdragon:
donotdespisethesnake:

--- Quote from: 0xdeadbeef on February 23, 2020, 03:49:11 pm ---He was an stuntman in his younger days, so the rocket stuff probably was his way to get an audience and money in his late years. If he even believed this flat earth nonsense is unclear. Even if he did, I guess using his own rockets to prove round-earthers wrong was at least combining two passions and not the best way he could think of.

--- End quote ---

That explains one comment "the only surprise is that he lived as long as he did". If you live on the edge, it's easy to fall off.
Red Squirrel:
I remember hearing about him before.   Maybe he had a few screws loose but still sad to see his experiment end it death.   Hope he at least got to see the curvature before dying.  :P
Ian.M:
I'm surprised - I expected to see the poor sod auger in under power, but it looks like his attitude control system was pretty good, at least good enough to recover from a serious launch mishap. You can see what appears to be the capsule's descent parachute start to deploy when the rocket has barely left the launch rail, then it breaks away about a second into the flight, and the rocket wobbles severely then stabilises and continues to ascend.   If he'd been wearing a reasonably reliable backup chute, + had effective means of blowing or rapidly exiting the capsule at apogee, odds are he'd still be alive today. 
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