A Notorious Flat Earther’s Attempt To Fly Into Orbit Fails Again

You probably remember the last time we wrote about the Flat Earth society having “definite proof” about the flat nature of our planet. We mentioned that one of the most active people among this small group of interesting people—“Mad” Mike Hughes—was preparing to launch himself in space to see for himself th Earth’s edge and prove to everyone that the Earth is not actually a planet, but rather a flat disc. Well, after a delay in his plans, he finally gave it a shot.

But guess what? It did not happen again. Perhaps that was not much of a surprise—probably not even for Mike himself; we can only guess about what he really thinks about the whole situation—even before he tried to pull it off.

Last November, the 61-years old Mr. Hughes first made it to the headlines with his announcement that he is building a homemade DIY rocket; after years of construction, he claimed, it was close to completion. He said he intends to fly it himself and prove to everyone that the Earth is flat. But his last attempt had an unexpected obstacle—he simply forgot that he may need permission for such an attempt. It turned out that he did. No surprise there.

As Mad Mike explained in a video on his YouTube channel, he was notified by the Bureau of Land Management that they were not going to allow him to launch from where he originally intended. But there was another problem. Mad Mike was about to head for Amboy, the place where he planned to take off from; however, his “rocket carrier and launcher”—or in other words, his motorhome—broke down. We wonder if Elon Musk had similar problems prior to launching the Falcon Heavy Rocket. Probably not.
However, last month Mad Mike rescheduled his attempt for the 3rd of February, but that also did not happen.

He intended to live-stream the launch for everyone following his YouTube channel to see, but the only thing that happened during the video was that Mad Mike spent about eleven minutes inside the rocket before figuring out that there was a “technical problem” and canceled the attempt. Just when we were about to become flat-Earthers ourselves upon seeing the actual footage of Earth’s edge, we ended up a bit disappointed, but at least Mad Mike is safe. Upon climbing out of the “rocket”, he said that it was the best he could do.

Apparently the problem was a fault in a “seal” or “actuator”. The good news is that he would probably not give up, and there will probably be another attempt. We’ll just have to wait and see. We wonder what would happen if the thing actually takes off. We only hope that Mad Mike knows what he is doing and the cause is worth it to him.

The believers in the Flat Earth theory have a long history behind them, and they seem to have a great deal of mistrust for the government about everything related to space. They believe that NASA is nothing than a propaganda machine and the astronauts’ claims are lies.

Mentioning the Falcon Heavy above, we have to note that the flat-Earthers considered that to be a hoax, too. These people apparently think SpaceX is the same gathering of liars as NASA, calling the company “FakeX” in a recent tweet. The successful attempt to launch the Falcon Heavy rocket a few days ago included sending a curious load on board—Musk’s own Tesla Roadster with a dummy named Starman. The setup included cameras to show the glorious view of our planet.

According to flat-Earthers, however, the photos of the Starman dummy are nothing more than a mockup, and the videos apparently must be manipulated, too, because during the live YouTube feed of the flight, there were a lot of comments below; flat-Earthers claimed it was just a conspiracy, while some Internet trolls mocked them, saying that the video clearly proved them wrong.

But the Flat Earth Society won’t be fooled that easy. They apparently consider seeing something with one’s own eyes to be an invalid argument.

In the thread that followed the aforementioned tweet of the Flat Earth Society, the society simply directed people to the organization’s page on Wikipedia, where it is “explained” that Earth is a disc, the North Pole is the center and the edge of the disc is a gigantic ice wall—one which most people simply know as Antarctica.

H/T – Source