Slashdot Mirror
Flat Earther Now Wants To Launch His Homemade Rocket From a Balloon (themaineedge.com)
A Maine alternative newsweekly just interviewed self-taught rocket scientist "Mad" Mike Hughes, who still believes that the earth is a flat, Frisbee-shaped disc. ("Think about this. Australia -- which is supposedly on the other side of the planet -- is upside down yet they're holding the waters in the ocean. Now how is that happening?") And Mike's got a new way to prove it after his aborted launch attempt in November. An anonymous reader writes:
"One thing I want to clarify is that this rocket was never supposed to prove that the Earth is flat," Hughes tells an interviewer. "I was never going to go high enough to do that." But he will prove it's flat -- with an even riskier stunt. "I have a plan to go 62 miles up to the edge of space. It's going to cost $1.8 million and that could happen within 10 months."
"I'm going to have a balloon built at about $250,000 with $100,000 worth of hydrogen in it. It will lift me up about 20 miles... If I'm unconscious, they can use the controls to bring the balloon back." But if he's still conscious? "Then I'll fire a rocket through the balloon that will pull me up by my shoulders through a truss for 42 miles at 1.5 g's."
It's an awesome plan "if I don't burn up coming back through the atmosphere."
The interviewer asks Hughes a reasonable question. "Wouldn't it be cheaper and less deadly to just try to drill through the Earth to the other side to prove your point?"
"You can't," Hughes answers. "That's another fallacy. The deepest hole ever drilled is seven-and-a-half miles and it was done in Russia. It took 12 years. You cannot drill through this planet. It dulls every drill bit. All the stuff that you learned in school -- that the core is molten nickel -- it's all lies. No one knows what's in the center of the Earth or how deep it is. I'm no expert at anything, but I know that's a fact."
"I'm going to have a balloon built at about $250,000 with $100,000 worth of hydrogen in it. It will lift me up about 20 miles... If I'm unconscious, they can use the controls to bring the balloon back." But if he's still conscious? "Then I'll fire a rocket through the balloon that will pull me up by my shoulders through a truss for 42 miles at 1.5 g's."
It's an awesome plan "if I don't burn up coming back through the atmosphere."
The interviewer asks Hughes a reasonable question. "Wouldn't it be cheaper and less deadly to just try to drill through the Earth to the other side to prove your point?"
"You can't," Hughes answers. "That's another fallacy. The deepest hole ever drilled is seven-and-a-half miles and it was done in Russia. It took 12 years. You cannot drill through this planet. It dulls every drill bit. All the stuff that you learned in school -- that the core is molten nickel -- it's all lies. No one knows what's in the center of the Earth or how deep it is. I'm no expert at anything, but I know that's a fact."
Would be cheaper to call some friend that he had in a different time zone, wait for sunrise and ask if the sun is rising there now. If answer is no, try to explain that with a flat earth.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
One of the saner ones, I'm afraid.
Log in or piss off.
He'd be better off letting the balloon go higher with a lighter payload. A steam rocket with its massive pressure vessel is going to take more off your maximum altitude than it contributes.
The first humans to see the curvature of the Earth were US Army captains Albert Stevens and Orvil Anderson, who achieved an altitude of 22km in the Helium-filled Explorer II balloon on November 11, 1935. This would be the way to go. The record for a hot-air balloon ascent is 21 km, which would be sufficient to detect the curvature of the Earth if your gondola sported a porthole with a sufficiently wide field of view.
But the easiest and cheapest sensory evidence you can get is from a camera lofted into the stratosphere by a weather balloon. For under $150 you can buy a ballon with a burst height of over 35 km. You could probably rig the entire mission for under $1000.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
It's an awesome plan "if I don't burn up coming back through the atmosphere."
Altitude has nothing to do with burning up in the atmosphere. He will merely reach terminal velocity speeds (which will vary with the density of the atmosphere) but there is no risk of burning up. Objects that are in orbit burn up because they are at orbital velocity, not because of their altitude.
Better known as 318230.