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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."

9 of 314 comments (clear)

  1. Trump has a new director of NASA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    The retard coalition is the biggest Republican constituency left sadly.

    1. Re:Trump has a new director of NASA? by Kernel+Kurtz · · Score: 2, Insightful

      My first thought as well. There must be some place in the Trump administration for this man!

    2. Re: Trump has a new director of NASA? by plopez · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Nancy was the true evil one. Reagan was a weak person surrounded by evil people. Remember Cheney was part of his administration at one point.

      To Reagan's credit he did volunteer for WWII. But that was before he met Nancy and switched sides.

      John Wayne was perfectly healthy but didn't volunteer. Instead of being a Marine he played one in the movies. He was a yellow bellied coward.

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      putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
    3. Re: Trump has a new director of NASA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      I hear that ignorance can be cured. You should look into it.

  2. This guy.... by Rick+Zeman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...is just a world-class troll. Nothing more.

  3. This guy is a grifter by galvanash · · Score: 5, Insightful

    He does not believe the earth is flat. What he believes is that a bunch of stupid people either DO think the earth is flat, or would just be willing to pay to see him die. He is just trying to swindle some cash.

    Stop feeding the troll people...

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    - sigs are stupid
    1. Re:This guy is a grifter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      He does not believe the earth is flat. What he believes is that a bunch of stupid people either DO think the earth is flat, or would just be willing to pay to see him die. He is just trying to swindle some cash.

      Stop feeding the troll people...

      That makes sense. Maybe he saw the election and went, "Hey, if people are that stupid, there must be a market here."

  4. evidence-based rocket science by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "I'm no expert at anything, but I know that's a fact."

    This is the quote of 2017.

    And all of you haters and losers making fun of this guy, why do you hate diverse viewpoints in science? It's about time we had more Trump-supporting scientists.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  5. Re:Wait, what? by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm convinced that 90% of flat earthers are just trolls who don't actually believe what they say, but love seeing the consternation of people trying to convince them they're wrong. Or maybe some of them just enjoy the intellectual challenge of trying to invent counter-arguments to scientific reality. The other 10% are just gullible saps who have been taken in by the former group.

    There are many thousands of logical fallacies to the flat earth theory. You'll go crazy if you try to argue logically with these people. You can't argue with trolls or stupid.

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    Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.