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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."
"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."
It might be even cooler... to launch a balloon from a rocket. You know, if you're a flat-earther.
Something tells me this guy may not be true believer.
...is just a world-class troll. Nothing more.
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...
- sigs are stupid
And bump into the ceiling, space is a lie.
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.
What a stupid retard this guy is, my self of steam is so high knowing I'm smarter than at least some one
Yes. I know the Earth isn't flat. I had to walk up a hill the other day.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
My first thought as well. There must be some place in the Trump administration for this man!
wait so he's against hillary AND against bump stocks? da heck kinda alt right conspiracy nut are you?
Just another second banana
The Earth is not flat. This is a lie spread by fools and idiots. If the earth was flat, the water would run off the edge. It is CLEARLY bowl shaped, as this is the only shape that would retain water over time.
Do not believe this idiot, his ideas will lead you down a path of folly and ruin.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
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.
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.
I've seen a hypothesis that our universe is a 3d hologram essentially projected from a 2d source on a brane, (Yes, I spelled "brane" correctly, go look it up.)
Of course, we have no idea if that's true or not, or if branes actually exist either. But even if the source of the universe is 2d, that doesn't mean the earth is "flat" in our perception of the universe.
I wonder if he's just trying to break the record for the most intricate and involved Darwin Award qualification.
Flat-Earthers make me feel the way I'm sure I make climate alarmists feel, but I believe in science (the process), and I'm willing to put a few bucks towards an independent verification.
And who exactly do you think is qualified to perform your "independent verification"? You do realize that climate scientists actually have more to gain by proving the consensus wrong than they do in going along with it? They ARE the independent verification. Only people engaged in confirmation bias pretend otherwise.
In any case the science has already been done on this (both flat earth and climate change) and there is no need to rehash what is out there unless you want to either confirm an experiment yourself or have new evidence to present.
And maybe a bigger factor is that if a schmuck like this can get to space, that can only mean the day is getting closer when I can too.
This idiot isn't going into space. Please tell me you aren't actually dumb enough to believe anything this moron claims.
"Wouldn't it be cheaper and less deadly to just try to drill through the Earth to the other side to prove your point?"
That's a reasonable question?
To be fair, Reagan had lost his marbles completely half way through his second term and was just a figurehead by that point.
Who built a rocket that rivals North Korea's efforts?
Mike Hughes hasn't launched anything, North Korea has launched rockets out of the atmosphere.
Not surprising from someone who doesn't believe in GPS or aeroplanes. You know, things that require a spherical earth to do what they do every day.
Someone who bases his beliefs on "If the earth was round, Australia would be upside down and its oceans would fall to its sky"
An obvious mod choice is missing!
Do we know who he voted for?
Any guesses?
Yeah, slashdot has really gone downhill since the good old days.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Beware... commenting on a low digit ID is near guaranteed to summon the Elder Gods of slashdot. There's still a few three's that troll this realm.
Log in or piss off.
He isn't. Can we can the Pseudoscience bullshit please? Just for a week are so.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
..."that's easy! Show me where the edge of the Earth is! That'd be the coolest place ever! Heck, I'll build a house right at the edge of the world!"
Personally, my favorite corollary is that the presence of cats is disproof of a flat Earth. If the Earth were flat, there would be an edge somewhere. Which is where all the cats would be, knocking things off the edge, rather than piddling around with us mere humans.
Ukranians designed and made the stuff, Russia gets the credit for theorists
Actually, yes you can. You can't project a sphere from a cartesian 3D space onto a cartesian 2D plane, but the surface of a sphere is, in fact, a 2D space.
There are people (serious scientists) who believe that the entire universe might be 2D, with a special geometry and rules of physics that make it appear 3D to us. They base this on the assumption that entropy in a black hole must be conserved, and a black hole can only hold an amount of entropy proportional to its surface area, but personally I think it's a bit far-fetched. I think it's far more logical to just accept that black holes can decrease entropy.