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Flat Earther Plans New Rocket Launch, Predicts Super Bowl-Sized Ratings (phillyvoice.com)
Self-taught rocket scientist/daredevil "Mad" Mike Hughes will finally launch his homemade rocket in two weeks -- despite "anonymous online haters questioning his every move." An anonymous reader quotes PhillyVoice:
He's found some private land in the "ghost town" of Amboy, California -- complete with a brand-spanking-new road that'll enable him to get his motor home and rocket gear to the site... "It'll be a vertical launch, me strapped into the rocket with 6,000 pounds of thrust, going up about three-eighths of a mile," he said, noting it's a prologue to a major launch this Fourth of July weekend. "It's the ultimate Wile E. Coyote move."
As with the scrubbed mission, this is in part an event which he hopes will get people to investigate the ideology which holds the earth is flat -- despite quite a bit of evidence to the contrary. He said it would've happened back in November if international publicity hadn't prompted government bureaucrats to "cover their asses" by pointing out that his launch site crept 150 feet into federal land. "I could've been arrested so at that point, I just went home and got back to work," he said... "But guess what? It's about to happen again... I should get more viewers than the Super Bowl," said Hughes, adding the launch will be aired on Noize TV [a video-on-demand service].
Noize TV has already posted video of a new interview with Hughes, touting his upcoming launch at 3 p.m. on Saturday, February 3, the day before the Super Bowl (which Hughes calls "nothing but bullshit.")
Hughes says he's also filing to run for Governor of California.
As with the scrubbed mission, this is in part an event which he hopes will get people to investigate the ideology which holds the earth is flat -- despite quite a bit of evidence to the contrary. He said it would've happened back in November if international publicity hadn't prompted government bureaucrats to "cover their asses" by pointing out that his launch site crept 150 feet into federal land. "I could've been arrested so at that point, I just went home and got back to work," he said... "But guess what? It's about to happen again... I should get more viewers than the Super Bowl," said Hughes, adding the launch will be aired on Noize TV [a video-on-demand service].
Noize TV has already posted video of a new interview with Hughes, touting his upcoming launch at 3 p.m. on Saturday, February 3, the day before the Super Bowl (which Hughes calls "nothing but bullshit.")
Hughes says he's also filing to run for Governor of California.
Is this what Slashdot has come to?
This is like something that Q would teleport Picard off the bridge to watch just to WASTE HIS TIME.
Of course, it will be like the stunt rider who was told that the crowd wasn't there to watch him jump thirteen buses. They were there to watch him jump twelve-and-a-half.
This guy doesn't seem to be a flat earther. The clowns funding him might be, but not necessarily even that many of them are.
I think the flat earth part is mostly just a gimmick to get extra media coverage.
Nowadays when we’re at the point that even a casual investigation by a grade school student can locate definitive evidence that the earth is round... it takes a special breed of delusional imbecile to hold onto the belief that the earth is flat.
Here’s to you, Mike Hughes!
#DeleteChrome
Flat Earther Plans New Rocket Launch, Predicts Super Bowl-Sized Crater
FTFY.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
He probably doesn't understand anything more than very simple cause and effect. Deducing indirect effects is beyond this fellow's ken.
Truculent ignorance is often self-resolving, especially when high energies and risks are involved.
Who are you calling flat? He's not flat... yet!
"Everybody's naked underneath" -- The Doctor
Do you think if I started a Kickstarter campaign to sponsor his live stream with a mental health "get help" campaign that I could hit a million dollars in 24 hours?
Wasn't there already a non-government extra-terrestrial live video event where we could see the curvature of the Earth from above? Or is this one of those things where anybody who produces evidence we don't like is clearly in-on-it and part of the big-as-we-need-it-to-be conspiracy?
It'll be the most watched suicide attempt in history...Who wants popcorn?
He says he'll go up 3/8ths of a mile, that's just under 2,000ft. A commercial airline flight goes higher than that, as well as some cheap high altitude balloons. Of course the point of this isn't to prove anything except that this is a publicity stunt.
This needs to be live viewing feed (for about 5 minutes) because it will only happen once and you want to make sure it's not censored by the crazy round planet people. He needs to get a circus monkey to push the launch button just to compliment the entertainment value. We'll get to see the first human firework that celebrates his own Darwin Award. Even if he survives, he won't see much at 2000 feet that you can't see from a skyscraper (Burj Khalifa is more than 1/2 a mile tall).
90% of flat-hearters are trolls.
9% are ten-year-old kids who believe anything they see on youtube.
The one percent remaining are con-artists trying to make a buck, and succeeding.
Geez. I need to start fleecing 10 year old children, too. Sounds quite lucrative. I didn't realize they had so much pocket money.
Yes. You notice your Sun at sunset and sunrise is pretty powerful? Well, here in winterful northern latitudes, it is the opposite, but has already about a month of strengthening since winter solstice.
That shouldn't happen on the globe. There is no explanation for it.
Pythagoras has a bridge in Greece he'd love to sell you.
too late
http://mentalfloss.com/article...
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
because the angle changes. FYI, the atmosphere is not uniformly distributed. It bulges out at the equator and this thinner at the poles. Which is exactly what to expect from a fluid on a spinning sphere-ish object.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Idiots like this one should to everything they can to remove their presence from this world. If they do it in an entertaining fashion, all the better.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
or climbing a reasonable tall mountains. Ive seen it at 12k , it is even more apparent at 14K.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Evangelicals are people with no morals who pretend to have morals. The people who use that term are typically a different breed: People who have no morals and don't pretend to.
That was the elevation change for my 10 mile hike.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Flat earthers are a different breed altogether. With your typical conspiracy (9-11 inside job, fake the moon landing, vaccines cause autism, etc.), all it takes is a combination of a good story, not understood or misunderstood science, and a belief that you know something special that most people don't. It also becomes more popular as time gets further and further away from the initial event. But a key element is the inability for everyone or the average person to recreate the original variables surrounding the conspiracy. (We cannot recreate 9-11, we cannot recreate a moon landing limiting our technology and knowledge to what we had in 1968, etc.
But with flat earthers? There are literally hundreds of ways today the average human can observe that the Earth is round. There's no depth of science to it. One can ask themselves the question, "Why can't I see the Rocky Mountains from my house?" Or, one can go find a straight road (perhaps on the salt flats or on ND Hwy 46), get a pair of binoculars or a good telescoping lens on a tripod, watch a car drive by, and watch it disappear over the horizon, then ask the question, "Would the car disappear if the Earth was flat?" Or just go onto YouTube and watch all the videos made floating weather balloons up to the stratosphere, where the camera can capture the curvature of the Earth. Or talk to an airplane pilot. Or control tower personnel whose equations they use to calculate distances, vectors, and flight plans would fail miserably if they were to use Euclidian Geometry instead of Spherical Geometry. Or duplicate Eratosthenes' experiment. (Yes, that one's far more complicated than watching video's on YouTube, but if it worked for some dead white Greek dude over two thousand years ago, who didn't have the internet or Google, then it can work for anyone today as well.)
Most conspiracy theories choose to ignore expert opinions because they're incapable of understanding the science themselves. Flat-earthers are fully capable of understanding the science; they just refuse to understand.
Right there is an imbecile folks.
And 2% of them are dyslexic.
You are welcome on my lawn.
When I lay the world map down on the table it's flat, how can you argue with that?
What is the fucking point? This person could gather more evidence of the earth being round or flat by spending a few hundred on a commercial airline flight and looking out the fucking window at 5.5-6 miles up
gonna go way out on a limb here, and when not admiring the earth's visible curvature from this height i'll guess that he's doing this for the attention, and not any variety of scientific truth. perhaps society should stop convincing people that they're not real unless they're famous, even if they're famous for being suicidally stupid.
Just ask Mattel or FisherPrice how much money that market is responsible for. Hint Barbie is NOT poor...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Wouldn't it be cheaper for him to just fly a basic Cesna - he's certainly get higher - 10,000 feet vs 2,000.
..........FULL STOP.
You don't even have to climb a mountain to get that high - you can drive to 14K feet by car in Colorado.
Especially if they are flying from Australia to southern Chile or Argenta, or vice versa.
One only has to compare the distances on a globe to the distance required if the earth were flat to realize how infeasible it is.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
So why is the winter Sun weak and yellower than the summer sun at the same altitude in the sky?
Based on your ignorance, you must be from the American South. I grew up in the far North, and can tell you that the sun is not any more yellow during winter at high latitudes; if anything it is more white.
At least at latitudes where there is a little bit of sun during winter. Where I started out at 70 degrees North, there are weeks with no sun, and the day the sun would finally peek up above the ocean to the South is celebrated. That was yesterday, this year, in my mother's town.
Explain how that happens with a flat earth...
The sunshine is slightly weaker during winter, but that is in part due to the temperature: a colder atmosphere is quite a bit denser.
And in part because the Earth is not a sphere, it's slightly pear shaped, so when the sun is closer to the South, it traverses more atmosphere than when it's closer to the East or West.
and on the internet in general do no seem to understand what flat-earther movement is aimed at. It is supposed to be there to help you engage your critical thinking first and not immediately deride everything you have been told is true by laughing at it.
Except that I think that most people accept that the Earth isn't flat because it explains quite a few things. Like how there can be midnight sun, why you can't see across a sea on a clear day, or why GPS works.
They gonna launch, gonna fail and gonna blame on NASA, I guarantee you that.
Let me know if you can spot the North start from Australia.
Better yet, describe the equation that relates linear distance from the equator with the angular elevation of the North Star
Good luck, flat earth moron.
The Earth is spinning on an axis, and it does get "flattened out" slightly, i.e. the Equator has a larger circumference than the Prime Meridian.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
In high school, a friend and me wanted to sign up for the flat earth society, just so we could get their newsletter and laugh at it (before the internet). We never did it though, we didn't have the money.
No need to go to Colorado to get high - Old California's got you covered, even if Mount Whitney seceded.
Because there's a giant ice wall around the edge of the known world. The government no doubt knows what lies beyond, but they don't tell us. Frost giants, perhaps? After all, Magellan met giants while rounding Cape Horn through his eponymous Straits.
I have gotten to this point regarding the Trump "presidency": Just tell me when it's over.
This is also how I feel about this guy. Slashdot, would you PLEASE stop posting stories about this schmuck until he either successfully launches himself high enough to be able to say, upon landing, "oops, looks like I was wrong, it is round after all," or he launches himself into the side of something really big, hard, and generally resistant to rockets, in which case, I will very much like to hear about it. Once. One more time. Then no more about him.
So to be clear, Slashposters and Slasheditors, please let me know when this moron/attention-whore either somehow manages to get some homemade POS to fly, learns what the saner among us already know, or inters himself using a homemade rapid-burial system, and until then, can you PLEASE stop posting each and every bullshit promise he makes about what he's ALLEGEDLY going to do until he has actually DONE it?
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
That's poor intelligent design. If it had been a prolate spheroid, many more people could have enjoyed living in the tropics.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
Looks like "Real Men of Genius" might have a comeback.
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And risk missing the opportunity to witness a Darwin Award getting won on live TV ?
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The new road will be good. I've heard the slightest bump causes parts to fall off the rocket. It even broke before getting it out of the driveway.
You mean the air planes that are built by the round-earthers? They clearly have realtime photoshopping windows that shows a fake curvature.
....ROTFMFAO! Ooh, I pee'd a little!
The covfefe, of course.
#DeleteFacebook
I hope he'll have enough time to draw a map of the flat Earth, including the obligatory "Here be dragons" note.
#DeleteFacebook
#DeleteFacebook
The Earth is in great shape. Round is a shape, isn't it?
#DeleteFacebook
Could it be that this guy has some serious psychological issues that could get him, or others, hurt or killed?
Didn't Evel Kenevil already sort of do this test?
Anyhow I have a new conspiracy theory I want to float for the first time here on slashdot.
I think this so=called flat earther is really part of the conspiracy to convince us the earth is not flat. See he's only pretending to be a flat earther so when he goes up and say "golly the earth isn't flat" we'll all be convinced and the Round-Earth Conspiracy wins!
It makes sense too. What's amazing really is that with all the space faring nations and corprorations and people launching their own balloon, the Round Earth Conspiracy is having to constantly get new people on board. It's hard work to keep a lid on the secret the earth is flat. It would there fore be much more likely that this guy is part of the con then not part of it. So how can we trust him not to be in on. It would make a lot more sense if he was in on it too.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I was going to join in college, but pre internet it was too difficult to find out how. Same thing for muon and nambla (what ever happened to them? You used to hear about them all of the time.
This is why they took lead out of paint
I've noticed that the Sun is the same all year round. It is traveling through more air at sunrise and sunset, so it is less intense, not more.
So, another unscrupulous narcissist hijacks clickbait farms to attract attention to a pointlessly-idiotic stunt.
In what universe is this even arguably "News for Nerds?"
Is there any "nerd" anywhere who takes flat-eartherism seriously?
Seriously?
This attention whore was never a flat-earth advocate - until he figured out that they're dumb enough to be willing to bankroll his stupid, steam-powered suicide machine. Now he's suddenly a passionate proponent of an idea so fundamentally idiotic, so stubbornly anti-scientific, so willfully blind to all the scientific evidence since at least as early as the 13th century that only aggressive dimwits like Atlanta rapper B o B take it seriously?
I'm not even going to facepalm or shake my metaphorical finger at /.'s so-called "editors" over this non-story, because all the evidence to date leads to the inescapable conclusion that such reactions only encourage them to post still more of this kind of horseshit. I am going to say that such blatant manipulation of the click-hungry meda - including /. - becomes progressively more tiresome with each iteration.
Downvoting crap like this is exactly what meta-moderation is for, folks ...
Check out my novel.
It must feel great knowing so many people will be tuning in to watch you fall on your face!
Is this why Sydney, Australia is undergoing the the most extreme heat wave on record?
Well, duh, of course it is - the Sun if off orbiting close to Australia during the winter, and orbits close to America during the summer so of course it's cold in Australia then.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Gotta STOP making stupid people famous.
But without Hollywood or news shows, what would people watch?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Parent post shouldn't have been voted down, it is probably pretty accurate. I think that most flat-earthers are either doing it for attention or money. I suppose a few might have genuine mental health problems. But it is pretty hard to swallow that someone who is sane would actually think that the Earth is flat. in the face of modern technology and the evidence it presents.
Of course this guy is a troll. He has the technical acumen to construct a primitive rocket, but yet it has not occurred to him to just put a camera on a small model rocket to 'prove' his theory rather than risk his life on an expensive and complicated stunt? Weather balloons are super cheap compared to rocketry, and those can go to the edges of space. He has a number of options to test his theories with little effort.
He isn't trying to prove anything, he just wants attention.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
We were enjoying a fine discussion without bring up bitcoin.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Because Australia isn't real and we are all actors perpetuating the myth. Hi from 'Melbourne'.
The rocket was built by ACME.
I mean, I always love a good fireworks show. Also love watching Darwin in action too.
I'm pretty sure the AC here is married to the Timecube guy.
Paint, drying.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"