12 ms·

Daredevil “Mad Mike” Hughes killed in rocket crash outside Barstow

77 points by jonas21 7y ago

neonate 7y ago
https://archive.md/mq0KY https://archive.md/mq0KY
- __d 7y ago
  Thanks
mdonahoe 7y ago
Sorry to hear he died. Glad to hear he wasn’t actually a flat earther.
- Udik 7y ago
  I wonder if anybody is actually a flat earther. It almost seems a myth kept alive by the sheer absurdity of it.
  - pixelpoet 7y ago
    You should check out the facebook groups, they are quite real and it's fascinating to observe. They basically never use any privacy settings so you can check out their personal pages and see them vehemently arguing with family and friends claiming all kinds of conspiracy stuff (Venn diagram overlapping with chemtrails and Illuminati blah blah). At the far end of that insanity you have groups like https://reddit.com/r/LEVELMANIA/ https://reddit.com/r/LEVELMANIA/ I've seen one guy argue that the sun is created and operated by NASA, and then there are the people who insist you can live from staring at the sun. Even a (quite nutty) friend of a friend claims to do this, someone I've personally spoken to and must unfortunately confirm is that dumb. He has 3 kids and is highly political, votes every time.
    - heavenlyblue 7y ago
      Nassim Haramein the FB group claims to have discovered a new physics theory and is followed by a bunch of newagers in London.
      - DonHopkins 7y ago
        Newage rhymes with sewage.
    - Igelau 7y ago
      > I've seen one guy argue that the sun is created and operated by NASA It's obviously the NOAA. They even tell you when they're going to be turning it on and off - it's like they're not even trying to hide it.
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      On the apparent existence of the moon: "...think about it – without the help of so-called "experts", how do you really know what you’re looking at? It could be a hologram, projected from various government installations throughout the world. It could be a large, crudely painted balloon, held in place by helium and propelled by tiny sails and rudders (which is why it moves across the sky so slowly). Or, most likely, it could have been different things at different times and different places, depending on the technology available to the conspirators and the culture and beliefs of the population being deceived. The hoax could easily have been imposed on a gullible world at many points in human history. Perhaps it began as a collective hallucination or a religious myth, or perhaps an especially bright star that came to be exaggerated over time. However the moon story started, early proponents of the hoax were swift to recognize how it could be exploited for their benefit, and shrewdly devised a scheme to use it to their advantage. They began to spread rumors, falsify scientific observations, and invent new gods to represent this fictional celestial body. They ingeniously concocted the idea of "cycles of the moon", and as their resources increased, were able to create the illusion that this object in the sky actually went through such changes. To make their hoax more plausible to early, superstitious societies, they arranged for these cycles to coincide with the months of the year. But don’t all qualified scientists and astronomers agree that there is a moon? Indeed, but shouldn’t one be suspicious of such unanimity, when universities are supposed to be forums for open debate of controversial issues. Even a layperson like myself knows that scientists are not supposed to approach issues with preconceived notions. Yet this principle is cast aside when the moon is at stake. You will never see the revisionist perspective on the moon being taught in institutions of higher learning, even as a controversial opposing view. In fact, in order to even become a recognized scientist in the current atmosphere of academic repression, one must pay lip service to the establishment’s orthodoxy. Could you imagine a student who argued the revisionist viewpoint on the question of the moon being awarded a degree? He would be hounded out of the university in an instant! How can one explain such behavior from institutions that are supposed to serve as forums for the free exchange of ideas, except to conclude that the establishment has something to hide?" https://phdn.org/archives/revisionism.nl/Moon/The-Mad-Revisionist.htm https://phdn.org/archives/revisionism.nl/Moon/The-Mad-Revisi... https://phdn.org/archives/revisionism.nl/Moon/Feedback4.htm https://phdn.org/archives/revisionism.nl/Moon/Feedback4.htm https://phdn.org/archives/revisionism.nl/Moon/Moon3.htm https://phdn.org/archives/revisionism.nl/Moon/Moon3.htm
  - squarefoot 7y ago
    "It almost seems a myth kept alive by the sheer absurdity of it." For some, possibly. As for the others, they would probably be a 99.9% / 0.1% ratio composed by actual believers and few smart con artists who saw the opportunity to cash on books, merchandise, donations, and perhaps even votes.
    - usrusr 7y ago
      You are missing a very large block of people who pretend to believe but not for money. Their rewards are feeling superior to both those who believe and to those who don't but fall for their show. Classic trolling. It gets scary where the line between trolling and believing blurs. Some will inevitably convert themselves, slowly forgetting their initial motivation while exposing themselves to all kinds of related conspiracy content while in their flat earther persona.
  - crispyambulance 7y ago
    >I wonder if anybody is actually a flat Earther. I suspect they're an extreme form of "contrarian" that craves disagreeing with conventional beliefs to the point where it becomes part of their self-image/identity. Like other conspiracy theorists, they're obsessed with intricate rhetoric and arguments, but they rarely take the extra step of trying to prove something without obfuscation and without ulterior motivations. This guy strapped himself onto a homemade rocket and lit a fuse. There are easier ways to prove/disprove the Earth is flat-- even if you don't buy the shadow-measurment and clock experiments. One could, for example, mount an expedition of to reach the edge of the Earth and take pictures. But that hasn't happened, ever. Or perhaps it did happen, and the effect was merely to quietly convert the very chagrined expedition team members from flat-earthers into round-earthers?
    - hutzlibu 7y ago
      Or you know, you could just send a camera. On a weather baloon. So yeah, this guy just wanted funds for his rocket. Which sadly did not work out.
      - lilSebastian 7y ago
        He demonstrably got funds for a 'rocket' of sorts....
  - hutzlibu 7y ago
    The first time I stumbled on the flat earth societys website I really, really could not tell. They even had complicated looking physical models of how gravity etc. works on a flat earth etc. My conclusion was, that most did just trolling. But now after I met some real flat earthers .. I am not so sure anymore. They were also not plain stupid. Just far out and very ignorant. So they build a lot of complex logic on a false axiom. They reminded me a lot of the classical "science" of bible theology. Where you take something ridiculus word for word - and then build a a complex stringent and logical philosophy above it. (with marxism I had similar experiences)
    - paulryanrogers 7y ago
      With religion the indoctrination begins very young. Fewer and fewer people believe as they become better educated or even just practice basic critical thinking. I'm afraid the religious mindset creates a switch that turns off critical thinking for certain topics. Then people can be more vulnerable to all kinds of hoaxes and scams.
    - anonsivalley652 7y ago
      Tribalism almost always subverts logic.
  - gridlockd 7y ago
    These are generally people that suffer from paranoid delusions. If it wasn't flat earth, it would be some other conspiracy theory, but a lot of the time it's simply all the conspiracy they can fit in their head.
- arrrg 7y ago
  It doesn’t matter whether you actually believe something, if you act like you do and what you believed in is toxic you are still responsible for spreading poison. You make the world a safer and more welcoming place for those who actually believe it.
  - heavenlyblue 7y ago
    At a certain limit it’s not so different from being a con artist essentially: literally taking advantage of the ignorant believers and using that for lulz or even power.
  - tyingq 7y ago
    The premise, to me, is silly enough that you aren't poisoning anyone. Anyone that would believe it is going to feed off of some other poison. Very few are equipped to hurt themselves or others via "flat Earth thinking".
    - simonh 7y ago
      That's their problem, it doesn't justify making it easier for them to get more poison.
      - tyingq 7y ago
        It is less harmful than, say, them latching onto anti-vaxx or eating Tide pods.
        gaius__baltar 7y ago
        Tide pods are actually delicious however.
  - gridlockd 7y ago
    > You make the world a safer and more welcoming place for those who actually believe it. I prefer the world in which people do the crazy stunts.
  - 7y ago
aasasd 7y ago
Ah heck. That was one crazy guy I was actually kinda rooting for. I mean, if your rocket works, good for you. Seems to not be the first time, though, that I wonder if backup parachutes should be activated remotely.
nlh 7y ago
You know, it’s sad whenever a tinkerer or explorer gets killed, but I have a feeling he knew this was his destiny, and this was clearly the path he loved in life. Good on him for being an explorer and pushing the limits. Sorry it had to come to a end :(
- thombat 7y ago
  One thing to tinker, another to claim that a steam-powered rocket would ever get to high altitude. Nevermind flat Earth, that's just setting your face against engineering.
  - avian 7y ago
    This reminds me that there's a company claiming to be developing a steam-powered booster for orbital launches. Scott Manley did a video about them a while back [1]. Where this stands on the spectrum between a scam and a real thing remains to be seen, but they did seem to be convincing enough to get some investments and build a test rig. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT9HBkWGg7s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT9HBkWGg7s
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      The major distinguishing factors between a scam and an also ran in my opinion are that for something to be a scam the people running it have to be aware that it will not work and that they have not ignored any expert advice telling them that it will not work in sufficiently clear terms that they can't claim that it is just naysaying. Plenty of people that relieved investors from their funds were unaware that what they were building was a scam. Plenty of people working for companies that built stuff that didn't work were not aware of the fact that it could not work until they themselves established that. Plenty of successes where there were people saying 'this can't possibly work' right up until the time that it did, in fact, work. Theranos, Moller sky car, Ubeam (now renamed to SonicEnergy in an attempt to leave their past behind them) -> clearly scams. This particular steam powered rocket is not a scam in the sense that it did not attempt to pass the risk or the eventual results onto others. It is merely very stupid, and it should serve as an object lesson in that if you are trying to do something in your backyard that normally has budgets in the 10's to 100's of millions that you are likely not going to succeed. Finally, it should teach people that your tests of vehicles of any kind that go up should be done unmanned as long as possible.
foobar_ 7y ago
The flat earth model works if it was built by isolated tribes living on an island. It wasn't until Copernicus that people started to believe the round earth model.
- Galanwe 7y ago
  Hu? This is completely unrelated. The overall idea of a spherical earth is a consensus since ancient Greece, and has been considered a fact since then. Copernicus more or less established that the earth revolves around the sun, and not the other way around. I use "more or less" here because 1) The idea of the earth revolving around the sun was not _new_, it was already discussed and debated in ancient Greek texts. Part of the renaissance movement is based on the re-study of ancient Greek texts, which was influential to Copernicus and his ideas. 2) There is no universal truth behind what revolves around what. It's just a matter of perspective, and having the earth rotate around the sun did had the advantage of making calendar computations much simpler, since you don't have to deal with intricate planet retro-cessions. That was the reason that led Copernicus to choose this perspective.
  - DalasNoin 7y ago
    Just about the point that it was a consensus since ancient Greece: it certainly wasn't a consensus around the world until somewhat recently According to Wikipedia: "Many ancient cultures subscribed to a flat Earth cosmography, including Greece until the classical period, the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period, India until the Gupta period (early centuries AD), and China until the 17th century. The idea of a spherical Earth appeared in Greek philosophy with Pythagoras (6th century BC), although most pre-Socratics (6th–5th century BC) retained the flat Earth model." Interestingly, it seems nobody but the Greeks independently discovered the spherical earth model
    - thombat 7y ago
      But it was certainly a consensus in educated Western Europe, or Columbus wouldn't have been heading west to get to the East Indies (his innovation was to be obstinately wrong about the diameter of the Earth, which would have doomed the voyage but for the fortunate collision with the Carribean) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df-uemc-e3w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df-uemc-e3w
ghostDancer 7y ago
Now the conspiracies will begin to grow.
- NoOneNew 7y ago
  I was just thinking this. The rhetoric is going to be... what is it, the airline companies and NASA are the bad guys in their conspiracies, right? Anyways, they sabotaged his rocket. They didn't want him "uncovering the truth". More fuel for the fire I guess... Then again, even if he did live and went, "Yea, it's round." All of them would just say he's a paid shill. You can't win with stupid. It's a lose-lose situation.
pg_bot 7y ago
Rockets are dangerous and this was entirely too predictable. I think it's worse if he wasn't a flat-earther because he used misinformation to promote and enrich himself.
- mannykannot 7y ago
  Did he enrich himself through this activity? Most people doing this sort of thing put more money into it than they bring in.
- gridlockd 7y ago
  > Rockets are dangerous What an insight! If only all these daredevils knew that their occupation was hazardous, they could die a healthy death by cardiovascular disease, like the rest of us.
  - pg_bot 7y ago
    There is a difference between a calculated risk and a death wish. I am by no means anti daredevil. Go ahead and jump from the edge of space or ride a motorcycle over a canyon. Just don't fly in an amateur rocket if you have any sense of self preservation. The budget to do it safely is far out of reach for the self funded thrill seeker.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    Alan Eustace dove from the "edge" of space. That would kill you or if we tried, but he figured out how to do it safely. That's the magic -- doing what seems impossible to survive. Doing what is impossible to survive, and dying, is just stupid.
    - s1artibartfast 7y ago
      Designing, building, and successfully flying a manned homemade rocket isn't impossible. It is improbable, difficult, and dangerous.
ColinWright 7y ago
Alternate submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22396314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22396314 I can't read the article here, the details are "below the fold" and it won't scroll. In case others are in a similar situation, the submission above is another source for the story.
yitchelle 7y ago
Sad to read this. He is one of the few eathers trying to prove the earth is flat rather than to disprove that the earth is sphere. He would have failed in the end, but he chased for an answer.
- tyingq 7y ago
  The article points out that he probably wasn't really a flat earther... “I don’t think he believed it,” Shuster said. “He did have some governmental conspiracy theories. But don’t confuse it with that flat Earth thing. That was a PR stunt we dreamed up.”
  - soneil 7y ago
    It certainly seems so. 2015 kickstarter [0] mentions nothing of FE at all. Just wants to break his previous record. Kickstarter flops, hard. 2017 gofundme [1] sells itself as $7500 of sponsorship in return for the prime advertising spot on the side of the rocket. None of these rockets were about trying to prove or disprove anything, he was no more scientist than evel knievel was. The FE community were openly courted for cash, but cash was the only relationship between FE and the rockets. [0] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1441636269/mission-rock-it-stage-i-the-1-mile-manned-rocket-j https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1441636269/mission-rock... [1] https://www.gofundme.com/f/flat-earth-community-rocket-launch https://www.gofundme.com/f/flat-earth-community-rocket-launc...
onemoresoop 7y ago
Need for attention is also a factor here. And this competition is to be seen more and more with great trophies in Darwin Awards
- gsich 7y ago
  Darwin award would assume he had no children.
  - onemoresoop 7y ago
    Didnt know this part. Maybe his current offspring learn a good deal from the tragedy..
  - Bootwizard 7y ago
    Article says he had no living relatives, so Darwin Award for sure.
  - senectus1 7y ago
    Darwin doesn't require you have no children, just that you remove yourself from the genepool through complete and utter stupidity. if you do it before having children all the better, but not necessary.
- sunstone 7y ago
  He had the courage of his convictions. Though a bit of mathematical insight could have shown that if the world was flat then gravity would not diminish with height. Some people just prefer practical experiments to theoretical calculations.
  - onemoresoop 7y ago
    If he quietly did his thing I’d understand but it was in part a show for attention. When this happens other Darwin Awards candidates are springing into existence. Maybe it is not bad after all. However, as a human, I feel bad for the guy. Hope others learn something from his lesson
tyingq 7y ago
"was captured on video as he rode a rocket into the sky, failed to activate a parachute " That's not quite right. The parachute deploys very early after the launch, separates from the rocket, and falls to earth by itself. I'm surprised there wasn't some kind of secondary parachute. There's a video here: (NSFW warning...no gore, but you do see the crash) https://twitter.com/justindchapman/status/1231336002175717376 https://twitter.com/justindchapman/status/123133600217571737...
- ColinWright 7y ago
  From the article: > *None of Hughes’ backup parachutes activated, either, Chapman said.
  - tyingq 7y ago
    Interesting. Found a Facebook post that has some pictures and descriptions of the backup parachute(s) system. https://www.facebook.com/ScaldedCatSteamRockets/posts/1628444337238704 https://www.facebook.com/ScaldedCatSteamRockets/posts/162844... (click the "+4" and page through) Or see: https://imgur.com/a/C37q14M https://imgur.com/a/C37q14M
    - mannykannot 7y ago
      The text uses the phrase "backup parachute handle" several times, but not "backup parachute" on its own. The former is potentially ambiguous - is it possible that there was only the one parachute, possibly with two separate deployment mechanisms?
  - mysterydip 7y ago
    I wonder, since he designed the rocket himself, if the same engineering flaw affected all parachutes.
    - tyingq 7y ago
      My various links suggests there was both an altimeter driven deployment, as well as a manual "oh shit" handle. Multiple things must have gone wrong.
coldcode 7y ago
Rocket science is actually rocket science. Making rockets that work, especially with people aboard, is about the most complex thing humans do. Even spending vast amounts of money and hiring the best people can still result in disaster. Doing it by yourself is highly unlikely to work. I always joke that programming is not rocket science even though some people I know think they are similar.
- buboard 7y ago
  it seems the rocket worked as expected. but maybe parachute science is like rocket science.
- gridlockd 7y ago
  > Doing it by yourself is highly unlikely to work. Perhaps so, but he's actually done it successfully before in 2018.
  - Balgair 7y ago
    I mean, it only takes one failure to kill you.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- everdrive 7y ago
  Even in 2020, many countries with nearly unlimited funding cannot get manned rockets to work.
aezakmi 7y ago
God bless his soul.
DonHopkins 7y ago
To paraphrase Jerry Pournelle: "Think of it as Creationism in action."
DonHopkins 7y ago
Bat Country takes another one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K89dChsgznw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K89dChsgznw >"We were somewhere outside Barstow, on the outskirts of the desert when the drugs began to take hold."

77 points by jonas21 7y ago

neonate 7y ago

https://archive.md/mq0KY https://archive.md/mq0KY

__d 7y ago
Thanks

mdonahoe 7y ago

Sorry to hear he died. Glad to hear he wasn’t actually a flat earther.

Udik 7y ago
I wonder if anybody is actually a flat earther. It almost seems a myth kept alive by the sheer absurdity of it.
- pixelpoet 7y ago
  You should check out the facebook groups, they are quite real and it's fascinating to observe. They basically never use any privacy settings so you can check out their personal pages and see them vehemently arguing with family and friends claiming all kinds of conspiracy stuff (Venn diagram overlapping with chemtrails and Illuminati blah blah). At the far end of that insanity you have groups like https://reddit.com/r/LEVELMANIA/ https://reddit.com/r/LEVELMANIA/ I've seen one guy argue that the sun is created and operated by NASA, and then there are the people who insist you can live from staring at the sun. Even a (quite nutty) friend of a friend claims to do this, someone I've personally spoken to and must unfortunately confirm is that dumb. He has 3 kids and is highly political, votes every time.
  - heavenlyblue 7y ago
    Nassim Haramein the FB group claims to have discovered a new physics theory and is followed by a bunch of newagers in London.
    - DonHopkins 7y ago
      Newage rhymes with sewage.
  - Igelau 7y ago
    > I've seen one guy argue that the sun is created and operated by NASA It's obviously the NOAA. They even tell you when they're going to be turning it on and off - it's like they're not even trying to hide it.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    On the apparent existence of the moon: "...think about it – without the help of so-called "experts", how do you really know what you’re looking at? It could be a hologram, projected from various government installations throughout the world. It could be a large, crudely painted balloon, held in place by helium and propelled by tiny sails and rudders (which is why it moves across the sky so slowly). Or, most likely, it could have been different things at different times and different places, depending on the technology available to the conspirators and the culture and beliefs of the population being deceived. The hoax could easily have been imposed on a gullible world at many points in human history. Perhaps it began as a collective hallucination or a religious myth, or perhaps an especially bright star that came to be exaggerated over time. However the moon story started, early proponents of the hoax were swift to recognize how it could be exploited for their benefit, and shrewdly devised a scheme to use it to their advantage. They began to spread rumors, falsify scientific observations, and invent new gods to represent this fictional celestial body. They ingeniously concocted the idea of "cycles of the moon", and as their resources increased, were able to create the illusion that this object in the sky actually went through such changes. To make their hoax more plausible to early, superstitious societies, they arranged for these cycles to coincide with the months of the year. But don’t all qualified scientists and astronomers agree that there is a moon? Indeed, but shouldn’t one be suspicious of such unanimity, when universities are supposed to be forums for open debate of controversial issues. Even a layperson like myself knows that scientists are not supposed to approach issues with preconceived notions. Yet this principle is cast aside when the moon is at stake. You will never see the revisionist perspective on the moon being taught in institutions of higher learning, even as a controversial opposing view. In fact, in order to even become a recognized scientist in the current atmosphere of academic repression, one must pay lip service to the establishment’s orthodoxy. Could you imagine a student who argued the revisionist viewpoint on the question of the moon being awarded a degree? He would be hounded out of the university in an instant! How can one explain such behavior from institutions that are supposed to serve as forums for the free exchange of ideas, except to conclude that the establishment has something to hide?" https://phdn.org/archives/revisionism.nl/Moon/The-Mad-Revisionist.htm https://phdn.org/archives/revisionism.nl/Moon/The-Mad-Revisi... https://phdn.org/archives/revisionism.nl/Moon/Feedback4.htm https://phdn.org/archives/revisionism.nl/Moon/Feedback4.htm https://phdn.org/archives/revisionism.nl/Moon/Moon3.htm https://phdn.org/archives/revisionism.nl/Moon/Moon3.htm
- squarefoot 7y ago
  "It almost seems a myth kept alive by the sheer absurdity of it." For some, possibly. As for the others, they would probably be a 99.9% / 0.1% ratio composed by actual believers and few smart con artists who saw the opportunity to cash on books, merchandise, donations, and perhaps even votes.
  - usrusr 7y ago
    You are missing a very large block of people who pretend to believe but not for money. Their rewards are feeling superior to both those who believe and to those who don't but fall for their show. Classic trolling. It gets scary where the line between trolling and believing blurs. Some will inevitably convert themselves, slowly forgetting their initial motivation while exposing themselves to all kinds of related conspiracy content while in their flat earther persona.
- crispyambulance 7y ago
  >I wonder if anybody is actually a flat Earther. I suspect they're an extreme form of "contrarian" that craves disagreeing with conventional beliefs to the point where it becomes part of their self-image/identity. Like other conspiracy theorists, they're obsessed with intricate rhetoric and arguments, but they rarely take the extra step of trying to prove something without obfuscation and without ulterior motivations. This guy strapped himself onto a homemade rocket and lit a fuse. There are easier ways to prove/disprove the Earth is flat-- even if you don't buy the shadow-measurment and clock experiments. One could, for example, mount an expedition of to reach the edge of the Earth and take pictures. But that hasn't happened, ever. Or perhaps it did happen, and the effect was merely to quietly convert the very chagrined expedition team members from flat-earthers into round-earthers?
  - hutzlibu 7y ago
    Or you know, you could just send a camera. On a weather baloon. So yeah, this guy just wanted funds for his rocket. Which sadly did not work out.
    - lilSebastian 7y ago
      He demonstrably got funds for a 'rocket' of sorts....
- hutzlibu 7y ago
  The first time I stumbled on the flat earth societys website I really, really could not tell. They even had complicated looking physical models of how gravity etc. works on a flat earth etc. My conclusion was, that most did just trolling. But now after I met some real flat earthers .. I am not so sure anymore. They were also not plain stupid. Just far out and very ignorant. So they build a lot of complex logic on a false axiom. They reminded me a lot of the classical "science" of bible theology. Where you take something ridiculus word for word - and then build a a complex stringent and logical philosophy above it. (with marxism I had similar experiences)
  - paulryanrogers 7y ago
    With religion the indoctrination begins very young. Fewer and fewer people believe as they become better educated or even just practice basic critical thinking. I'm afraid the religious mindset creates a switch that turns off critical thinking for certain topics. Then people can be more vulnerable to all kinds of hoaxes and scams.
  - anonsivalley652 7y ago
    Tribalism almost always subverts logic.
- gridlockd 7y ago
  These are generally people that suffer from paranoid delusions. If it wasn't flat earth, it would be some other conspiracy theory, but a lot of the time it's simply all the conspiracy they can fit in their head.
arrrg 7y ago
It doesn’t matter whether you actually believe something, if you act like you do and what you believed in is toxic you are still responsible for spreading poison. You make the world a safer and more welcoming place for those who actually believe it.
- heavenlyblue 7y ago
  At a certain limit it’s not so different from being a con artist essentially: literally taking advantage of the ignorant believers and using that for lulz or even power.
- tyingq 7y ago
  The premise, to me, is silly enough that you aren't poisoning anyone. Anyone that would believe it is going to feed off of some other poison. Very few are equipped to hurt themselves or others via "flat Earth thinking".
  - simonh 7y ago
    That's their problem, it doesn't justify making it easier for them to get more poison.
    - tyingq 7y ago
      It is less harmful than, say, them latching onto anti-vaxx or eating Tide pods.
      - gaius__baltar 7y ago
        Tide pods are actually delicious however.
- gridlockd 7y ago
  > You make the world a safer and more welcoming place for those who actually believe it. I prefer the world in which people do the crazy stunts.
- 7y ago

aasasd 7y ago

Ah heck. That was one crazy guy I was actually kinda rooting for. I mean, if your rocket works, good for you. Seems to not be the first time, though, that I wonder if backup parachutes should be activated remotely.

nlh 7y ago

You know, it’s sad whenever a tinkerer or explorer gets killed, but I have a feeling he knew this was his destiny, and this was clearly the path he loved in life. Good on him for being an explorer and pushing the limits. Sorry it had to come to a end :(

thombat 7y ago
One thing to tinker, another to claim that a steam-powered rocket would ever get to high altitude. Nevermind flat Earth, that's just setting your face against engineering.
- avian 7y ago
  This reminds me that there's a company claiming to be developing a steam-powered booster for orbital launches. Scott Manley did a video about them a while back [1]. Where this stands on the spectrum between a scam and a real thing remains to be seen, but they did seem to be convincing enough to get some investments and build a test rig. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT9HBkWGg7s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT9HBkWGg7s
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    The major distinguishing factors between a scam and an also ran in my opinion are that for something to be a scam the people running it have to be aware that it will not work and that they have not ignored any expert advice telling them that it will not work in sufficiently clear terms that they can't claim that it is just naysaying. Plenty of people that relieved investors from their funds were unaware that what they were building was a scam. Plenty of people working for companies that built stuff that didn't work were not aware of the fact that it could not work until they themselves established that. Plenty of successes where there were people saying 'this can't possibly work' right up until the time that it did, in fact, work. Theranos, Moller sky car, Ubeam (now renamed to SonicEnergy in an attempt to leave their past behind them) -> clearly scams. This particular steam powered rocket is not a scam in the sense that it did not attempt to pass the risk or the eventual results onto others. It is merely very stupid, and it should serve as an object lesson in that if you are trying to do something in your backyard that normally has budgets in the 10's to 100's of millions that you are likely not going to succeed. Finally, it should teach people that your tests of vehicles of any kind that go up should be done unmanned as long as possible.

foobar_ 7y ago

The flat earth model works if it was built by isolated tribes living on an island. It wasn't until Copernicus that people started to believe the round earth model.

Galanwe 7y ago
Hu? This is completely unrelated. The overall idea of a spherical earth is a consensus since ancient Greece, and has been considered a fact since then. Copernicus more or less established that the earth revolves around the sun, and not the other way around. I use "more or less" here because 1) The idea of the earth revolving around the sun was not _new_, it was already discussed and debated in ancient Greek texts. Part of the renaissance movement is based on the re-study of ancient Greek texts, which was influential to Copernicus and his ideas. 2) There is no universal truth behind what revolves around what. It's just a matter of perspective, and having the earth rotate around the sun did had the advantage of making calendar computations much simpler, since you don't have to deal with intricate planet retro-cessions. That was the reason that led Copernicus to choose this perspective.
- DalasNoin 7y ago
  Just about the point that it was a consensus since ancient Greece: it certainly wasn't a consensus around the world until somewhat recently According to Wikipedia: "Many ancient cultures subscribed to a flat Earth cosmography, including Greece until the classical period, the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period, India until the Gupta period (early centuries AD), and China until the 17th century. The idea of a spherical Earth appeared in Greek philosophy with Pythagoras (6th century BC), although most pre-Socratics (6th–5th century BC) retained the flat Earth model." Interestingly, it seems nobody but the Greeks independently discovered the spherical earth model
  - thombat 7y ago
    But it was certainly a consensus in educated Western Europe, or Columbus wouldn't have been heading west to get to the East Indies (his innovation was to be obstinately wrong about the diameter of the Earth, which would have doomed the voyage but for the fortunate collision with the Carribean) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df-uemc-e3w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df-uemc-e3w

ghostDancer 7y ago

Now the conspiracies will begin to grow.

NoOneNew 7y ago
I was just thinking this. The rhetoric is going to be... what is it, the airline companies and NASA are the bad guys in their conspiracies, right? Anyways, they sabotaged his rocket. They didn't want him "uncovering the truth". More fuel for the fire I guess... Then again, even if he did live and went, "Yea, it's round." All of them would just say he's a paid shill. You can't win with stupid. It's a lose-lose situation.

pg_bot 7y ago

Rockets are dangerous and this was entirely too predictable. I think it's worse if he wasn't a flat-earther because he used misinformation to promote and enrich himself.

mannykannot 7y ago
Did he enrich himself through this activity? Most people doing this sort of thing put more money into it than they bring in.
gridlockd 7y ago
> Rockets are dangerous What an insight! If only all these daredevils knew that their occupation was hazardous, they could die a healthy death by cardiovascular disease, like the rest of us.
- pg_bot 7y ago
  There is a difference between a calculated risk and a death wish. I am by no means anti daredevil. Go ahead and jump from the edge of space or ride a motorcycle over a canyon. Just don't fly in an amateur rocket if you have any sense of self preservation. The budget to do it safely is far out of reach for the self funded thrill seeker.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  Alan Eustace dove from the "edge" of space. That would kill you or if we tried, but he figured out how to do it safely. That's the magic -- doing what seems impossible to survive. Doing what is impossible to survive, and dying, is just stupid.
  - s1artibartfast 7y ago
    Designing, building, and successfully flying a manned homemade rocket isn't impossible. It is improbable, difficult, and dangerous.

ColinWright 7y ago

Alternate submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22396314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22396314 I can't read the article here, the details are "below the fold" and it won't scroll. In case others are in a similar situation, the submission above is another source for the story.

yitchelle 7y ago

Sad to read this. He is one of the few eathers trying to prove the earth is flat rather than to disprove that the earth is sphere. He would have failed in the end, but he chased for an answer.

tyingq 7y ago
The article points out that he probably wasn't really a flat earther... “I don’t think he believed it,” Shuster said. “He did have some governmental conspiracy theories. But don’t confuse it with that flat Earth thing. That was a PR stunt we dreamed up.”
- soneil 7y ago
  It certainly seems so. 2015 kickstarter [0] mentions nothing of FE at all. Just wants to break his previous record. Kickstarter flops, hard. 2017 gofundme [1] sells itself as $7500 of sponsorship in return for the prime advertising spot on the side of the rocket. None of these rockets were about trying to prove or disprove anything, he was no more scientist than evel knievel was. The FE community were openly courted for cash, but cash was the only relationship between FE and the rockets. [0] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1441636269/mission-rock-it-stage-i-the-1-mile-manned-rocket-j https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1441636269/mission-rock... [1] https://www.gofundme.com/f/flat-earth-community-rocket-launch https://www.gofundme.com/f/flat-earth-community-rocket-launc...

onemoresoop 7y ago

Need for attention is also a factor here. And this competition is to be seen more and more with great trophies in Darwin Awards

gsich 7y ago
Darwin award would assume he had no children.
- onemoresoop 7y ago
  Didnt know this part. Maybe his current offspring learn a good deal from the tragedy..
- Bootwizard 7y ago
  Article says he had no living relatives, so Darwin Award for sure.
- senectus1 7y ago
  Darwin doesn't require you have no children, just that you remove yourself from the genepool through complete and utter stupidity. if you do it before having children all the better, but not necessary.
sunstone 7y ago
He had the courage of his convictions. Though a bit of mathematical insight could have shown that if the world was flat then gravity would not diminish with height. Some people just prefer practical experiments to theoretical calculations.
- onemoresoop 7y ago
  If he quietly did his thing I’d understand but it was in part a show for attention. When this happens other Darwin Awards candidates are springing into existence. Maybe it is not bad after all. However, as a human, I feel bad for the guy. Hope others learn something from his lesson

tyingq 7y ago

"was captured on video as he rode a rocket into the sky, failed to activate a parachute " That's not quite right. The parachute deploys very early after the launch, separates from the rocket, and falls to earth by itself. I'm surprised there wasn't some kind of secondary parachute. There's a video here: (NSFW warning...no gore, but you do see the crash) https://twitter.com/justindchapman/status/1231336002175717376 https://twitter.com/justindchapman/status/123133600217571737...

ColinWright 7y ago
From the article: > *None of Hughes’ backup parachutes activated, either, Chapman said.
- tyingq 7y ago
  Interesting. Found a Facebook post that has some pictures and descriptions of the backup parachute(s) system. https://www.facebook.com/ScaldedCatSteamRockets/posts/1628444337238704 https://www.facebook.com/ScaldedCatSteamRockets/posts/162844... (click the "+4" and page through) Or see: https://imgur.com/a/C37q14M https://imgur.com/a/C37q14M
  - mannykannot 7y ago
    The text uses the phrase "backup parachute handle" several times, but not "backup parachute" on its own. The former is potentially ambiguous - is it possible that there was only the one parachute, possibly with two separate deployment mechanisms?
- mysterydip 7y ago
  I wonder, since he designed the rocket himself, if the same engineering flaw affected all parachutes.
  - tyingq 7y ago
    My various links suggests there was both an altimeter driven deployment, as well as a manual "oh shit" handle. Multiple things must have gone wrong.

coldcode 7y ago

Rocket science is actually rocket science. Making rockets that work, especially with people aboard, is about the most complex thing humans do. Even spending vast amounts of money and hiring the best people can still result in disaster. Doing it by yourself is highly unlikely to work. I always joke that programming is not rocket science even though some people I know think they are similar.

buboard 7y ago
it seems the rocket worked as expected. but maybe parachute science is like rocket science.
gridlockd 7y ago
> Doing it by yourself is highly unlikely to work. Perhaps so, but he's actually done it successfully before in 2018.
- Balgair 7y ago
  I mean, it only takes one failure to kill you.
deleted 7y ago
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everdrive 7y ago
Even in 2020, many countries with nearly unlimited funding cannot get manned rockets to work.

aezakmi 7y ago

God bless his soul.

DonHopkins 7y ago

To paraphrase Jerry Pournelle: "Think of it as Creationism in action."

DonHopkins 7y ago

Bat Country takes another one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K89dChsgznw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K89dChsgznw >"We were somewhere outside Barstow, on the outskirts of the desert when the drugs began to take hold."