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RocketLaunch`

About Americans will spend Saturday in varying degrees of stupor, having just consumed a month's worth of calories and/or spent a month's worth of income. Merely non Mike Hughes. Mike, a 61-twelvemonth-one-time limo driver has spent the past few years edifice a homemade, steam-powered rocket. This initial rocket — which hasn't been tested, evaluated, or designed past anyone with what you'd call expertise — is meant to fling Hughes roughly a mile at a speed of 500 mph.

"If you're non scared to decease, you're an idiot," Hughes told the Associated Press. "It'south scary as hell, but none of the states are getting out of this world alive. I like to do boggling things that no one else can practise, and no one in the history of mankind has designed, built and launched himself in his own rocket. I'm a walking reality show."

Hughes, an avowed flat-earther, has launched previous rockets before, though none designed to take him as far as a mile. A previous launch effort with an earlier, less-powerful rocket design is embedded below (the parachute pattern is quite… interesting).

The pioneering cocky-taught would-be astronaut somewhen wants to build a rocket capable of taking him to infinite, so he can photograph the apartment World and illustrate, once and for all, that modern scientists are all a function of a globalist (that'southward the word they use) conspiracy to hide the truth of a apartment Earth considering… I actually have no thought.

"I don't believe in science," said Hughes, whose primary sponsor for the rocket is Enquiry Flat Earth. "I know about aerodynamics and fluid dynamics and how things move through the air, about the certain size of rocket nozzles, and thrust. But that's not science, that's merely a formula. There'due south no divergence between science and science fiction."

Mike Hughes

Hughes previously survived the 1,374-foot rocket launch but needed several days to recover from the m-forces involved. His plans for a steam-driven rocket might sound foolish, only low-powered rockets that run on steam have been built on multiple occasions. The trouble with steam rockets is that they typically crave a pressurized containment vessel (if you're using loftier pressures and temperatures) that'southward very heavy, while a simpler blueprint relies generally on liquid water and produces very little steam. Information technology's not clear if any steam-powered rocket could accomplish Hughes goal of reaching space (or even the upper atmosphere).

Given that there's no difference between science and science fiction, ExtremeTech readers interested in observing the Hughes launch are invited to beam aboard the USS Enterprise,where I'll have yous on a guided bout and demonstrate some cutting-border Force powers I've been perfecting. Later on a calorie-free snack, we'll warp to Trantor to visit its amazing library and tour a nearby Edenist habitat and its attendant helium-iii mining facilities. Our evening among the stars will conclude with drinks with famed scientific discipline fiction author Kilgore Trout. The cost? Just 10,000 Buckazoids, payable in advance.