Michael Hughes, a renowned flat-earth proponent and professional stunt performer, has announced his intention to prove this anti-scientific theory during his "space flight" on a steam rocket, according to Space.com.
“I don't believe in science, but I believe my eyes. I know everything there is to know about the aerodynamics and behavior of a fluid, and how objects move through the air, how a rocket nozzle works and how it generates thrust. All this is not a science, but only a set of formulas. In fact, there is no difference between science and science fiction,”Hughes said in a video posted on his YouTube channel.
Hughes describes himself as one of the small group of marginalized people who claim that the Earth is in fact flat, as the Bible and the myths of the ancient Greeks tell about it. They argue that all images from telescopes and photographs of the Earth from orbit are the fruit of a conspiracy of scientists and a sophisticated hoax.
This conspiracy theory Hughes plans to prove this weekend, flying on a self-built rocket. The stuntman hopes that it will rise to an altitude of about 550 meters, fly about a kilometer and reach a speed of 1000 kilometers per hour.
This rocket is not a direct analogue of Russian Protons, American Saturns, or even Falcon 9 by Elon Musk and Blue Shepherd of Jeff Bezos - it is not the products of fuel combustion that escape from its nozzle, but compressed steam pumped into the tank of the spaceship under high pressure …
Thanks to this, the cost of the "conspiracy theorist" rocket is only 20 thousand US dollars, and he collected most of the parts in landfills or bought for next to nothing at online auctions.
As Hughes promised, the launch will take place on Saturday in the abandoned town of Emboy in the Mojave Desert, and the entire preparation for the flight and the flight itself will be broadcast on the stuntman's YouTube channel and other popular video services.
In the past, Hughes has already tried to make a "flight" into space - in January 2014, he performed the first such stunt, rising to a height of several hundred meters. Hughes' ideas have already attracted the attention of sponsors with a similar outlook; in the near future, he, together with like-minded people, plans to create a new version of the rocket that will be launched from a balloon and rise to an altitude of about 100 kilometers.
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