In 2017, he called in to the Infinite Plane Society, a live-stream YouTube channel that discusses Earth’s flatness and other matters, to announce his beliefs and ambitions and ask for the community’s endorsement. “Do I believe the Earth is shaped like a Frisbee? I believe it is,” he told the Associated Press. Stuff was leaking, bolts needed tightening, but at around three o’clock, and with no countdown, Hughes blasted off from a portable ramp-attached to a motorhome he’d bought through Craigslist-soared to nearly nineteen hundred feet, and, after a minute or so, parachuted less than gently back to Earth.įor all of that, Hughes might have attracted little media attention were it not for his outspoken belief that the world is flat. Finally, a couple of months ago, he made good.

Further attempts were scrubbed-mechanical problems, logistical hurdles, hassles from the U.S. He planned to try again in 2016, but his Kickstarter campaign, which aimed to raise a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, netted just two supporters and three hundred and ten dollars.

In 2014, he allegedly flew thirteen hundred and seventy-four feet in a garage-built rocket and was injured when it crashed. In 2002, Hughes set a Guinness World Record for the longest ramp jump-a hundred and three feet-in a limo, a stretch Lincoln Town Car. He’d been trying for years, in one way or another. On the last Sunday afternoon in March, Mike Hughes, a sixty-two-year-old limousine driver from Apple Valley, California, successfully launched himself above the Mojave Desert in a homemade steam-powered rocket.

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