From the “you can’t make this shit up department” I give you all that is great and terrible about this country in one story.
We’ve always been a nation of rebels, inventors, and let’s face it crackpots. Combining all these into one awesome all-American package is Mike “Mad Mike” Hughes.
The daredevil inventor and self-described “World's Most Famous Limousine Driver” plans to fly his home-built, steam-powered rocket at 500 mph across the Mojave Desert on Saturday.
In the best traditions of American ingenuity, he built it from scrap metal.
So far so good. Here’s where it gets, well, interesting.
His ultimate goal is to use his DIY space program to……...wait for it……..prove that the earth is flat.
Yes, really.
(Sorry, I’m not including a link to the Flat Earth Society. Even I have standards.)
I would say that is either stupidity, insanity or the sheer genius of someone who figured out a way to get his home-grown rocket program financed. I’ll let you decide.
Now Mike’s one previous manned rocket flight went about a quarter of a mile and put him in a walker for two weeks. That hasn’t deterred the 61-year-old limo driver however.
None of this surprises me, actually.
I get driven to and from a lot of airports in a lot of limos and some of the drivers are, well let’s just say “different”.
Here’s a fun interview that I got about halfway through before he got to the really good stuff about Neil Armstrong being a Freemason.
This tells you pretty much all you need to know about society today.
Rather then believe that the Earth is round, people would rather believe in a vast, I guess I can’t say “global”, conspiracy involving NASA, Elon Musk, Freemasons and presumably the European and Russian space agencies as well.
“I don’t believe in science,” said Hughes, whose main sponsor for the rocket is Research Flat Earth.
Well, Mike, the thing is, science works whether you believe in it or not. Hopefully he won’t be testing the theory of natural selection while he’s at it.
Assuming he survives Saturday’s launch, Mike plans to run for Governor of California.
And this folks, is why we can’t have nice things.