
Man plans to launch himself in a homemade rocket to prove the Earth is flat - lisper
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/11/21/this-man-is-about-to-launch-himself-in-his-homemade-rocket-to-prove-the-earth-is-flat/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories-2_sos-rocketman-315pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
======
fancyPantsZero
"Hughes only recently converted to flat-Eartherism, after struggling for
months to raise funds for his follow-up flight over the Mojave."

I think that sums it up.

~~~
soperj
All the best to him, taking money out of their pockets is probably an
admirable feat.

~~~
soperj
Also for all the people just roasting this guy. He's actually already shot
himself into the air with these rockets (you can see them on youtube), and
does nearly kill himself since his parachute is so shotty. But he's actually
fucking doing it.

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PopsiclePete
Godspeed, sir.

"I'll prove that sabre-tooth tigers are actually vegetarians by attempting to
scratch that one behind the ears" said one of his caveman ancestors. And then
people learned.

People like him are the unsung heroes of civilization.

------
yodon
Flat earther plans to launch himself into the air using steam powered rocket
because the two 10 year old girls from Seattle who sent a helium balloon to
78,000 feet to capture video of the earth’s curvature [0] are obviously part
of the conspiracy.

[0] [https://www.geekwire.com/2015/two-seattle-girls-launched-
a-b...](https://www.geekwire.com/2015/two-seattle-girls-launched-a-balloon-to-
the-edge-of-space-this-weekend-and-have-the-video-to-prove-it/amp/)

~~~
eesmith
If 78,000 feet were enough, he could get there by airplane.
[http://www.rusadventures.com/tour6.shtml](http://www.rusadventures.com/tour6.shtml)
says that a ride on a MiG-25 costs about $20,000 and gets to about 80,000
feet.

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Cyberdog
Something tells me that no matter how high he may get, no matter what he sees
up there, it will still somehow be evidence of the flat earth we live on. It's
always that way with these folks.

(Also: Is steam-powered rocketry a real thing? Hmm.)

~~~
ryandvm
I didn't see it mentioned in the article, but yes, High-Test Peroxide (and a
catalyst) is most definitely a legit rocket fuel and the byproducts of that
reaction are oxygen and steam.

I believe John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace venture used HTP.

------
thrill
Well, he may not be able to discern its (lack of) roundness but I think there
may some evidence gathered about its hardness.

------
olh
Flat earth theory is all about humans not being able to do a specific 2d to 3d
mapping using the natural brain circuitry/architecture/pathway we gained from
evolution for this operation because the earth is too big for our
brains/senses as an object viewed from nearby (like from a plane in the
atmosphere) and we never encountered something with such measures and
relationships (like a circular path that becomes linear to our senses) in the
natural world we evolved. Some of us know the earth is not flat because we
developed other ways (other brain circuitry) to do the mapping: some think it
terms of pure geometry, some scale down earth to a ball and compare our senses
to it, some think in terms of planetary movements, some use the moon to help
with the mapping from our vision, etc.

~~~
jimsmart
All of that, plus a lack of understanding regarding the basics of
astrophysics, it would seem. (e.g. I've seriously heard flat-earthers argue
'how can water stick to the surface of a ball?')

~~~
flukus
From what I've seen on youtube you're right, the one thing they all seem to
have in common is that the have no understanding of gravity. Everything else
seems to be an elaborate set of logical contortions to overcome this lack of
understanding.

------
synicalx
> a California man intends to launch himself 1,800 feet high on Saturday in a
> rocket he built from scrap metal.

Ok, cool.

> ... though he acknowledged that he still had much to learn about rocket
> science.

Surely at this point, someone should step in and stop him? Is this not at this
point, basically just really elaborate suicide? Not even joking here, I think
this guy may genuinely need help.

~~~
jopsen
It's America who would help a suicidal person?

Maybe you can call the cops so they can shoot him... That way he won't cause
any harm to himself.

Really though; if he is just slightly sane trying to stop him will only
convince him therr is a conspiracy.

------
gshock
Witness a Darwin Award in the making

------
013
Do videos like this prove the earth is round:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQf4m6rew7c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQf4m6rew7c)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHtvDA0W34I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHtvDA0W34I)

There are comments saying that they use a fish-eye lense, but the only thing
that seems to be affected is the earths curvature and nothing else...

~~~
didgeoridoo
Except those ARE both fairly extreme fisheye lenses, and you can tell whenever
the horizon goes above the midline and the curvature inverts (see 22:10 on the
MiG video).

Neither the MiG nor Baumgartner were high enough for the extreme curvature
visible on these videos to be an accurate reflection of what you would have
seen in their shoes.

~~~
thrill
I read things that say you should be able to tell that the horizon dips at
each end when you're at 35,000 feet above average sea level, but I can't
eyeball it there and tell there's bend. I can at 50,000 feet.

~~~
mchahn
2 things:

Sailors could see the top of ships before the whole ship when using a decent
telescope.

I saw the curvature of the earth when I flew to Paris in a Concorde many years
ago.

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nunez
Him and this guy from Denton, TX need to be friends: [http://ntdaily.com/home-
adorned-with-cryptic-messages-under-...](http://ntdaily.com/home-adorned-with-
cryptic-messages-under-citys-scrutiny/)

------
IdontRememberIt
Why not simply go to the top of the Stromboli and watch the curve of the sea?

------
neo4sure
"But Eratosthenes knew that this wasn’t the case where he was, in Alexandria.
Sure, the Sun came closer to being directly overhead at Noon on the Summer
Solstice in Alexandria than at any other time during the year, but vertical
objects still cast shadows.

And — like any good scientist — Eratosthenes did the experiment. By measuring
the length of the shadow cast by a vertical stick during the solstice noon, he
could figure out what angle the Sun made with the vertical direction at
Alexandria.

And the answer he got was one-fiftieth of a circle, or 7.2 degrees. But at
this time, in Syene, the angle the Sun was making with an identical vertical
stick was zero degrees! What could be causing this? In perhaps a stroke of
genius, Eratosthenes realized that the Sun’s rays could all be parallel, and
that the Earth could be curved!

If he could then figure out the distance from Alexandria to Syene, since he
knew the angular difference between the two cities, he could figure out the
circumference of the Earth! If only Eratosthenes had a grad student, he could
have sent one to make the trip, and measure the distance!

Instead, he was forced to rely on the reported distance between the two
cities. The most “precise” measurement of his day?

Travel-by-camel. (So I can understand criticisms of his accuracy.)
Nevertheless, his results were that the distance between Syene and Alexandria
were 5,000 stadia. The question, of course, is how big is a stadium? The
answer depends, of course, on whether Eratosthenes, a Greek living in Egypt,
was using an Attic stadium or an Egyptian stadium, something still debated
among historians. An Attic stadium was used more commonly, and is 185 meters
in modern terms. Using this value, one gets a circumference of the Earth of
46,620 kilometers, a number that’s only about 16% bigger than the actual
value.

However, an Egyptian stadium is 157.5 meters, and it’s conceivable that’s what
Eratosthenes meant. In that case, we get a value of 39,375 kilometers, which
is off by less than 2% from the modern value of 40,041 km!

Regardless of what the actual values were, Eratosthenes went on to become the
world’s first geographer, inventing the concepts of latitude and longitude
that we still use today, and constructed the first models and maps based on a
spherical Earth.

Although many things were “lost” during the subsequent millenium, neither the
idea of a spherical Earth nor the rough knowledge of the Earth’s circumference
were one of them. In fact, anyone can perform this same experiment today with
two locations at the same longitude, and with simultaneous measurements of
shadow lengths, you too can measure the circumference of the Earth! Not bad,
considering that the first direct, photographic evidence of the Earth’s
curvature would not arrive until 1946!"

[http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/09/21/who-
disco...](http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/09/21/who-discovered-
the-earth-is-ro/)

~~~
52-6F-62
We might also need to remind him of the story of Icarus's study in flight...

------
cisanti
How far can you climb with s balloon and jump down? Wouldn't it be more cost
effective. I'm not sure if this guy is trolling or not, but if he really
believes in flat earth I give him respect to "showing the proof" instead of
moaning online.

~~~
jmts
About 40km.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Eustace#Stratosphere_jump](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Eustace#Stratosphere_jump)

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m00s3
But has he had a chance to breed? Don’t want that line continuing....

~~~
vixen99
So who else would you not want to breed? You can tell us, we won't say a word
regarding your eugenic ambitions. After all it was all the fashion in the
1920s and 1930s with acclaimed intellectuals and personages such as Alexander
Graham Bell, John Maynard Keynes, HG Wells, GB Shaw and the socialist Sidney
Webb. The list is long and thought-provoking for some of today's fashionable
ideas.

[http://www.conservapedia.com/List_of_people_who_supported_eu...](http://www.conservapedia.com/List_of_people_who_supported_eugenics)

~~~
Oletros
Conservapedia?

Please, now link the articles about Theory of Relativity being a liberal plot
and the discussion about Lensky Experiment

