
Daredevil “Mad Mike” Hughes killed in rocket crash outside Barstow - jonas21
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-02-22/daredevil-mad-mike-hughes-killed-in-stunt
======
tyingq
_" was captured on video as he rode a rocket into the sky, failed to activate
a parachute "_

That's not quite right. The parachute deploys very early after the launch,
separates from the rocket, and falls to earth by itself. I'm surprised there
wasn't some kind of secondary parachute.

There's a video here: (NSFW warning...no gore, but you do see the crash)
[https://twitter.com/justindchapman/status/123133600217571737...](https://twitter.com/justindchapman/status/1231336002175717376)

~~~
ColinWright
From the article:

> *None of Hughes’ backup parachutes activated, either, Chapman said.

~~~
tyingq
Interesting. Found a Facebook post that has some pictures and descriptions of
the backup parachute(s) system.
[https://www.facebook.com/ScaldedCatSteamRockets/posts/162844...](https://www.facebook.com/ScaldedCatSteamRockets/posts/1628444337238704)
(click the "+4" and page through)

Or see: [https://imgur.com/a/C37q14M](https://imgur.com/a/C37q14M)

~~~
mannykannot
The text uses the phrase "backup parachute handle" several times, but not
"backup parachute" on its own. The former is potentially ambiguous - is it
possible that there was only the one parachute, possibly with two separate
deployment mechanisms?

------
nlh
You know, it’s sad whenever a tinkerer or explorer gets killed, but I have a
feeling he knew this was his destiny, and this was clearly the path he loved
in life.

Good on him for being an explorer and pushing the limits. Sorry it had to come
to a end :(

~~~
cdumler
> Good on him for being an explorer and pushing the limits.

NO. Just, no. This guy willfully ignored the knowledge and expertise that came
before him; both, in how to accomplish the task and the demonstratively
provable physics that show his goals were folly.

If he just claimed that gravity was false and jumped off a cliff to the rocks
below to prove it, it would just be "local idiot jumps to his death." Some
how, if you add rockets and a flat earth conspiracy it gets praise?

No. This is the tragedy of the U.S. education and mental health systems.

~~~
jessriedel
> It’s not clear how strongly he held the conviction, or if he really believed
> it at all. His publicist, Darren Shuster, said Saturday that the “flat Earth
> thing … was a PR stunt we dreamed up” to get publicity and attract sponsors
> for the rockets that the self-taught engineer made in his garage at his home
> in Apple Valley, Calif.

[https://archive.md/1QX2W#selection-2017.0-2017.330](https://archive.md/1QX2W#selection-2017.0-2017.330)

Sounds like he wanted to build and ride rockets, and this was a way to get
strangers to pay for it.

~~~
lolc
Interesting. That would make him much worse in my book. Now should I remember
him as an irresponsible fraud or a mistaken fool?

It is one thing to be so misinformed as to believe a flat earth has any
plausibility. It is another to reinforce people in this mistaken belief to
take advantage of them!

~~~
GaryNumanVevo
I mean, he grifted a bunch of flat earther's into funding his hobby. That's a
win in my book

~~~
lolc
That's because you think flat-earthers "deserve" being cheated because they're
stupid. I wonder how you'd react to cons that exploit your own ignorance.

In my ethics it is fraud to keep people in a mistaken belief to profit from
it. By adopting their beliefs as his own, he crossed into that zone. If he'd
just announced that he'll check curvature for them, that would have been
alright.

~~~
GaryNumanVevo
Flat Earther's are more convicted than stupid. They're more than welcome to
give money to anyone they please.

> In my ethics it is fraud to keep people in a mistaken belief to profit from
> it.

See: all of organized religion.

~~~
lolc
It's not fraud if you believe it yourself. Sure there are frauds in organized
religion, but that doesn't make the religions as a whole a fraud.

------
coldcode
Rocket science is actually rocket science. Making rockets that work,
especially with people aboard, is about the most complex thing humans do. Even
spending vast amounts of money and hiring the best people can still result in
disaster. Doing it by yourself is highly unlikely to work.

I always joke that programming is not rocket science even though some people I
know think they are similar.

~~~
gridlockd
> Doing it by yourself is highly unlikely to work.

Perhaps so, but he's actually done it successfully before in 2018.

~~~
Balgair
I mean, it only takes one failure to kill you.

------
pg_bot
Rockets are dangerous and this was entirely too predictable. I think it's
worse if he wasn't a flat-earther because he used misinformation to promote
and enrich himself.

~~~
gridlockd
> Rockets are dangerous

What an insight! If only all these daredevils knew that their occupation was
hazardous, they could die a healthy death by cardiovascular disease, like the
rest of us.

~~~
lonelappde
Alan Eustace dove from the "edge" of space. That would kill you or if we
tried, but he figured out how to do it safely.

That's the magic -- doing what _seems_ impossible to survive. Doing what _is_
impossible to survive, and dying, is just stupid.

~~~
s1artibartfast
Designing, building, and successfully flying a manned homemade rocket isn't
impossible.

It is improbable, difficult, and dangerous.

------
DonHopkins
Bat Country takes another one.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K89dChsgznw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K89dChsgznw)

>"We were somewhere outside Barstow, on the outskirts of the desert when the
drugs began to take hold."

------
neonate
[https://archive.md/mq0KY](https://archive.md/mq0KY)

~~~
__d
Thanks

------
ColinWright
Alternate submission:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22396314](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22396314)

I can't read the article here, the details are "below the fold" and it won't
scroll. In case others are in a similar situation, the submission above is
another source for the story.

------
onemoresoop
Need for attention is also a factor here. And this competition is to be seen
more and more with great trophies in Darwin Awards

~~~
gsich
Darwin award would assume he had no children.

~~~
senectus1
Darwin doesn't require you have no children, just that you remove yourself
from the genepool through complete and utter stupidity. if you do it before
having children all the better, but not necessary.

------
ghostDancer
Now the conspiracies will begin to grow.

~~~
NoOneNew
I was just thinking this. The rhetoric is going to be... what is it, the
airline companies and NASA are the bad guys in their conspiracies, right?
Anyways, _they_ sabotaged his rocket. They didn't want him "uncovering the
truth". More fuel for the fire I guess...

Then again, even if he did live and went, "Yea, it's round." All of them would
just say he's a paid shill. You can't win with stupid. It's a lose-lose
situation.

------
DonHopkins
To paraphrase Jerry Pournelle: "Think of it as Creationism in action."

------
aasasd
Ah heck. That was one crazy guy I was actually kinda rooting for. I mean, if
your rocket works, good for you.

Seems to not be the first time, though, that I wonder if backup parachutes
should be activated remotely.

------
yitchelle
Sad to read this. He is one of the few eathers trying to prove the earth is
flat rather than to disprove that the earth is sphere. He would have failed in
the end, but he chased for an answer.

~~~
tyingq
The article points out that he probably wasn't really a flat earther...

 _“I don’t think he believed it,” Shuster said. “He did have some governmental
conspiracy theories. But don’t confuse it with that flat Earth thing. That was
a PR stunt we dreamed up.”_

~~~
soneil
It certainly seems so.

2015 kickstarter [0] mentions nothing of FE at all. Just wants to break his
previous record. Kickstarter flops, hard.

2017 gofundme [1] sells itself as $7500 of sponsorship in return for the prime
advertising spot on the side of the rocket.

None of these rockets were about trying to prove or disprove anything, he was
no more scientist than evel knievel was. The FE community were openly courted
for cash, but cash was the only relationship between FE and the rockets.

[0] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1441636269/mission-
rock...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1441636269/mission-rock-it-
stage-i-the-1-mile-manned-rocket-j)

[1] [https://www.gofundme.com/f/flat-earth-community-rocket-
launc...](https://www.gofundme.com/f/flat-earth-community-rocket-launch)

------
mdonahoe
Sorry to hear he died. Glad to hear he wasn’t actually a flat earther.

~~~
arrrg
It doesn’t matter whether you actually believe something, if you act like you
do and what you believed in is toxic you are still responsible for spreading
poison.

You make the world a safer and more welcoming place for those who actually
believe it.

~~~
tyingq
The premise, to me, is silly enough that you aren't poisoning anyone. Anyone
that would believe it is going to feed off of some other poison. Very few are
equipped to hurt themselves or others via "flat Earth thinking".

~~~
simonh
That's their problem, it doesn't justify making it easier for them to get more
poison.

~~~
tyingq
It is less harmful than, say, them latching onto anti-vaxx or eating Tide
pods.

~~~
gaius__baltar
Tide pods are actually delicious however.

------
foobar_
The flat earth model works if it was built by isolated tribes living on an
island. It wasn't until Copernicus that people started to believe the round
earth model.

~~~
Galanwe
Hu? This is completely unrelated.

The overall idea of a spherical earth is a consensus since ancient Greece, and
has been considered a fact since then.

Copernicus more or less established that the earth revolves around the sun,
and not the other way around.

I use "more or less" here because

1) The idea of the earth revolving around the sun was not _new_, it was
already discussed and debated in ancient Greek texts. Part of the renaissance
movement is based on the re-study of ancient Greek texts, which was
influential to Copernicus and his ideas.

2) There is no universal truth behind what revolves around what. It's just a
matter of perspective, and having the earth rotate around the sun did had the
advantage of making calendar computations much simpler, since you don't have
to deal with intricate planet retro-cessions. That was the reason that led
Copernicus to choose this perspective.

~~~
DalasNoin
Just about the point that it was a consensus since ancient Greece: it
certainly wasn't a consensus around the world until somewhat recently

According to Wikipedia: "Many ancient cultures subscribed to a flat Earth
cosmography, including Greece until the classical period, the Bronze Age and
Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period, India
until the Gupta period (early centuries AD), and China until the 17th century.

The idea of a spherical Earth appeared in Greek philosophy with Pythagoras
(6th century BC), although most pre-Socratics (6th–5th century BC) retained
the flat Earth model."

Interestingly, it seems nobody but the Greeks independently discovered the
spherical earth model

~~~
thombat
But it was certainly a consensus in educated Western Europe, or Columbus
wouldn't have been heading west to get to the East Indies (his innovation was
to be obstinately wrong about the diameter of the Earth, which would have
doomed the voyage but for the fortunate collision with the Carribean)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df-
uemc-e3w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df-uemc-e3w)

~~~
raverbashing
I wonder what he was really thinking:

a) "I believe the distance is smaller and that we'll be able to get there no
problem (as much as a trip like that could be ""no problem"")"

b) "distance is bigger but there might be something in between, etc, and I
like adventures"

c) "distance is (or might be) bigger and this will be a very boring trip but
we'll eventually get there but might have to wing it.

~~~
nwallin
We don't have to wonder, because he wrote it down.

Ptolemy estimated that the continents of Europe and Asia collectively spanned
180 lines of longitude, leaving 180 to travel by sea. Most contemporary
scholars believed this too. In actuality, the continents span about 130 from
China to Spain, leaving 230 that would need to be travelled by sea. The best
sources available to Columbus were wrong, and the other available sources
typically erred on the ocean being too small. Few, if any, people thought
Europe and Asia spanned _less_ lines of longitude than estimated by Ptolemy.

Additionally, he read that each line of longitude spanned 56 2/3 miles at the
equator. Unfortunately, his source was quoting Arabic miles, but Columbus was
only familiar with Roman miles, which are shorter.

He didn't believe that he discovered something the scholars of the day didn't.
The fragmentation of the Mongol Empire meant that overland trade was growing
more expensive, meanwhile nautical technology and seamanship was rapidly
advancing. It would have been impossible to have made Columbus' planned (as he
understood it) sea voyage in, say 1300. But now, the overland route wasn't
well run, and the caravels used by Columbus were much better suited to ocean
travel.

If Columbus hadn't done it, the economic necessity of the rising price of
goods and dropping costs of sea travel would have resulted in someone else
doing the same thing. Some people say he was a unique visionary, other people
say he was dumb and lucky. Neither were true. He did his research and came to
the natural (if wrong) conclusion. (he was lucky though)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus#Geographi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus#Geographical_considerations)

~~~
foogazi
> The fragmentation of the Mongol Empire meant that overland trade was growing
> more expensive, meanwhile nautical technology and seamanship was rapidly
> advancing.

The fall of Constantinople and the the Ottoman Empire Also made trade routes
more expensive

There were also efforts to circumnavigate Africa for this reason

