We woke up this morning to the news that ‘Mad’ Mike Hughes – daredevil, flat earther, Guinness World Record holder for longest limousine ramp jump, and rocket lover – had died after his parachutes failed on a homemade rocket. He was 64.
The launch was an attempt to prove that the earth was flat. Hughes had strapped himself to a steam powered rocket, and launched himself 5000ft (a bit over a kilometer and a half) into the air with the hopes that he’d be able to see for himself that the earth had no curve.
A video of the crash has been circulating since the news of his death broke, and it’s an intense watch.
When the video starts, you can see the parachutes trailing after the rocket. They’d been deployed too early. As the video goes on, you can see a tiny dot – the part of the rocket that Hughes is in – plummet to the ground.
It’s a hard video to see through until the end, and the captions prediction that he likely didn’t survive turned out to be true.
The launch was being filmed as part of a series for The Science Channel called Homemade Astronauts, a show that chronicles the lives of DIY rocketeers as they try and get to space on a budget.
Hughes had previously made headlines for being sponsored by dating apps and launching himself in a different homemade rocket as high as 1,870ft (570m) last year.
After a bumpy landing on the previous launch, Hughes said at the time “Am I glad I did it? Yeah, I guess. I’ll feel it in the morning. I won’t be able to get out of bed. At least I can go home and have dinner and see my cats tonight.”
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