I am, on one hand, very pleased to announce that my favourite person – self-described NASCAR innovator, world’s top limo driver, and stuntman “Mad” Mike Hughes – is back in the news, but on the other, I am sad to announce that it is because his much-heralded rocket launch failed to go ahead.
Hughes planned to launch a home-made rocket straight up into the sky at roughly 800km/h in Amboy, California to further the cause of flat Earth trutherism. Although it has been reported that he’s doing the rocket flight in order to prove the Earth isn’t flat, it turns out he’s actually doing it for a much more sane reason: in the hopes of raising the $1.8 – $2 million AUD required to send himself into space. Yep.
As noble and reasonable as that cause is, unfortunately luck does not appear to be on his side, having had to abort the jump for the second time in the last six months. He was unable to go through with a jump he planned in November due to the Bureau of Land Management becoming quite cagey about the idea of him hurtling through their airspace at unbelievable speed in a rocket he threw together himself – a problem that he overcame by replanning the jump to be on private land and strictly vertical.
This time, however, it was a mechanical fault that kept him tethered to the terra firma. In a Facebook post, Hughes identified that the problem was with an actuator on the rocket, which he would be replaced and ready within the week. He says he intends to only announce the time and location of the next launch hours before it happens, but also that he will be busy with court cases because, as he told MGTV, he is suing “the Governor, the Franchise Tax Board, and the legal department for the Franchise Tax Board, and the Attorney-General, and Kamala Harris, the Senator“. So I imagine he’ll be pretty tied up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fpoTg5P334
In his most recent Facebook post, there’s a somewhat confusing sentence where he says “Also this picture is the beginning paperwork to run for governor in the once great state of California.” There’s no picture attached, so it’s not entirely clear what he’s talking about, but the California gubernatorial election is in November this year, so I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
As always, we wish him the best of luck.
