NPR

Flat-Earther Delays Launch In His Homemade Rocket, Saying 'It's Not Easy'

Mike Hughes had planned to launch himself Saturday over the Mojave Desert in a quest to prove the world is flat. But he didn't count on a federal agency's rejection — or a significant tech breakdown.
The blue sky over the Mojave Desert, untouched by the path of Mike Hughes' rocket. He had planned to launch himself in his own rocket Saturday in Amboy, Calif., but the Bureau of Land Management put up a significant hurdle to that effort.

It appears we will need to wait a while longer to find out whether more than two millennia of thinkers and explorers — from Aristotle and Ferdinand Magellan, to Neil deGrasse Tyson and John Glenn — have been wrong about the shape of the Earth.

"Mad" Mike Hughes, limousine driver and self-proclaimed flat-Earther, announced that he had to delay1,800 feet high in a rocket of his own making. The launch, which he has billed as a crucial first step toward ultimately photographing our disc-world from space, had been scheduled for Saturday — before the Bureau of Land Management got wind of the plan and barred him from using public land in Amboy, Calif.

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