How does this refute that he was pretending to be a Flat-Earther?
Okay, it doesn’t refute it, but it is kind of weird for someone to partially say that they didn’t believe it (but not fully.) And the article implied that he spewed all sorts of conspiracy theory garbage.
The bottom line is either he lied about being a Flat-Earther or lied about lying about being a Flat-Earther–either way, he was a liar on top of being a fool.
As I linked in post #107, his PR man literally said they ginned it up for the attention and revenue.
And “Mud” Mike literally said that he didn’t.
Con men are well known for changing their story depending on their audience.
And you believe the con man.
Con man and liar.
Or
Delusional conspiracy theorizing nutbar.
It really matters not. The main thing is he was so freaking idiotic about basic, BASIC safety protocols, that he essentially committed expensive suicide.
It’s like a dude decided to build himself a race car with other people’s money, ignored what actual automotive engineers do, and decided the best way to propel it was to pour a can of gasoline in the back seat and light it on fire. And then he burned to death. What a surprise.
Which one? PR people are professional con men.
Okay, found some of his other conspiracy theory stuff:
I suppose he was just a Sovereign Citizen for fund-raising purposes? Has his PR flack issued a statment denying that?
But in this context the PR guy didn’t have a reason to lie.
All the conspiracy-theory believing idiocy fits in very well with his attitude of “I know how to build a a rocket better than rocket scientists.”
This is common in conspiracy-theory believing nutjobs. They have an overwhelming sense of superiority. “Only they” know the real truth. They don’t need anyone to tell them how to build a rocket.
And we see the results.
Arrogant stupidity leading to death is not rare. That’s all this was - but he decided to do it in the public spotlight, and use other people’s money to kill himself in an interesting way. That’s the only reason this makes the news.
I almost feel like attending the next meeting of the Flat Earth Society S.A. and asking who would like a rocket ride to prove their theorem. But I might be arrested as a public nuisance. Sad.
Flat-earthers. Scientologists. Mormons. All are great sales targets because they’ll believe and buy anything. Do not try to dissuade them; just take their money, and smirk.
Truly he slapped the face of God.
God, it turned out, was not amused.
I don’t know why he was so obsessed with it being steam powered. The last thing to go through his mind was a water boiler.
Nice joke but modern steamers use flash tubes, not boilers, so no explosions. I don’t know the details of Mad Mike’s steam rocket, don’t know if he was up to 1890 technology. I doubt the NTSB will investigate. Write this off as Operator Error. As to why steam - it’s ecological!
Good article by the guy that made the main video of the launch that went viral. It goes into more detail about his nutty beliefs, and mentions that one of his earlier attempts at a launch cut a guy’s legs off.
New article on Wired from a reporter that had been enabling Hughes and feels very guilty about it.:
That reporter had guts to make a statement like that.
It wasn’t a delusion that there was widespread interest in his antics, just as there was interest in the antics of Evel Knievel and NASCAR and the gladiators of old. Humans, and I think chimps, love to watch dumfucks crash and burn. It’s not our prettiest trait, and he should feel bad for profiting from it, but Hughes loved playing the fame game until his last fifteen seconds. We all should be that fortunate, doing what we love until the very end.
The series this was being filmed for (Homade Astronauts) has been released on Discovery+. I skimmed through it. I was curious if they would show any (non-morbid) video of the crash scene, but the crash actually got a lot less coverage than we saw in the news videos. They did, though, show a memorial held for Flat Mike 5 months later where they had what was left of the helment he was wearing at the time on display.
(I also found this old article showing bits of rocket confetti being hauled away.)