As was reported earlier, one 61-year-old Mike Hughes was planning to launch himself aboard a homemade rocket in an effort to establish the fact that Earth is actually flat and not round. However, the launch, which was scheduled to take place on Saturday, has been delayed.
As per a report by The Washington Post, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has forbidden Hughes to launch his rocket, which is made of scrap metal, from a public area. Hughes had planned to take off on his rocket from Amboy, a ghost town in California.
As per the report, Hughes informed that the federal agency has asked him that this launch cannot take place at Amboy. On the other hand, a BLM spokeswoman, Samantha Storms, has now said that she is not aware of any such communication between the agency and Mike Hughes. "Someone from our local office reached out to him after seeing some of these news articles (about the launch), because that was news to them," she told media.
However, despite the holdup, Hughes is determined to go on with his planned launch. "It's still happening. We're just moving it three miles down the road. This is what happens anytime you have to deal with any kind of government agency," said Hughes.
According to Associated Press, if Hughes' attempt is successful, his rocket will be launched at a speed of 500 miles/hour.
"If you're not scared to death, you're an idiot. It's scary as hell, but none of us are getting out of this world alive. I like to do extraordinary things that no one else can do, and no one in the history of mankind has designed, built and launched himself in his own rocket," said the self-taught rocket scientist in his interview with AP.
This, however, is not the first attempt by Mike Hughes. Reportedly he had launched himself aboard another home-made rocket in 2014, which had taken him around 1,374 feet in the sky. Following his landing back then, he had collapsed and it took him a few days to recover from that. However, he wasn't someone who believed in the flat-Earth theory back then.
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Research Flat Earth, a group that believes in this theory, is funding this latest launch of Mike Hughes. Hughes has plans of traveling in space in the future to take a picture of one flat Earth.
"I don't believe in science. I know about aerodynamics and fluid dynamics and how things move through the air, about the certain size of rocket nozzles, and thrust. But that's not science, that's just a formula. There's no difference between science and science fiction," Hughes told AP.
