The crazy plan of self-taught rocket scientist "Mad" Mike Hughes to prove that the Earth is flat has already hit a snag before getting off the ground, literally.
The project will still push through, though, as Hughes will not be denied in his mission to disprove the "conspiracy" that the Earth is round.
Plan To Prove Flat Earth Delayed: Rocket Launch Blocked
Hughes, a 61-year-old limousine driver and a self-taught rocket scientist, has spent the last few years and $20,000 on a steam-powered rocket.
The plan is simple: strap himself onto the rocket, fly up to space, and take pictures of what he and many others believe is a disc-shaped, flat Earth.
The first phase of the dangerous project, which was scheduled for the afternoon of Nov. 25, was to launch the homemade rocket and himself about a mile over a ghost town in California's Mojave Desert named Amboy, which only has four residents. The contraption will travel at a speed of around 500 miles per hour and will look to reach an altitude of 1,800 feet before Hughes release two parachutes.
Unfortunately, those looking forward to watch the rocket launch on Hughes's YouTube channel will have to wait a bit longer.
Hughes said that he will postpone the rocket launch to next week, as the Bureau of Land Management denied giving him the permission to fly over public land.
"It's still happening," Hughes told The Washington Post. Hughes will simply move the location of the launch to have the rocket fly over private property "three miles down the road," without saying the specific location.
According to Hughes, the BLM gave him verbal permission over a year ago to launch his rocket over Amboy, pending approval granted by the Federal Aviation Administration. However, a spokeswoman for the BLM said that there were no records of its local field office discussing the matter with Hughes, who did not apply for the necessary permit to launch his homemade rocket on public land.
The denial of the BLM on the rocket launch coincided with technical difficulties, as a motor in the modified motor home, where Hughes will attach the rocket's launch pad, had to undergo repairs.
Hughes expects that the rocket launch will not happen until about Tuesday, Nov. 28, with the flat-Earther to likely announce a specific date soon.
Is The Earth Flat? Many People Think So
Hundreds of people attended the first-ever Flat Earth International Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina, earlier this month, showing that a lot of people are starting to believe that NASA and other agencies are conspiring to keep people thinking that the Earth is round.
The theory of flat-Earthers is that our world is actually a disc, with Antarctica actually walls of ice that prevent people from reaching the edges and falling off. They believe that NASA and other scientific agencies are covering up that the Earth is flat through things such as edited photos of the round Earth taken from space to stop people from venturing into dangerous territory.
