Mike Hughes, a 61-year-old American, believes that astronauts and space agencies are conspiring to convince the world that Earth is round. And the limousine driver (and amateur scientist in his spare time) is willing to go far to prove his theory - more precisely, 549 meters above ground, with a rocket he built himself from scrap metal. The flight is scheduled for Saturday and the goal is clear: to see for yourself the truth and to take a photo to prove that our planet, contrary to what all scientists and renowned research institutions say, is flat.
Hughes knows that flying 1.6 kilometers in a homemade vehicle at more than 805 kilometers per hour may seem dangerous, but it's for a bigger reason. "This will close the door to this story of Round Earth," he said in a video produced by a group of land-planters, called The Daily Plane, to raise funds. In all, his project cost $ 20,000 ($ 65,000) - a figure that includes, in addition to the rocket, the "space suit" he built
In the interview, Hughes also says that NASA is being controlled and that Elon Musk, CEO of the space company SpaceX, is making fake rockets. "They have not yet sent a man into space," he says. "There are twenty space agencies here in the United States and I am the last person to put a man on a rocket and launch it."
This latest release Hughes refers to occurred in 2014, when he entered another home rocket and traveled 400 meters in a village called Winkelman, in the State of Arizona. The problem is that the distance is only a quarter of what Hughes intends to travel on Saturday, and yet the flight has not finished very well - the video shows footage of the American being dragged onto the ground and then leaving the destroyed rocket. As he tells himself, he was so hurt that he had to walk on crutches for two weeks.
"If you're not afraid of death, you're an idiot," Hughes told the Associated Press. "It's very scary, but none of us are going to leave the living world. 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 into their own rocket. I'm a walking reality TV show. "
In addition, Hughes states with conviction that he does not believe in science. "I know about aerodynamics and the dynamics of fluids and how things move through the air, about the size of rocket nozzles and about thrust. But this is not science, it's just a formula. There is no difference between science and science fiction, "he sums up.