have a chance in hell of achieving them. Which usually means researching what the hell it is you’re trying to do and having a half decent and serious attempt at it

You know that this was his second rocket flight, and that the first one worked successfully, right? I’m not taken by the chaps motivations but I’ve got to admire his chutzpah. I’m glad that humans take risks. It’d be a rubbish world if they didn’t.

You’re right.

It’s still funny though.

Things can be both tragic and funny.

Just out of interest, what would you say your greatest achievement in your life so far has been?

I’m asking because I’m beginning to wonder if you’re actually just really jealous.

The whole point is that I (and 99.9999999999% of the population) am not likely to involve myself in any endeavor likely to kill me in pursuit of spurious science purely to try and make myself famous. If that’s your thing, venerate away – I reiterate that I’m sorry he’s dead, but it was a stupid, pointless stunt. When you strive for the same achievement, be sure to film it.

Serious answer; if the people like the Wright bros and those like them had just thought “**** it, it’s a dodgy idea, I think I’ll just ride my horse instead” the world would be a much more dull place.

Fair play, but I don’t see it as a fair analogy – he wasn’t testing new technology, he wasn’t breaking boundaries, it was a publicity stunt gone wrong. If he wanted to prove that a steam-powered rocket could break 5k, or that the world is flat, he didn’t need to be aboard.

reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.

― George Bernard Shaw

That was not an attempt at progress.

I have several projects I would like to pursue tomorrow. Instead I’m going to go and sit in a **** office doing a job I really can’t be arsed with anymore in the interests of paying the mortgage, watching my life slowly drip away day by day.

I could do with being a bit more Mike Hughes, I reckon.

Maybe it’s just me.

It’s not just you. You have just described my life. Ive just arrived home from holiday where I read Into the Wild. If you have read it you will understand

Just out of interest, do you feel the same way about base jumpers who die?

Inaccurate comparison as they mostly don’t, but you stay classy.

Ive just arrived home from holiday where I read Into the Wild. If you have read it you will understand

Love that book, McCandless is an inspirational figure for me. Go figure.

I have several projects I would like to pursue tomorrow. Instead I’m going to go and sit in a **** office doing a job I really can’t be arsed with anymore in the interests of paying the mortgage, watching my life slowly drip away day by day.

Well said.

Various bile from wobliscott..

Not well said

And I think if most of the people taking the piss were honest they’d admit he achieved more than they have as well.

Nope, he was a fruit loop and the only thing he achieved was proving the theory of gravity.

Mad Mike Hughes wikipedia page

His website is still live so i guess you could argue he has proved the afterlife

That was not an attempt at progress.

Well, that depends on your perspective. It’s easy to mock other people’s belief systems isn’t it? Fancy believing something that is clearly a fantasy and devoting your life to it. What a weird thing to do…

Wonder what went through his mind as he hit the earth.

Inaccurate comparison as they mostly don’t, but you stay classy.

It’s not really though, is it. The survival rate for early wingsuit developers was close to 0% but they kept at it. Some call them **** idiots but most people I associate with find something to be admired in them.

Mountaineers die all the time but again, most people I know take inspiration from them.

And then, of course, we get onto mountain bikers. How long would you last on this forum if you started saying same things you’ve been saying about Mike Hughes but about Jordie Lunn instead?

Mike Hughes is a far more impressive individual than the vast majority who are slagging him off.

Wonder what went through his mind as he hit the earth.

Probably his teeth

The thing with the Wright brothers, is that they were doing something that had never been done before. What this chap was doing has been done before, to the point of normality, he’s just tried to do it in a needlessly dangerous fashion.

Want to go to 5000ft? Light aircraft.
Want to build a steam rocket? Build an unmanned one, with a camera if you want to see out.

I fail to see how this is any different to the guy who died of exposure having lashed a load of helium balloons to his garden chair. Budget maybe.

In fairness, he built a steam powered rocket that was capable of powering a human being safely up to several thousand feet

In fairness anyone who doesn’t believe in gravity or is incapable of determining the earth isn’t flat by themselves shouldn’t be building rockets, steam or otherwise.

Apparently he wasn’t a flat earth believer, but had said he was in order to generate publicity and raise money.

We used flat Earth as a PR stunt. Period,” Darren Shuster told BuzzFeed News. “He was a true daredevil decades before the latest round of rocket missions. Flat Earth allowed us to get so much publicity that we kept going! I know he didn’t believe in flat Earth and it was a schtick.

So he was really a daredevil yet now forever remembered as a ‘flat-earther’?

RIP

As a keen follower of the flat earth movement, a few points:

• “Mad” Mike had made previous flights and survived. He did get badly injured on his previous one so he knew the risks.
• He wasn’t expecting to get to space in that rocket. He was fully aware he could get higher in a plane or by walking up a a hill
• I’m 99% sure he wasn’t a flat earther. He had tried to raise funds for his hobby rocket in the past and failed miserably. Then he announced he was a flat earther and the funds poured in. One of the surprising/sad things about flat earth is how much money you can make from gullible/vulnerable/mentally-ill people.

I don’t particularly approve of his methods, but it’s still a loss. The world needs Mikes.

Also from that Buzzfeed article “Mad” Mike is quoted as saying:

People ask me why I do stuff like this, and basically it’s just to convince people they can do things extraordinary with their lives, and maybe it pushes people do things that they normally wouldn’t do with their life, and maybe it’ll inspire someone else.

Let’s hope so. RIP Mike.

A man died. Sorry if I fail to see the ‘funny’ side.

Anyhoo, talking of steam powered madness… https://www.staffordclassicbikeshows.com/2018/09/22/steam-rocket-bike-to-appear-at-stafford/

A man died. Sorry if I fail to see the ‘funny’ side.

I’m guessing you don’t find choking on a lamington amusing either.

I’m guessing you don’t find choking on a lamington amusing either.

It’d be funnier if it was a  flat earther choking on a pancake

When we thought he was mad  because he was a flat earther (bad mad) this was funny but now we know he was just plain insane (good mad) it’s rather sad. First we thought we’d lost someone who the world was better off without and then we found out we’d lost someone the world needed.

Except those are just perceptions, funny how we all, me included, think we can make judgements about people with so little to go on.

It’d be funnier if it was a flat earther choking on a pancake

Excellent work.

Speaking of space, a big thing surrounding all this is your belief in a flat earth. What do you exactly believe?
I believe the earth is stationary but you have to realize I was an atheist for seven years. I just believed everything was a lie—all the wars, that there was no government, that corporations ran the world, that everything was a fraud—that everyone lied about everything. Then I found flat earth and I said, “Well, this makes sense” because they talk about the flat earth in the bible. Then you think well the airplanes can’t fly around the globe; submarines can’t go around the globe. The world photography record is not possible in a globe, and when they build bridges and roads, they don’t worry about the curvature of the earth.

There are just so many things!

This magical little thing called gravity does not exist—it’s all electromagnetism, OK. No one knows what is in the center of this earth, no one! The deepest drill they’ve ever drilled is seven and a half miles and that took twelve years. They don’t know, so they can’t say it’s gravity. All of it is just all bull crap. So that brought me back to believing in a creator—that’s what flat earth did. That helped me out. When I started looking into it and researching it, I couldn’t dismiss it, bottom line.

-Mad Mike Hughes 2018

From here- LINK

Yep, all very standard flat earth stuff that anyone could rhyme off after watching a few FE YouTube videos. Chuck in the biblical bit for extra donations.

I’m highly skeptical that he was a genuine flat earther.

Jumping off a cliff flapping your arms in an attempt to achieve your dream of flight wouldn’t be seen as anything other than ridiculous and idiotic.

They certainly said mocking things in the national press when my mates brother Don jumped off Hammersmith Bridge wearing a pair of homemade wings. “Four Flaps and the Birdman Flops” Was the headline in the Mirror.
Much nicer though than the words of his brother the following year on his camping trip. He unpacked his tent to find two large and suspiciously wing shaped pieces of fabric missing.

(And how cool does a steam powered rocket sound)

He also held the record for jumping a stretch limo.

I think the world needs more eccentrics like that.

This. Just this.