WingNews logo WingNews
top | item 16673380

Flat-Earther's rocket lofts him 1,875 feet up

38 points| utopkara | 8 years ago |latimes.com

40 comments

order

eloff|8 years ago

I wonder if he really believes the earth is flat, or if he's just pretending so the flat earth people will keep funding his rocket hobby.

Jonovono|8 years ago

That's exactly what it was. He was trying to raise money before and didn't succeed so he tried this angle.

sqdbps|8 years ago

No one really thinks that the earth is flat it's just attention seeking behavior.

Roritharr|8 years ago

I'm more onboard with this then selling sugar pills as "alternative medicine".

kolinko|8 years ago

Well, earth looks like a frisbee disc from 1800 feet up...

colordrops|8 years ago

Maybe 10% of flat earthers are true faithful and not trolls.

jimmies|8 years ago

I have a high altitude balloon+electronics education project and it is very fun. We were using our pocket money. It can get expensive really quickly was very hard to raise money for this kind of stuff. We spend about $300 per launch (not including transportation) given we retrieve the payload successfully. If we don't, it is going to be $1.5k per launch for a latex weather balloon. There is a lot of risks involved in the process.

With that in mind, I think being able to launch a hunk of metal to 2k ft with just $20k is actually really quite impressive. I don't care if he raised money for the flat earth cause or any other scandalous cause, I think he did a legitimately impressive engineering feat, risked his life for it, raised money for it, didn't hurt or rob nobody. I am thoroughly entertained by this guy. Anyone with an iota of a brain will quickly realize this is just a comedy sketch, but as they say, a fool and his money are soon parted. If they didn't give money to this guy, they would have given their money to another stupid cause. And if anyone decides to give their money to any flat earth cause, I'd rather see they give money to this one.

With that in mind, I don't think I would go so far as going on the radio saying stupid shit just to raise money for my hobby project. But then, the world rewards people with crazy ideas and crazy execution plans when they work. Clearly, this is one of the instances when an unlikely funny idea actually worked. If I knew about this earlier, I would have chipped in some of my money just because it's so hilarious (and I can see many people would do that too).

theonealtair|8 years ago

Can't really fault him for literally studying "the natural world through observation and experiment" as opposed to blindly taking some else's word. But, he should probably spend his time understanding what others did to "study the natural world through observation and experiments" and realize it's not so blind to look at their conclusions.

guscost|8 years ago

If you’re going less than 2000 feet up, what’s wrong with an airplane?

mulmen|8 years ago

It’s harder to get flat earthers to give you money for airfare.

txsh|8 years ago

[deleted]

smoyer|8 years ago

I'm more interested in the fact that he converted a motor home into his launch pad. Well ... the steam-punk side of me also wants to see how his steam-powered rocket works. Unfortunately after looking at NoizeTV I don't think I'll be watching his launch.

ggm|8 years ago

I don't think this is high enough to see the curvature of the earth. So, experientially he probably has a confirmation-bias event which reinforces his core belief. Well.. the belief he espouses, to further his aims.

CyberDildonics|8 years ago

I think putting a gopro on a balloon would have been easier.

akx|8 years ago

But the GoPro's firmware is probably hacked to show a globe, because GoPro is in on the conspiracy, etc., etc.

SubiculumCode|8 years ago

The flat-earth stuff is nonsense, but I am glad he stuck to it and launched. Congrats, and even a bit of admiration.

SubiculumCode|8 years ago

I was either downvoted twice because the mods were flat earthers, or because they view it as impossible to ever admire guts in an idiot. And if you want to say it was down-voted because the comment was not technically informed or provided insight as befitting an expert in the field, I'd respond that this article is clearly asking for flippant comments, no serious discussion is to be had about this article. It is a fluff article, and deserves fluff comments. So instead of down voting, as I am sure this comment will also receive, write why you disagree.

starik36|8 years ago

If he is a true believer, he is at least willing to test those beliefs by conducting an experiment. As it should be. How many true believers of anything are willing to have their their minds changed?

This guy should be praised instead of ridiculed by a bunch of internet non-contributing zeroes.

Houshalter|8 years ago

Yeah what he did was definitely cool. But if you just want to test a hypothesis, it would be much easier to send a camera and not a whole person. Also a balloon could obtain a higher altitude than any amateur rocket. And people have filmed the curvature of the Earth with just balloons, they can get quite high.

crowbahr|8 years ago

Except he doesn't believe, he just wants to go do something dangerous and adventurous and have other people pay him for it.

stusmith1977|8 years ago

Wouldn't it have been more sensible to do the launch from somewhere nearer the edge of the earth?

johnnyOnTheSpot|8 years ago

Given people have always known the earth is round based on the shadow it casts on the Moon...

saghm|8 years ago

EDITED: Obviously not trying to argue that the Earth is flat, but flat things can still cast round shadows if they're, well, round

(ORIGINAL: Obviously not trying to argue that the Earth is flat, but there are round things that are also flat)

Kenji|8 years ago

A disk will also cast a round shadow in some cases.

utopkara|8 years ago

He could have gone up to the top of Burj Khalifa instead. But, that wouldn't have placed him on the headlines. Also, he is running for governor. As far as I can tell from recent experience, he will win.

adrianmonk|8 years ago

Or pay for a helicopter tour. You can get a ~10 minute helicopter tour for under $100 where I live. They don't fly incredibly high, but given that the minimum safe altitude is 1000 feet in some cases:

https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/27076/what-is-t...

Or, just book a flight on a commercial airliner, which is also cheap but doesn't get you a panoramic view. But you'll get way higher than 1875 feet.

jwilk|8 years ago

Translation for metric units users:

1875 ft ≈ 570 m

150 miles ≈ 240 km

350 psi ≈ 2.4 MPa

350 mph ≈ 560 km/h

86 miles ≈ 140 km