Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He Died Trying to Prove The Earth Is Flat - The Mad Mike Hughes story

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

Mad Mike Hughes launched himself into the sky in several different homemade rockets.

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That's W-E-S-T-H-O-L-M-E dot com slash M-E-I-L-I-N. With the power and endurance of Toyota trucks, you can go to the most incredible places, like this valley where the echo does different voices. Hello! Hello! We know what we're made of, Toyota Trucks. So this guy's going to launch himself into space in a homemade rocket to prove to everyone that the earth is flat.

Now his name is Mad Mike and Mad Mike has always been a risk taker. He used to race motorbikes as a young teen and he eventually became a pro-motor cycle racer for a while. But all that thrill-seeking, that's just not enough for Mad Mike. He wants more. He wants to become the world's greatest daredevil. But unfortunately, right now he can't because he's just a working man. In fact, he's a limo driver in Las Vegas.

But then one day in 2002, he gets an idea. Why not break a world record? And he decides to take his limousine that he uses for work and drive it up a ramp and jump it as far as it will go and basically create a world record for how far he can jump a limo. And he does. At the local speedway, he sets it all up and he jumps his limousine a whole ass 103 feet, and he sets a Guinness World Record. And about a year later, he tries a...

again to break his own world record by jumping a new limo 125 feet. This time though, unfortunately, the limo crashes to the ground early, and poor Mad Mike gets no world record this time. But that doesn't matter to him. He still holds his original record. So basically he got what he wanted, and people now know him as a daredevil, and he's happy with that. Until...

Here's the thing about Mad Mike. Jumping limos is great, but it's still. Still not enough of a thrill for him. And if he's gonna be the world's greatest daredevil, he needs to go bigger. And that is when he gets another idea. He wants to build a homemade rocket and fly higher than anyone has ever flown before in a homemade rocket. Here's the problem with this idea, though, other than the fact that it's really fucking dangerous.

The problem with this idea is that he doesn't exactly know how to build a homemade rocket. And he's never built something like this before. So he eventually teams up with another guy who does build Amherstead amateur rockets. This guy, Waldo. And together, Mike and Waldo, they're going to build this thing, and they're going to do it on a budget, because, you know, they're kind of broke. And so they design a cheap version of a rocket, one that runs on water. More specifically, it runs on steam, because steam is cheap to make, while actual rocket fuel is not. And so they work on this rocket, and they build it out of a bunch of scrap parts. And eventually, in 2014, boom, they finish it.

And Mad Mike calls it the X2 Sky Limo. And it's just a little guy. I mean, here's a picture of Mike standing next to it, and here it is on its ramp. And so now it's finally time to launch it. And one day on some land out in Arizona, they actually do. Mad Mike, he gets all ready and he gets in it and they count down and boom, it takes off. And this homemade rocket flies around 1,370 feet before Mike pulls his parachutes to end the flight. And then one of the parachutes doesn't end up opening. and then, pow, the rocket falls and lands pretty hard, and Mad Mike ends up getting injured.

And for the next two weeks, he has to move around with a walker. But, you know, he eventually recovers. Regardless, he got what he wanted. He successfully launched himself in a homemade rocket, and he's content now. Uh, actually, no, he's not. Quite the opposite. At this point, Mad Mike's desire to be the world's greatest daredevil gets even worse. Which means not only does he want to go up again, but he wants to go higher.

Which means he and Waldo will have to build a new rocket. Here's the problem with that, though. They're out of funds now. I mean, even though they're making rockets out of spare parts, I mean, these things still cost money to build. And so, Mike gets yet another idea. Why not launch a fundraiser? And so he does.

He makes a Kickstarter to raise money like, I'm going to launch myself over 2,000 feet in the air and a homemade rocket. Please donate. But unfortunately, of the $150,000 he was hoping to raise, he only raises a whopping $310. So, that failed. But old Mike, he's never out of ideas. And he certainly isn't going to give up now. So then he decides to do something kind of brilliant.

He starts pandering to flat earthers, saying that he's one of them. And he like really plays into this bit. Like he starts talking about it publicly. I believe the world is a different shape than what we were taught in those programming centers, which is called public school system. And so he starts telling the flat earth community all this stuff, that he wants to launch a homemade rocket into space or nearly into space, so that once he's up there, he can observe and take pictures and see that the earth is not a sphere, but that it's actually flat. And this will prove that the flat earthers have been right about the shape of the world this whole time. And because he's going to do that, that they should help him raise him.

money for this project to first do a smaller launch and that eventually at some point he'll do a much bigger launch all the way into space. I mean, he's totally bullshying them, but it doesn't matter. Flat Earthers believe him. Who would have thought flat earthers would be so gullible? Anyway, so the flat earthers believe him and they set up a go-fund me for him and through that he raises about $8,500, which isn't a ton, but it is enough to help him build his next rocket. And so he and Waldo, they build a new rocket. And here's a picture of it and you can see that it says flat earth on the side. Then in 2018 they go launch again. Mike gets in it and they go ahead and boom it takes off. And this launch is also successful and you can see it reaches at 1,875 feet and you can see the little parachutes coming out and he eventually gets to the ground safely. Now just to be clear this launch wasn't supposed to reach space. This was supposed to be a smaller launch first to raise awareness for a much bigger space launch later. But whatever, Mike fleeced the flat earth community and he beat his previous launch height by 500 feet. And that's pretty damn good. Oh, but it's not good for Mike. Not good enough.

He still wants to be the world's greatest daredevil. And so he has to go again. And now at this point, there have got to be people around him saying like, Mike, you don't have to do this. I mean, you've launched yourself more than once. Bro, you have proven yourself. You're a daredevil. Everyone knows it. But Mike, he's still determined. Not only that, after this last launch, he's suddenly getting all kinds of media attention from this. Like, he's doing interviews on TV.

A film crew from the Science Channel has started following him around, documenting his work for a TV series called Homemade Astronauts. He even gets featured on an episode of Tosh.0. And Tash, the host comedian, doesn't actually believe that Mike thinks the Earth is flat, and he kind of calls him out on it. And I believe it is flat. I believe you don't believe that. And you just want a free trip to space.

Anyway, so Mike and Waldo put another rocket together. And this is actually their best looking one yet. And if you zoom into the photo, it looks like he actually got some sponsors to pay for this one. So that's cool. Well, however he did it, finally, the big day comes. And this is going to be his greatest launch yet. And the science channel crew is there filming for the TV show and about 50 other people show up to watch and document the whole thing. So Mad Mike, he gets prepared and you can see him

here climbing into the rocket and he straps in and they ready the launch, the countdown, and boom, Mike and the rocket blasts off into the air. However, something goes horribly wrong. If you slow down the footage, you can see that during the blast off, the rocket slightly hits the ladder that Mike had used to climb into it, which then snags one of the parachutes. And this snag rips off this parachute and knocks the rocket off course. And we don't have proof of what happened inside the rocket, but it's theorized that this sudden jerk to the side knocks Mike unconscious, which means that inside he's unable to pull any of the other reserve parachutes, and because of that, Mad Mike and his rocket fall crashing to the ground. And of course,

Of course, he doesn't make it. 64-year-old Mad Mike Hughes was known as a homemade astronaut on a self-financed mission to space. But as Mololinghi reports, he died living out his dream.