Manned Rocket Flight to Prove Earth is Flat

[Scout26]

"you're" / "you are"

And yore first name is "Pass," right?  As in "Donner, Pass?"

Yeah, yeah, I know.  I'm just a jerk.  Waddaya gonna do?

Terry

I blame voice to text on my phone.

[230RN]

I blame voice to text on my phone.

Meh.  No biggie.  I've just been feeling puckish, pickish and prickish the last couple of days. Impatient on minor faults.  Must be something I et.  You could have used "you are" with your "subordinate" to make it clear.

Yeah, I'm a jerk.  Whaddaya gonna do?

Terry

[bedlamite]

I guess any time you have a short focal length lens, things off the optical axis look curved, don't they?  "Barrel distortion," I think they call it.

ETA:  Yep:



Depending on where in the image plane you place the horizon, you could make a case that the earth is bowl-shaped.

That would explain why you can't get near the edges, right?

Terry

https://m.imgur.com/QMbxbHi

[Jim147]

Can we just shoot this guy out of a cannon and be done with it?

[bedlamite]

Update:

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/mad-mike-hughes-flat-earther-who-built-his-own-rocket-comes-back-down-with-a-bump/ar-BBKFvaJ?ocid=spartanntp

[Hawkmoon]

"It's got a bunch of story lines — the garage-built thing. I'm an older guy. It's out in the middle of nowhere, plus the Flat Earth. The problem is it brings out all the nuts also, people questioning everything. It's the downside of all this."

Now why would anyone question his mission or his theories?

Mr Hughes maintained that his mission is not to prove that the earth is flat.

"Do I believe the Earth is shaped like a Frisbee? I believe it is," he said. "Do I know for sure? No. That's why I want to go up in space."

This flight reached 1,875 feet. I'm pretty sure he could have easily beaten that with a Piper Cub, an airlight, or a lawn chair tied to a bunch of helium balloons. He has a way to go to reach "space."

[Ben]

I thought the photo at the link was somewhat hilarious, since there's around an 800' hill behind him. 

[KD5NRH]

The cynic in me is expecting him to go all Kerbal Space Program

Stuck in a slowly decaying orbit for years while we try to get a rescue vehicle up to him, but at every attempt, the system automatically assigns all vacant seats to other Kerbals right before launch so there's never a spot for him?

[Hawkmoon]

He reached an estimated speed of around 350 mph before pulling his parachute.

Math doesn't work. If he reached 350 MPH at any point, and if the propulsion stopped instantly right then, it would have taken 2.97 minutes for his vertical velocity to bleed off to zero. In that time, he would have climbed more than 15,000 additional feet beyond whatever altitude he reached before the power cut off.

[Doggy Daddy]

Math doesn't work. If he reached 350 MPH at any point, ...[snip]

Maybe that 350 mph was reached on the way back down?   

[Andiron]

Sounds like he had a rough landing.  Which amuses me.  Stupid is as stupid does..

[Hawkmoon]

Maybe that 350 mph was reached on the way back down?   

d=1/2at^2

[Fly320s]

Math doesn't work. If he reached 350 MPH at any point, and if the propulsion stopped instantly right then, it would have taken 2.97 minutes for his vertical velocity to bleed off to zero. In that time, he would have climbed more than 15,000 additional feet beyond whatever altitude he reached before the power cut off.

3 minutes of coasting/deceleration?  That seems like too long.

To gain an additional 13,150 feet at 350mph would take about 25 seconds.  350mph = 1,848,000 feet/hr = 30,800 ft/min = 513 ft/sec.
13,150 feet / 513fps = 25.63 seconds. 

I didn't take into account deceleration, because I don't know how, but I don't think the time will change from 25 seconds to 180 seconds.  Maybe I'm wrong, but that long of deceleration/coasting time feels off to me.

[Hawkmoon]

3 minutes of coasting/deceleration?  That seems like too long.

To gain an additional 13,150 feet at 350mph would take about 25 seconds.  350mph = 1,848,000 feet/hr = 30,800 ft/min = 513 ft/sec.
13,150 feet / 513fps = 25.63 seconds.  

I didn't take into account deceleration, because I don't know how, but I don't think the time will change from 25 seconds to 180 seconds.  Maybe I'm wrong, but that long of deceleration/coasting time feels off to me.

Yep -- my math was off, too.

Acceleration due to gravity is 32 feet-per-second-per second. Deceleration is nothing but negative acceleration. Acceleration due to gravity is constant (albeit slightly affected by drag). If we ignore drag, we can look at it as how long it would take to go from 0 MPH to 350 MPH. The formula for velocity is V = at. Rearranging that, we get the formula for time: t = V/a

350 MPH is, as you calculated, 513 feet-per-second. Time required to go from 0 to 513 fps (or the opposite) at an acceleration of 32 feet-per-second-per-second is 513 = 32t.

t = 513/32 = 16.03 seconds.


Assuming constant acceleration (which gravity is), the formula for distance is d = 1/2(at^2) We now know the rate of acceleration and the time, so distance is:

d = 1/2(32 x 16.03^2) = 1/2(32 x 256.96) = 16 x 256.96 = 4,111 feet.

BUT ... the article said he reached a height/altitude of 1,875 feet, but he reached a velocity of 350 MPH. Granted, he didn't go straight vertical, but he landed only 1,500 feet from the launch pad. That's less than a third of a mile, so he went pretty much straight up. So either he didn't reach 350 MPH, or else he went a lot higher than 1,875 feet.

[RoadKingLarry]

I would support a "Go Fund Me" so he could build an even bigger bomb rocket to get him to his desired altitude

[Firethorn]

I would support a "Go Fund Me" so he could build an even bigger bomb rocket to get him to his desired altitude

That's actually a suspicion elsewhere, that he's doing the flat earth thing to get funding to feed his rocket habit.

[freakazoid]

That's actually a suspicion elsewhere, that he's doing the flat earth thing to get funding to feed his rocket habit.

If so it's pretty genius. Although a pretty long way to go about it as wasn't this guy active long before Go Fund Me even existed?

[230RN]

<mumble, mumble>

That's actually a suspicion elsewhere, that he's doing the flat earth thing to get funding to feed his rocket habit.

My impression, too.  I'm surprised he didn't have a "Lucas" ad on it, as well.
        

I thought the math was odd, but let it go.  It just didn't look right.  No sense "disproving" what is fundamentally nonsense anyhow.

"Yeah, but wherever you go on the earth's oceans, the GPS altitude is the same.  So the earth must be flat."



I wonder where the boiler was and how that operated to get the steam pressure up.

I find it odd that nowadays, with everybody carrying a digital camera, nobody has released vids of the launch sequence including building up steam pressure.

That launch pic looked suspiciously like a run of the mill black powder-ish toy rocket from any amateur rocket meet, not a steam powered one.  My suspicion is that any video would have shown a lingering exhaust BP smoke cloud, unlike a steam one, which would rapidly thin out.

https://youtu.be/LWxp8oXGlMA

A⁺ for advertising/propaganda effort, D^- for "science."

01 April is coming up.  Hughes for Governor !

<mumble, mumble>

Pic credits in properties

</mumble, mumble>

[dogmush]

https://youtu.be/QRZ90syG4Zs

Video of the most recent launch.

That might help with the math, as it looks like he deployed the parachute while still on the ascending portion of the flight, which would mess with the deccel and altitude numbers.

[Perd Hapley]

You guys are applying round earth mathematics and physics to a flat-earth problem. Of course you're going to get it wrong.

[MechAg94]

I find it funny that he could have gotten higher than he did by driving a car to a higher elevation.  I guess riding a riding a rocket is cooler. 

[Fly320s]

I find it funny that he could have gotten higher than he did by driving a car to a higher elevation.  I guess riding a riding a rocket is cooler. 

He has been saying all along that this is just the preliminary test to get prepared for the big launch when he will prove that the Earth is flat.  That is his story and he is sticking to it.

[Ben]

He has been saying all along that this is just the preliminary test to get prepared for the big launch when he will prove that the Earth is flat.  That is his story and he is sticking to it.

Nobody is going to believe a thing you say. Pilots flying around at 30K feet are in on both the "chemtrail" and the "Earth is round" conspiracies.

[MechAg94]

He has been saying all along that this is just the preliminary test to get prepared for the big launch when he will prove that the Earth is flat.  That is his story and he is sticking to it.

He needs to get a boat and try to sail off the end of the earth.  I am sure there is some reason he can't do that.

[Fly320s]

Nobody is going to believe a thing you say. Pilots flying around at 30K feet are in on both the "chemtrail" and the "Earth is round" conspiracies.

The Earth is real and chemtrails are round.