Rocketman

- A California man is getting ready to launch himself into the air

in a home-made rocket to prove that the Earth is flat.

- Look, any idiot can sit in their bedroom uploading conspiracy theories to YouTube,

but it takes a special idiot to launch himself into space for the cause.

Shasta, Haley, Curtis.

- He's done it before. He shot himself like 160 miles into space, not really.

No he did. I think he did shoot himself 1.6 miles into the air.

It might be something he said, he might just be crazy.

- I wonder how this ends for this guy? Probably, you know how it ends?

- "Fuck. It's round." That's how this story ends.

- Smart enough to build a missile from scratch, yet stupid enough to climb inside,

my kind of crazy. -You may not learn whether the earth is round,

but I have a feeling you're about to learn a lot about gravity.

- I am Michael Hughes, better known as Mad

Mike Hughes for some unknown reason, I guess.

I live in Apple Valley, California, which is in Southern California.

It's a place called The High Desert.

I live with my four cats,

and live a pretty quiet existence considering

what I do, which is build rockets.

I'm a limousine driver, and have been for about 21 years,

and a former NASCAR crew chief, I'm a

daredevil, and self-taught rocket scientist.

Me saying I'm a self-taught rocket scientist is a misnomer

because I really don't believe in science. I believe in formulas, some math.

Not these things where the whole chalk board's full of some formula

that no one knows, except three people. I just want the raw truth.

And I believe in the Flat Earth model.

I'm not going to take anyone else's word for it,

or NASA, or especially Elon Musk with SpaceX.

I'm going to build my own rocket right here

and I'm going to see it with my own eyes what shape this world we live on.

And that's Mad Mike is in a nutshell.

I got started at 6:30 this morning. This is the first time I've sat down all day.

My back is done. My right shoulder and both my knees are hurting.

I've got other interests, other than this rocket, believe me.

There are other things I want to be doing,

but to do something like this, it takes everything

and it will take everything from you. This is what a lot of people don't understand.

This is why a lot of guys get divorced and it will tear a family up.

It will bankrupt you, or do all that kind of nasty stuff.

We just ran across this. Some guy did an artist's rendering of me.

My hair might look like that first thing in the morning,

but after it's blow-dried, I think it looks a little nicer than that.

My tongue's not that long, where I'd be in porn,

but he did a real good job with the rocket.

But he's got my four cats right here.

This guy says I'm a plant to make Flat Earthers look stupid. Is that what it is?

This is endless. You can spend one whole day going through the internet

with people making drawings of me with rockets stuck up my ass and now,

we've got cats in my video. It's unbelievable,

but he did a good job with the rocket, though.

Let's see what Haley thinks about it. Hey, Haley, someone just sent a picture of you.

Which one is you? See? It looks like shit, doesn't it?

See that really pisses me off. You make fun of me and my hair,

I don't give a shit, but don't make fun of my

cats, ok? I draw the line right there. Ok?

Most of the stuff I buy is remnants, or scrap, or whatever from these metal places.

It's very rare I buy something new.

I'll have them cut this down

where I can even haul it back to the rocket ranch.

Oh hey, Candice. This is part of the platform for the rocket

because now it's on its wing standing straight up.

Instead of being on the ground, it's going to be on this.

And we already got the frame made. Is this thing really on backwards?

- You got it on backwards, we were telling you that.

- I don't like to wear hard hats. I don't think it's good for my hair.

That's the big thing in my life is my cats and my hair.

- Mike is a good indicator of never giving up.

Regardless of how hard it is, he keeps going.

It's like this little pelican that has the frog, and the frog is choking the pelican.

The picture says, 'Never give up',

that's what he reminds me of. He's the little frog inside the pelican's mouth.

- I brought my own tape today. - It'll be $42.44.

- Being forced to be thrifty and frugal is everything on this project, everything.

Basically, this is the perfect example

of how some of the parts have transformed into my rocket.

This is some kind of an air filter. No one really knows what it's off from.

There's numbers on it and all kinds of crazy stuff.

I said, "Man, that's a great shape for a rocket

nozzle." I bought one and brought it home.

It's on this stand, so I don't use the stand, of course. It's useless,

but it's kinda cool to keep. So here is the filter part.

No one knows what it filters, ok? But now, luckily, when I took this apart,

there is nothing welded inside. You can see the

shape is perfect for a bell rocket nozzle.

That's the rocket nozzle on the rocket right now, $50.

It may be around since the 1950s, who knows?

Is this something that NASA would use or SpaceX?

I don't know, but for my use, it's perfect.

This is one of the many examples of how

something that was scrap and used for something else wound up on my rocket.

This is kind of funny. I just noticed this, 'Gravity'.

It's on the sticker, I don't believe in gravity. There it is.

I was never tempted to get in the motorcycle

stunt business because I knew people in it,

only three or four guys were making money.

I mean there was guys going and jumping for $200, $300, or $500.

And you can get killed. But, I thought, you know

I want to do something crazy, and I thought,

"What can I do?" I sit down, I watch TV. I

just turn the TV on and the Teletubbies is on.

Remember that crazy show? I fell asleep watching the Teletubbies.

I dreamed about jumping a limo

in the stomach of one of the Teletubbies. When I woke up, I'm thinking,

"Wow! That's a hell of an idea. Jump a limo, no one has done that."

Let me out. Let me out.

- Can you raise your hand? Come on. Are you all right?

There he is. Mad Mike Hughes!

- I guess it was worth it. It didn't put any money in my bank account,

I don't think, but very few things ever has anyway.

The flat earth thing, this time, has to go up and down

because the rocket is standing up now.

You're doing a vertical large this time?

Yes, that's the only way I can do it there.

- From the highway, it's a quarter mile from the road and all this area's flat.

- Good deal. I tell some of the media people this

launch is going to get more viewers around the world than the Superbowl

is going to get and some of the guys go,

"Yeah, right." Some guys go, "Wait a second.

No one in Finland cares about the Superbowl."

This is what's wrong with the world today, no one knows what's real.

I don't know. I just researched and I

try to research the research and that's what I always do.

Well, I know I like climbing trees but

if I came from a monkey then why the hell are monkeys still here?

You know what I mean?

I think that . - It's okay right here?

- Yes. - Okay. Cool.

Okay, so we'll watch another video of some uninformed idiot

that's made one who's got to much time on their hands,

who doesn't know me. If they'd walked inside my living room,

they would shut them up real quickly knowing,

seeing just half of my accomplishments.

Go get a life, okay? How am I bothering you?

Because I may believe in something you don't believe in?

It's just nutty that people actually do this. Don't mess with me!

Go mess with someone else. Dude, you don't know my background. Okay?

Have I beat up people? Yes. Have I pushed people through plate glass windows? Yes.

Have I rammed people's-their head into the quarter panel of the suburban

and then kick their ribs in? Yes. And heard their ribs snap, yes. Okay?

But I'm a nice guy.

There is not an employee of NASA, of Virgin Galactic,

of Blue Horizon,

that's ever designed, built, and launched himself in a rocket.

So, there you go.

They started all this space crap in the late '40s

and all the way through the 50s. They're priming people, okay?

They will do a fake attack through holographic images

in the sky, which they can do, and they'll

simulate attack from UFOs to unite the world,

to fight these beings from another planet or another solar system

so we need the one world government, the one world religion,

and one world everything and currency. That's

how they want to bring some of that stuff in,

in my opinion.

I haven't had a steady girlfriend in about, what? 11 years,

which is my choice also. Do I want to live in Apple Valley?

Uh... no. It's not exactly the Mecca of entertainment

but it's inexpensive to live here and I've got a shop.

To have this down the hill where you're close to everybody and everything else.

That is $1,500, $2,000, $2,200 a month.

There's some months, I don't make that much money,

so now how do you eat?

And even worse, you can't buy cat food.

That's Jojo. That's my first cat. Had her for 11 and a half years.

I grieved about this cat more than the death of both my parents.

This is something I can't read. It's about cats.

It's about animals and where they wind up.

They cross the rainbow bridge.

This was her leash.

She was an old soul. People loved this cat.

In fact, some people loved this cat more than their own cats.

That happened several times. She was just a wonderful thing.

One of the few things in my life I've ever loved.

This is her paw print. This is a part of her fur.

My goal when I go to space, is I'm going to take this with me.

Okay. Let's see here.

Here we go. There's one of them.

What's up, Waldo?

I think I want to do a round table at 9:00 in the morning. Can you do that?

- Tomorrow? - For the space thing?

- Yeah we can do that. - What do you think about the colors?

- I'll take a look at it as soon as I fix this wire.

You've done a lot of work since I've been gone. You've been a busy boy.

My name is Waldo Stakes.

I've been building flight rockets since I was 10 years old.

I got interested in rocket-powered vehicles when I was about 19, 20.

I'm a self-taught rocketeer, everything I learned, I learned from books

and from experimentation pretty much.

I'm currently retired and so I have more time for this kind of stuff.

If you come to my house, you'll see rocket engines everywhere.

I've been collecting them for 40 years. All kinds of rockets

from maybe 1,000 pounds of thrust to 60,000 pounds of thrust.

I help people because I like to see people succeed and most of them

have this dream and nobody helps them out.

This guy, this Mike here, I don't consider him a friend.

He's like a bad little brother, that's what he's like, but we get along.

We work together. We help each other out.

I read about him, something or other, and I figured