Imagine for a second that you're just sitting
in your backyard. Okay. You're a limo driver.
You're in your 60s, living out in the sun -baked
stretches of Apple Valley, California. Right,
desert country. Exactly. And you're looking up
at the sky, surrounded by scrap metal, old tools,
desert dust. And you decide right then and there
that you are going to build your very own homemade
steam rocket. Just a totally normal Tuesday thought.
Right. You decide you're going to climb inside
this DIY contraction and literally blast yourself
into the heavens. It's wild. It sounds entirely
like the plot of some quirky Hollywood movie.
It really does. But for you, our listener, sitting
right here in the room with us today, we are
going to explore a story that is 100 % real.
Unbelievable life, the extreme stunts, and the
highly controversial legacy of Michael Hughes.
A man much better known to the world as Mad Mike
Hughes. Exactly. Mad Mike Hughes, the ultimate
DIY stuntman. And it really is an astonishing
and, frankly, incredibly complex story. When
you first hear about a guy launching himself
over the desert, you know, the explosions and
the sheer audacity of it that immediately catches
your attention. How could it not? Right. But
what we are looking at today goes significantly
deeper than just the adrenaline rush of an amateur
aerospace enthusiast. This is actually a profound
case study about modern Internet culture. Oh,
absolutely. It's about the wild. sometimes deeply
cynical economics of crowdfunding and ultimately
the extreme, sometimes fatal lengths that people
will go to in order to finance their impossible
dreams. OK, let's unpack this starting right
at the beginning, because long before he was
an aspiring astronaut making international headlines,
Mike Hughes was just a guy from Oklahoma City
who loved motorcycle racing. He always had this
intense need for speed. He did, but he didn't
quietly harbor that ambition. You know, he made
his. mark in a massive heavy metal sort of way
long before the Rockets ever came into play.
You look at the archives and back in 2002 he
sets a Guinness World Record. Yes, he does. And
how exactly did he pull that off? Because it
wasn't on a motorcycle, right? Far from it. He
set that Guinness World Record by jumping a Lincoln
Town car stretch limousine. A stretch limousine.
An incredible 103 feet through the air. That
just sounds like a physics nightmare. It is entirely
a physics nightmare. If you think about the structural
integrity of a stretch limo, it is completely
absurd to try and make it airborne. Right. They're
boats. Exactly. Those vehicles are incredibly
heavy. They're notoriously unbalanced with that
extended wheelbase. And their suspension systems
are designed for, you know, smooth, luxurious
highway driving. Not absorbing the impact of
a 103 -foot flight. Definitely not. The fact
that he managed to jump one and actually survive
really cements his core identity right out of
the gate. He wasn't trained as an aerospace engineer.
No. He was a daredevil. He thrived on spectacle.
And his ambitions were always just larger than
life. I mean, he even told the Associated Press
in 2018 that he had planned to run for governor
of California at one point. Wow. Really? Yeah.
He was a man who constantly sought the biggest
stage possible. So. Jumping a massive luxury
land yacht solidifies his brand. But eventually,
jumping cars just wasn't enough to satisfy that
itch. He looks higher. Right. The sources show
that by 2014, he teams up with a collaborator
named Waldo Stakes, and together they build his
first crewed rocket. Yes. They take it out to
Winkleman, Arizona. What exactly happened on
that launch day? So on January 30, 2014, they
actually managed to launch the craft. The data
shows he flew 1 ,374 feet over the Arizona landscape.
That's a huge distance for a backyard build.
It is. And the entire flight lasted just over
a minute. A minute in the air. But the physical
toll that took on him, it's hard to even comprehend.
The archives note that after the landing, he
literally collapsed. It was brutal. It took him
three days just to recover from the sheer force
of the flight. His injuries were so severe he
had to use a walker for two weeks. Yeah. It begs
the question, what kind of forces are at play
inside a homemade rocket, that would absolutely
wreck a person's body like that. What's fascinating
here is the harsh reality of the transition from
traditional vehicle stunts to the highly unpredictable
realm of amateur rocketry. It's important to
understand the mechanics we're talking about.
Break it down for us. Well, a homemade steam
rocket doesn't use controlled chemical combustion
in the way we typically think of, say, modern
space shuttles. Okay. Think of a pressure vessel
like a massive industrial -strength tea kettle.
A tea kettle. Exactly. If you plug the spout
and keep boiling the water, the pressure builds
and builds until it is desperate to escape. When
the valve is finally opened, that trapped, superheated
steam blasts out all at once. Releasing all that
energy. Right, creating enough raw thrust to
launch a heavy metal rocket into the air. So
you're basically strapping yourself to an exploding
boiler. Essentially, yes. And because it's a
sudden, violent release of energy rather than
a smooth, sustained burn, the G -forces are incredibly
intense. I can't even imagine. The vibration
inside the cockpit is bone -rattling. And the
landings, which rely on parachute deployments
at relatively low altitudes, are notoriously
hard. It is incredibly violent on the human body.
It sounds like it. And we should note, there
is a healthy amount of skepticism surrounding
this specific 2014 launch. Right, because there
was no actual footage of him getting into the
craft. Correct. Because there was no video of
Hughes actually climbing into the rocket before
liftoff, some critics in the amateur rocketry
community doubted he was even inside it when
it launched. Interesting. But regardless of that
skepticism, this event permanently set the trajectory
for the rest of his life. He was officially in
the rocket game. But getting into the rocket
game introduces a massive hurdle. And that is
the financial reality of building these machines
in your backyard. It is wildly expensive. Exactly.
So by 2016, Hughes is hitting a brick wall. He
tries the traditional route to crowdfund his
next launch. He sets up a campaign, puts his
ambitious dream out there for the Internet to
support. And what happens? It completely flops.
He raises a grand total of $310. $310? That won't
even cover the cost of a high -end safety helmet,
let alone the raw steel and pressure valves needed
for a steam rocket. It barely covers the hardware
store run. Right. So he is dead in the water
financially. Nobody is interested in funding
a random daredevil's backyard project. But here's
where it gets really interesting. Later that
same year, in 2016, Mike Hughes makes a very
sudden... very public declaration. He certainly
does. He announces to the world that he is a
staunch believer in the flat earth conspiracy.
And this is the pivot that completely changes
the economics of his entire operation. It's night
and day. The moment he publicly aligns himself
with the flat earth community, the financial
drought ends. Suddenly, he is tapped into an
entirely new, highly engaged, and highly motivated
audience. He found his people, or at least his
funders. Exactly. He launches a brand new fundraising
campaign. But this time, He ties the financial
goal directly to this new professed belief. He
rebrands the entire mission. His stated mission
is no longer just about the thrill of a stunt
launch. He tells this community that his ultimate
goal is to fly a rocket into outer space and
take a picture, proving once and for all that
the Earth is a flat disk. And the result of that
pivot? The new campaign crushes its goal, raising
$7 ,875. There is an incredible sociological
irony to that. He essentially has to publicly
reject centuries of established scientific observation
just to secure the funding for an experiment
that is governed entirely by the unforgiving
laws of physics. That's quite the paradox. It's
a brilliant, if highly controversial, masterclass
in finding a niche audience. So he gets the cash,
he starts building his machine, and he sets his
sights on a major launch in November of 2017.
But when you are trying to launch a homemade
missile into the sky, the government tends to
get involved. They absolutely do. He gets into
a massive, highly publicized standoff with the
Bureau of Land Management, the BLM. Hughes intended
to launch over public land in California, claiming
that the agency had given him verbal permission
a year prior. And the BLM's response? They come
back and say, absolutely not. We have no record
of any such conversation. And you need a mountain
of permits and safety clearances to do this.
Which makes sense. You can't just... slide a
makeshift missile pad onto public property and
expect the federal government to look the other
way exactly so how does a guy who brands himself
as mad mike respond to that level of bureaucratic
red tape his response is perfectly emblematic
of his entire worldview yeah he told the press
and i quote i'm a daredevil i'm not much for
authority or rules He doesn't hire lawyers. He
doesn't fill out the extensive safety paperwork.
Instead, he just moves the entire launch pad
four miles down the road so he can take off and
land entirely on private property. Just sidesteps
them entirely. He's completely bypassed their
jurisdiction. That is incredibly stubborn, but
you have to admire the sheer willpower. He was
going to launch that rocket no matter what institution
stood in his way, but he wasn't completely naive
to the risks, was he? No, he understood the gravity
of what he was attempting. Around the time of
this standoff, he gave a very sobering quote
to the Associated Press. He openly acknowledged
the extreme danger of his DIY approach. What
did he say? He told them, quote, it's scary as
hell, but none of us are getting out of this
world alive. Wow. So the stakes are set. He knows
it could end terribly. After some delays and
having to scrape together a bit more money to
keep the project alive, he finally gets his moment.
March 24, 2018. Out in the Mojave Desert. The
visual here is incredible. He has to launch this
steam -powered rocket at a sharp 83 -degree angle.
Right, because of the property lines. Exactly.
He has to do that specifically to make sure he
doesn't accidentally drift over and land on that
public BLM land he was just fighting with. Precision
backyard engineering. He blasts off. What did
the numbers look like for this flight? It was
a highly successful flight by amateur standards.
The team reported that he hit speeds of 350 miles
per hour during the ascent. 350 miles per hour?
And he reached a peak altitude of 1 ,875 feet.
It ended with a really hard parachute landing
in the desert about 1 ,500 feet from where he
originally took off. But he survived. Amazingly,
despite the violent forces involved, he walked
away with no serious injuries. That has to be
an unbelievable high to have the government tell
you no, have the internet call you crazy, and
then to actually strap yourself into a boiling
tea kettle, hit 350 miles an hour and survive.
He proved everyone wrong. But where do you go
once you've successfully launched yourself into
the desert sky and lived to tell the tale? For
a guy like Hughes, you look higher. The 2018
launch was the validation he had been looking
for. He proved the machine worked. At least to
a certain altitude. Right. He immediately started
conceptualizing the next phase, pushing for much
higher altitudes. He was ultimately aiming for
a theoretical 20 mile high balloon launch where
he would detach and ignite a rocket. 20 miles
high. That's getting into legitimate aerospace
territory. But the reality of backyard engineering
caught up with him. And 2019 proved to be incredibly
frustrating. What happened? He had a major launch
plan for August 10th of that year, but it was
grounded by mechanical troubles. And these weren't
highly technical airspace issues. The sources
note that one of the critical failures was a
bad water heater that he had bought on Craigslist.
Hold on. A Craigslist water heater? Yes. How
does a household appliance even fit into the
schematic of a vehicle meant to break the sound
barrier? This is the reality of DIY rocketry
on a shoestring budget. Amateur builders often
rely on repurposing high -pressure consumer goods
because custom machine pressure vessels cost
tens of thousands of dollars. So they just use
what they can find. They take a commercial water
heater, reinforce it, and try to adapt it to
hold superheated steam. That's wild. It highlights
the absolute duct tape and grit nature of this
enterprise, but is also incredibly, incredibly
dangerous. It's terrifying when you really think
about it. So the Craigslist water heater fails.
He tries again the following weekend, but he
has to postpone once more this time because he
ends up being treated for heat exhaustion while
working out in the unforgiving desert sun. The
elements are just as dangerous as the rocket.
Exactly. So 2019 is effectively a wash, but he
regroups. He patches up the rocket and he prepares
for a new launch date, February 22, 2020, near
Barstow, California. And the energy surrounding
this launch is completely different. The stakes
are higher. Much higher, because the cameras
are rolling for a major cable network. He is
starring in a new science channel television
series, literally called Homemade Astronauts.
This raises an important question about the intersection
of extreme stunts and the entertainment industry.
When you have production schedules, film crews
on site and network money involved, the pressure
to launch, even if conditions aren't perfect,
increases exponentially. It creates a very dangerous
dynamic. And on that day in February 2020, that
pressure culminated in tragedy. Walk us through
what happened on that launch pad. We know from
the source material and eyewitness accounts,
including freelance journalist Justin Chapman,
who was on site, that there was a fatal. mechanical
failure right at the moment of liftoff. As the
steam rocket forcefully launched off the ramp,
the parachute, which is obviously the single
most critical component for a safe return, deployed
far too early. The footage shows it appearing
to catch and rub against the launch apparatus
and the ladder. The sheer force and speed of
the ascent tore the parachute, and it completely
detached from the craft while it was still heading
up. So he had no way down. Without the parachute,
the rocket reached its apex, arsed, and crashed
forcefully back to Earth. Mike Hughes was killed
upon impact. It's an incredibly heavy, tragic
end to his story. He died doing exactly what
he loved, right in front of the documentary cameras
that were there to chronicle his journey as the
ultimate DIY stuntman. A very public end to a
very public life. But almost immediately after
the dust settled in the desert, a massive debate
erupted about who Mike Hughes really was and
what he actually believed. This is a crucial
part of his legacy. And this is where we have
to look impartially at the conflicting viewpoints
from the people who operated in his inner circle.
Was Mad Mike Hughes a genuine proponent of the
Flat Earth conspiracy? Or was he a PR genius
playing a highly lucrative character to get his
rockets funded? The source material provides
very stark opposing views on his true motives.
And it's important we examine both sides. Let's
hear them. On one hand, you have the PR argument.
His own public relations representative, Darren
Schuster, came out after Hughes's death and was
remarkably blunt about the strategy. What did
Schuster say? He stated, and I quote, we use
Flat Earth as a PR stunt. 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 shtick. That's a pretty definitive statement
from the guy paid to manage his public image.
It is. And this viewpoint is echoed by science
writer Mick West. West actually spoke with Hughes
and analyzed his public statements. And his conclusion.
He came away completely convinced that Hughes
was simply using the controversial topic as a
tool to promote his stuntman career. And that
he harbored no genuine desire to conduct scientific
research to prove the shape of the Earth. But
then you look at the other side of the debate.
And the waters get murky. Michael Lynn, who was
a partner on a documentary made about Hughes
called Rocket Man, spent a significant amount
of time with him. Right. He was there behind
the scenes. Lynn stated that from his close perspective,
Hughes's belief in the flat earth appeared entirely
genuine and not just an act for the cameras.
So you have two people who work closely with
him saying complete opposites. Exactly. We are
presenting both of these sides to you, the listener,
because the truth of his internal belief system
seems. to be caught somewhere in the middle of
this intense, posthumous debate. So what does
this all mean for us, sitting here trying to
understand his legacy? If we connect this to
the bigger picture, it's a fascinating and somewhat
unsettling look at the blurred lines between
monetization, persona, and reality in the digital
age. It really is. Hughes needed capital to build
rockets. The Flat Earth community had capital,
and they had a desperate desire for mainstream
representation and validation. It functioned,
at least initially, as a mutually beneficial
economic transaction. A symbiotic relationship.
But when you spend years publicly advocating
for a highly controversial belief... When you
do the media tours, when you wear the logos,
and when you brand your life's work around it,
the distinction between a cynical stick and a
genuine belief becomes incredibly muddy to the
outside observer. Whether he believed it in his
heart or not, his name became inextricably linked
to that specific internet subculture. And that
linkage catapulted him into a really unique,
weird echelon of pop culture fame. Oh, totally.
He wasn't just a guy tinkering in his backyard
anymore. He became a cultural phenomenon. You
look at his footprint. And he actually appeared
in a music video for the punk band Death Valley
Girls for their song One Less Thing Before I
Die. I remember that. The video prominently features
actual footage of his Flat Earth rocket launch
out in Apple Valley. And as we mentioned, he
was the starring focus of that 2019 documentary,
Rocket Man, Mad Mike's mission to prove the Flat
Earth. His cultural footprint even extended into
the highly volatile realm of major Internet influencers.
This part is so bizarre. He appeared in a 2020
mockumentary created by the massive YouTube star
Logan Paul titled Flat Earth. To the edge and
back. And in a fitting final detail to his chaotic
story, at the time of his death, Hughes was actually
attempting to sue over his appearance in that
very film. He was constantly navigating and sometimes
fiercely battling the media ecosystem that had
helped elevate his profile. Always in the mix,
right to the end. So to recap this unbelievable
journey for you sitting here with us, Michael
Mad Mike Hughes was a man whose life was this
incredible chaotic blend of extreme physical
bravery, stubborn DIY engineering. and a highly
controversial internet persona. He went from
jumping a Lincoln Town car stretch limousine
to building a homemade steam rocket with Craigslist
parts. Ultimately achieving literal flight on
his own terms. But his story is also a stark,
sobering reminder of the tragic human cost that
can come with that specific brand of relentless
daredevil ambition. He probably refused to play
by the rules of aerodynamics or bureaucracy.
And it ultimately cost him his life. He built
his own path, circumventing every traditional
institution entirely on his own terms. But looking
at the entirety of his life leaves us with something
very profound to consider about the changing
landscape of exploration and media. Exactly.
And that is what we want to leave you with today.
A brand new thought to mull over long after we
sign off. Let's hear it. For decades, pushing
the boundaries of human flight was strictly the
domain of highly regulated, multi -billion dollar
government agencies. But today, the democratization
of internet funding means anyone with a smartphone
and a controversial enough persona can crowdfund
a private space program right in their backyard.
It's a massive shift in access. But if the internet
algorithms and niche communities actively reward
people with massive funding for aggressively
bypassing institutional safety nets, What does
the future of extreme DIY exploration look like?
That's the real question. When you adopt a radical
persona just to crowdfund your dreams, at what
point does the character you're playing simply
become who you are? If the world only knows you
for the shtick, does the truth of what you actually
believe even matter in the end? It's a critical
question about identity and the future of exploration
in an algorithm -driven world. It really is.
Thank you so much for sitting down with us and
joining us on this deep dive. We love unpacking
these complex, fascinating stories with you.
And we can't wait to see where the archives take
us next time. Take care and keep questioning
everything.