"Mad Mike" Launches Himself Into Orbit (almost)

I will say, I have to kind of admire the guy for having the stones to strap himself into a home made rocket. The whole steam rocket thing really limits his altitude though :D.

But the entire concept of gravity he's using to figure out his rocket trajectory and height, all the math and all the physics concepts he puts into play with the design of his rocket, they all either depend on the assumption of a spherical Earth or prove it outright.

There is some question as to whether or not he's really a flat-earther. During his first rocket flight that he did out in Arizona he made no mention of the whole flat Earth thing. There's been some speculation that he just jumped on the flat Earth bandwagon because he managed to get a lot of funding by doing that. So he could just be using the flat Earth angle as a revenue stream to pay for his rocket building hobby, there's a bunch of those folks that have donated to him. He's pretty nutty, so it's hard to tell.

This was allegedly a test flight, he eventually wants to launch a rocket from a high-altitude balloon to actually approach space. I hope he does it, although given the amount of evidence and physics the flat earthers deny his witnessing first hand the spherical Earth from space won't likely change much. And unless his methods and safety systems improve a whole bunch if he gets anywhere near space he'll be totally screwed.