The self-styled daredevil perished after a rocket in which he launched himself into the air crashed into the ground without its parachute. Hughes' rocket crashed on private property near Barstow, California. The homemade rocket appeared to rub against the launch apparatus, which caused the parachutes to be left behind at launch. View the launch below (warning-- the end of the video may be hard to watch):
The 64-year-old was a conspiracy theorist who believed the earth was flat and hoped to launch himself into space to prove it. His plan had been to prove the earth was flat by triggering a balloon to carry him to the Karman line (the 62-mile barrier that separates the atmosphere from space) where he could observe for himself that the earth extended in a flat line, rather than curve downward.
Waldo Stakes, a colleague who was at the rocket launch, confirmed that Hughes was killed when the rocket slammed into the ground.. “It was unsuccessful, and he passed away,” Stakes told reporters.
The crash occurred during filming for a future series on the Science Channel called “Homemade Astronauts.” Hughes’ launch was to be one of three featured on the new show, which follows three self-financed rocket-building teams.
It is widely believed that Hughes' stunt will place him among the finalists of the 2020 Darwin Awards. Darwin Awards recognize individuals who have contributed to human evolution by removing themselves from the gene pool by eliminating themselves in an extraordinarily idiotic manner, thereby improving our species' chances of long-term survival.
This wasn't Hughes' first brush with death. In March 2018 he faced a near-fatal catastrophe when he attempted to propel himself into the air in a rocket made using mostly spare parts. The wanna-be engineer launched himself 1,875 feet into the sky but his descent went awry, when it began to plunge at a speed of 350 mph. He misjudged the deployment of his parachute and crash landed in the Mojave Desert, just east of Los Angeles.
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