"He Died Doing What He Loved," Incident Number 3807

Another dipshit doing something foolish has made himself a contestant for next year's Darwin Awards.  On top of being foolish, he was a flat-earth crackpot:

'Mad' Mike Hughes is believed to possibly be dead after launching himself in the air with a self-made rocket that crash-landed -- and it was captured on camera.

The well-known daredevil and amateur rocket-engineer was doing a rocket launch Saturday in what appears to be near Barstow, CA -- where a reporter says Mike propelled himself into the air with a "self-made steam-powered rocket" and then crash-landed into the ground.

Robert "Evel" Knievel he wasn't.

Hughes was 64, plenty old enough to know better.

A more recent article:

"He went way up in the sky," Chapman said. "I'm not sure how high. But his goal was 5,000 feet. Then it did an arc and then came straight down and nose-dived into the desert floor about half a mile away from the launch pad."

The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department said deputies were called at 1:52 p.m. Saturday to a private property off of Highway 247 in Barstow and pronounced a man deceased "after the rocket crashed in the open desert during a rocket launch event."

"We don't know what happened," said Waldo Stakes, a close friend of Hughes who's been involved in the launches and was at the scene. Stakes says the rocket landed nearly a mile away from the launch site.

There were about 50 to 60 people on hand for the event, including a crew from the Science Channel, which was documenting Hughes' launch as part of a series on homemade astronauts.

link

If you believe Wikipedia, Hughes apparently didn't believe in the flat-earth nonsense.  However, he was still a crackpot because he had fantasies of running for governor of California.

The state already has one weirdo in there now, or a man who has fallen off the turnip truck a few times since taking over for Jerry Brown:  Gavin Newsom.