Daredevil 'Mad' Mike Hughes dies in homemade rocket launch

[Lonnie]

I just watched a quick report on this and his team felt that he had to have been rendered unconscious because there were 3 more backup parachutes on the rocket that he never deployed.
Sad that this man lost his life but you can only flirt with death for so long before it wins....

 

[Superburban]

In one interview, he claimed that when you ride in your own rockets, you have a 50/50 chance of living through it. One of his previous attempts, he had a hard landing, which hurt is spine, but he lived. I guess he calculated very close with the odds.

 

[rwm]

I just watched a quick report on this and his team felt that he had to have been rendered unconscious because there were 3 more backup parachutes on the rocket that he never deployed.
Sad that this man lost his life but you can only flirt with death for so long before it wins....

I cannot imagine anything in that video that would render him unconscious?
Robert

 

[Lonnie]

I can't see anything either. Only thing I can think of is maybe there was enough G's to disorientate him? Here's the short report that I watched.

 

[MontanaLon]

I cannot imagine anything in that video that would render him unconscious?
Robert

Other than the sudden stop at the end, I kind of agree. But then the EMT side of me comes out and he could have gone unconscious for any of several reasons.

I've seen cervical spine injuries of a restrained driver in a low speed crash. The turn the "rocket" took when the chute deployed early was very possibly enough to snap his neck. Like Dale Earnhardt hitting the wall, it didn't look too bad, but the effect was immediate.

I've experienced first hand the effects of 9g's. Actually several steps along the way to 9g. Not sure what the g load was on that launch but I'd be willing to bet it was higher than 6g and judging from the video above possibly even higher than 9g. That much g coming on that fast and it is good night Alice.

 

[Ulma Doctor]

I've experienced first hand the effects of 9g's. Actually several steps along the way to 9g. Not sure what the g load was on that launch but I'd be willing to bet it was higher than 6g and judging from the video above possibly even higher than 9g. That much g coming on that fast and it is good night Alice.

i gotta know... were you a pilot?

 

[MontanaLon]

i gotta know... were you a pilot?

Not a pilot. But 10 years ago I did get to do the coolest thing ever.








In this pic we are pulling 6g, if you look really close my head is pinned between my knees.



We actually pulled 9.2g max and went 98% of the speed of sound. Climbed to 50,000 feet vertically and did all the maneuvers they do in the airshows. The next day, I could barely move to get out of bed.

I didn't experience gLOC. I got the blurry vision, black and white vision and tunnel vision down to about a toilet paper tube. As soon as the g let off I was back and wanting more.

And yes, I did puke, twice. If you don't puke, you aren't having fun.

 

[Ulma Doctor]

Not a pilot. But 10 years ago I did get to do the coolest thing ever.

In this pic we are pulling 6g, if you look really close my head is pinned between my knees.

We actually pulled 9.2g max and went 98% of the speed of sound. Climbed to 50,000 feet vertically and did all the maneuvers they do in the airshows. The next day, I could barely move to get out of bed.

We gotta hang out- i need friends like you

 

[ThinWoodsman]

Sad news.

I don't really see the tragedy, outside of the tragedy entailed in any loss of life. The guy was avowedly anti-science and a flat-earther, yet thought he could build a rocket sufficiently powerful to get him into space. This outcome seemed pretty inevitable from the get-go, and it's fortunate that nobody else got hurt due to his recklessness.

 

[cjtoombs]

I just watched a quick report on this and his team felt that he had to have been rendered unconscious because there were 3 more backup parachutes on the rocket that he never deployed.
Sad that this man lost his life but you can only flirt with death for so long before it wins....

This may have been the case, but it's also possible that the other parachutes were not completely independent from the first. The failure that caused the first parachute to deploy could have rendered the others inoperable if the design was not such that that could not happen. Remember that parachute was supposed to hold the weight of the rocket on descent, and it was ripped loose like it was made of taffy. That could have deformed the rear bulkhead, possibly jamming or otherwise rendering inoperable the remaining parachutes. Short of a thorough investigation that won't be known.