Last week we saw the SpaceX Falcon Heavy, the world’s most powerful rocket in operation, take off delivering a Tesla roadster into space with a mannequin driver Starman behind the wheel. It was a great week for SpaceX led by South African billionaire and visionary Elon Musk. We even got to see the live video of Starman in space with views of our wonderful planet Earth. Nevertheless, that wasn’t enough for the conspiracy theorists supporting the “flat earth” theory to be convinced that our planet is not flat. They called the launch of Falcon Heavy fake, indicating that space travel doesn’t exist and that everything was manipulated.
“It certainly is interesting to see the shift of focus in space programs from official government, organizations to privately-run organizations. Whether or not that’s a good thing will, of course, vary with your political views, but the ultimate outcome isn’t much different. After all, corporations are driven by profit, not the pursuit of knowledge or truth,” the blog post of the flat-earth society reads, implying that the rocket didn’t launch the car into space.
The flat earth conspiracy theorists wanted to ensure that they covered everything regarding the launch of Falcon Heavy so they made sure to mention the live streaming of the launch, criticizing the company. They said that the launch was shown live in order to convince people that it’s real while in fact, it’s not.
“What is surprising, however, is the new generation of people shouting ‘It’s true, I saw it on TV!’ Except this time, it’s the Internet. We have already witnessed the shortfalls of this blind belief in online materials,” the post explains the live streaming of the launch.
Many believers of this theory are convinced that SpaceX and other private space agencies are organizing and sending fake missions into space, so that people will get distracted from searching other lands unknown to humanity, but exist beyond the ice ring which surrounds the flat earth.
Meanwhile, the society of those believers ensured that their word was heard on other social media networks also. The flat-earth society official Facebook page published a picture of the live stream of the launch of the Falcon Heavy and revealed all the anomalies in it. The picture revealed that the Roadster is traveling in space in the backdrop of Earth. The theorists wanted to point out that the space should have stars and satellites which should surround Starman and his vehicle, and according to them that’s enough to believe that it’s a fake mission.
The society also questions the position of the roadster, wondering what happened to all the land on Earth seeing that it’s all ocean. One of the comments tried to reasonably assure them that it’s the Pacific ocean which is quite large, although it’s doubtful that the theorists believe that.
Nevertheless, experts are not sufficiently interested to explain anything to the conspiracy theorists spreading their theories. Many of the scientists in different space agencies think that the reason people join this society is because of the lack of education.
Interestingly, when Elon Musk asked flat-earthers about the shape of Mars in December last year, the society replied that while Earth is disc-shaped, they have evidence that Mars is round. Musk probably asked this question out of curiosity, given that he has always been ambitious of going to the Red Planet and colonizing it.
