It’s hard to know what to make of flat earth rocketeers, but my instinctive response is “this world is kind of awesome”.

First (like another poster said perfectly), “amateur astronaut” is a badass pursuit. 2nd is the possibility that there is a person who (A) can and will build a rocketship and (B) can’t think of a better way to confirm that the earth is flat. I kind of want to believe this.

This (and maybe most flat earth stuff) is multi-layered. Maybe (most likely) this is just a good PR narrative for this guy’s rocket project. Didn’t RKA/NASA have semi-bogus scientific goals to justify pure engineering challenges? I think a lot of flat earth stuff is trolls, jokes, devils advocacy, cyber-age epistemology. If I let my self get ridiculously carried away, I’d say there are some parts of flat earth world that rhyme with weird (but at the time important) parts of the enlightenment. I’m thinking des cartes, maybe Kant, probably others too. In my own narrative, these eventually culminated in moderate, but very useful philosophy like that of Karl Popper.