Flat earth theorist and amateur rocketeer “Mad” Mike Hughes has died after his homemade rocket came crashing back to Earth in the California desert on Saturday.

Mr Hughes, 64, died when the chute on his steam-powered rocket detached during launch, giving him no other way of safely landing the rocket.

Footage posted to social media shows the rocket crashing back to Earth 20 seconds later, a small puff of dust the only sign of the impact.

WARNING: CONFRONTING FOOTAGE

Daredevil "Mad" Mike Hughes dies in homemade rocket crash A flat Earth theorist and amateur rocketeer has died after his homemade rocket crashed in the desert.

Freelance journalist Justin Chapman caught the incident on camera.

He told AP the rocket appeared to rub up against its launch ramp, which may have contributed to the parachute detaching.

A crew from the Science Channel had been following Mr Hughes for a production on amateur rocketeeers called Homemade Astronauts.

The show is pitched as taking viewers inside “a cosmic quest to explore the final frontier on a shoestring budget”.

The launch the crew planned to film was trying to reach an altitude of 1524 metres, a stepping stone on the way to reaching the Karman Line, where Earth becomes space.

Mr Hughes and his partner Waldo Stakes reportedly spent around $US18,000 ($A27,300) on the rocket.

The channel shared news of Mr Hughes’ death on its Twitter account.

Michael 'Mad Mike' Hughes tragically passed away today during an attempt to launch his homemade rocket. Our thoughts & prayers go out to his family & friends during this difficult time. It was always his dream to do this launch & Science Channel was there to chronicle his journey pic.twitter.com/GxwjpVf2md — Science Channel (@ScienceChannel) February 23, 2020

Local police and Mr Hughes’ publicist later confirmed the news.

The launch took place on private property in Barstow, California, around 190 kilometres north east of Los Angeles by road.

It wasn’t his first attempt.

He’d previously launched a rocket up to 570 metres off the ground before parachuting back to Earth in March of 2018.

He also claimed to have launched a rocket in 2014.

Prior to a previous launch Mr Hughes told AP he wanted to fly into space to make sure the Earth was flat, according to the Los Angeles Times.

He later told Space.com his beliefs on the shape of the Earth weren’t the reason behind his mission.

“I believe the Earth is flat,” Hughes said. But “this flat Earth has nothing to do with the steam rocket launches,” he added. “It never did. It never will. I’m a daredevil!”

He also cited a “personal desire to inspire my fellow Americans to help make this country great again,” adding that he hoped to be invited to the White House.

Mr Hughes once told AP the flat Earth storyline, along with his age, the launch location and the DIY rocket construction was apart of what made his efforts so “incredible” as a story, but did say the “problem” with the flat Earth theories was that “it brings out all the nuts also”.

His former PR rep Darren Shuster told the Los Angeles Times “the flat Earth thing” was a PR stunt dreamt up by the pair.

“I don’t think he believed it,” Mr Shuster said, but allowed that Mr Hughes had “some governmental conspiracy theories”.

Evidence of his daredevil stunts are more certain.

In 2002 he set a Guinness World Recordfor jumping a 3-tonne Lincoln Town Car stretch limousine 31.39 metres.

— with AP