A self-proclaimed flat-earth researcher planning to launch himself in a homemade rocket 550 meters into the air has been forced to delay his mission.

Mike Hughes, a California limousine driver, had to cancel the Saturday launch after the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) blocked him from using public land. Hughes said the BLM "informed me that they were not going to allow me to do the event there — at least at that location."

Hughes plans to take pictures of the earth while speeding at 800 kph above the Mojave Desert, expecting to see a disk-shaped, flat plain of our planet rather than the spherical images we've grown accustomed to.

"It'll shut the door on this ball Earth," said Hughes.

Earlier in the week, Hughes said his rocket launcher, made from a motor home, "broke down in the driveway," though he later fixed it.

Federal permission for the launch is Hughes' main problem, however. Last year, the BLM left the matter to the Federal Aviation Administration, said Hughes, adding "of course, they can't honestly approve it."

BLM jumped back into the case following national media coverage of the expected launch by the AP, stating that Hughes had not applied to the agency for a required permit.

"Someone from our local office reached out to him after seeing some of these news articles [about the launch], because that was news to them," a BLM spokeswoman told The Washington Post.

Hughes says he has now found private property for the launch, which he hopes to reschedule for later this week.

"It's been very disappointing and, I guess, enlightening — this whole week," Hughes said. "But it's not easy because it's not supposed to be."

"It's still happening. We're just moving it 3 miles down the road," Hughes added to the The Washington Post. "This is what happens anytime you have to deal with any kind of government agency."

Rocket science is a particular passion of "Mad" Mike Hughes, who first launched himself across the Arizona desert in 2014—a flight resulting in severe injuries when his landing parachutes did not function as well as expected.

The 61-year-old has been fully committed to his flat-earth research since he first converted to the belief, gathering significant donation funds for his rocket projects. In the future, he hopes to launch himself to space, to set the record straight after what he claims is 2,300 years of misinformation.

"I don't believe in science," he told The Associated Press. "There's no difference between science and science fiction."