To Infinity: The Man Who Tried to Leave Earth

This isn't the Buzz Lightyear you know. In the summer of 1981, a man named Russell "Buzz" Kearney was found wandering the Mojave Desert in a suit of scrap metal, aircraft salvage, and oxygen tanks he called a hyperflight harness. A former Air Force mechanic, Kearney claimed he'd been abducted by something he couldn't explain. For years, he sent letters to NASA and the Pentagon with coordinates "beyond known space." When no one responded, he built his own launch platform in the desert. Neighbors recalled hearing an engine roar like a jet—then silence. Days later, he was discovered collapsed beside the wreckage, muttering only one phrase: "To infinity. They were real." He never fully recovered, spending the rest of his life in a state hospital, drawing star maps on the walls until his death in 1997.