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Other Conspiracy Theories / Re: Help for a Discussion with flatearthers and moonlanding deniers
« Last post by Jason Thompson on February 06, 2025, 07:16:55 AM »Since I am not an aviation expert, I would like to know how this introduction should be understood.
The simple answer (which drives conspiracy theorists nuts) is that if you're not an aviation expert it shouldn't. Papers like this, in any technical field, are written for people working in the field, not laypeople, and certainly not random conspiracy theorists without a hint of background in the relevant disciplines.
However (and not being an aviation expert myself but having some technical background), in essence this appears to be an example of calculation of a simplified set of general parameters that provide the basis of more detailed analyses and models. They have reduced a complex system to some key elements in order to give a model onto which other variables can be added to more closely meet real world situations. Rather like the ideal gas equation, which models movement of gas molecules in ways that don't actually occur in any real situations but which model the fundamental underlying elements.
So, the major assumptions made and my thoughts on them:
The plane is a rigid body that does not change shape. Broadly true but many aircraft have a degree of flexibility in their structures and all have moveable control surfaces to change how they move through the air, up to and including swing-wing designs that have very different flight characteristics depending on the position of the wing.
The plane has a constant mass. Never true since it burns fuel during flight, so mass is always decreasing to some extent. However in most cases the bulk of the vehicle makes up the majority of the mass and the difference caused by loss of fuel mass is quite small.
Flat Earth: Firstly, this certainly refers to an absence of topgraphical variation, i.e. not considering mountains, valleys, hills, cliffs, land or sea etc. Secondly, assuming a spherical Earth with constant gravitational pull at a given altitude, there is no difference between flying around a sphere and flying across a plane, as the aircraft retains the same relationship to the ground in both cases (it doesn't actively work to move in a circle around a spherical Earth), therefore flight around a spherical Earth can be modelled as flight across a flat one.
Non-rotating Earth: This is just removal of the variable of the motion of the ground under the plane.
So, what this paper is referring to is a basic model of flight, which provides the fundamental underlying conditions onto which other variables (such as the rotation of the Earth, or the loss of mass due to consumption of fuel, or the effect of changing topography, or the effect of changing the shape of the aircraft during flight) can be introduced to more closely model real world situations. It is certainly not saying the Earth is actually flat and non-rotating. The flat-earthers who use this as evidence are ignoring that assumptions are being made about the aircraft that are not true in real-world flight situations, because then they'd have to explain why those assumptions clearly don't mean all aircraft have constant mass and rigid structures, while the assumptions about the Earth do supposedly mean that is what Earth is really like.
