A flat Earth thread for Tradosaurus

[Geordie]

However, it takes very special kind of stupid to believe that the earth is flat in the face of evidence that is plain for anyone to see and so easy to check out. Anyone can test the Flat Earth theory for themselves with easy to do experiments

http://www.popsci.com.au/science/10-easy-ways-you-can-tell-for-yourself-that-the-earth-is-round,414182

The X-Files sums it up the best: "I Want To Believe".

[bknight]

smartcookie, did you  drop an apple to see if it moved sideways?   Being NZ is close to Aus.

[Peter B]

As an Australian, the thing that's first to nix the Flat Earth idea is the shape of Australia in Flat Earth maps - it's massively stretched east-west. The result is that journey times required by that map don't come close to matching what happens in reality.

Of course, most Flat Earth proponents live in the northern hemisphere, where continent shapes are far less distorted than poor old Australia is. So the problem of Australia's distortion on these maps doesn't really enter their heads.

Second is the business of flight times across the southern oceans of the world (which I addressed earlier in this thread) which again is an issue outside the span of attention of most Flat Earthers.

[bknight]

While flying to Australia in Feb. The plane flew through sunset, a period of darkness, followed by sunrise.  With FE, this would not occur.
But I have stated you can't argue with stupid, worse than Apollo Hoaxers, IMO.

[Abaddon]

It is hard to debunk stupid.

True, but the FE crowd have a proposed explanation.

See, the light bends in unexpected ways giving rise to the illusion of curvature. I read a bit of it some time ago. I regretted that lost time which will never be recovered and I have no ambition to revisit that loon tank.

For me, it's the basic questions that are best. So Antarctica is a circle around all of this disc? Why can we not climb up this wall and peer over the edge?

Answer given: The US mans the ice wall to prevent anyone from doing so with a shoot on sight policy.

What the actual <bleep>?

Next question: Do you have evidence of this wild claim?

Answer given: Yes, but I can't show it to you.

What the actual <bleep>? again?

As far as I am concerned, FE loons fall into two groups...

There are those who hold it true for the sheer joy of the cut and thrust of a hot debate. For those, I wish them good luck. I don't care what you do in your spare time. Maybe that bakes their noodle, so be it.

The second group appear to be the genuine swivel eyed loon brigade. NASA has controlled everything. This group is outright bonkers.

Now, I would dismiss this out of hand as not worth the time of day, group one being engaged in a largely pointless intellectual exercise and group two being swivelled eyed loons. They can feed of each other until the cows come home to roost for all I care.

However, there exists a third group... the fence sitters. The one's who claim to be unsure and wont commit either way. They will chuck arguments in either direction, but they will not commit to either direction. The whole thing is a game.

To me, at this point it is simply amusing. Sure, I occasionally dip into the cesspit and throw a comment or three, but it is just cheap entertainment.

[smartcooky]

Second is the business of flight times across the southern oceans of the world (which I addressed earlier in this thread) which again is an issue outside the span of attention of most Flat Earthers.

Not just flight times, but directions too.

The direct flight flight from Sydney to Johannesburg, South Africa (a flight I have made several times) passes very close to Antarctica....



...however, in Flat Earth Loonyland, the flight would pass over China, Mongolia, Pakistan and the Saudi Arabian Peninsula (the red flight path)... 



The fact that the aircraft turns south west after departing Kingsford Smith International Airport TMA and flies over Tasmania is a very big clue. If the airlines were all in a conspiracy to make flights look like they are on Globe Earth, which is one explanation I have heard (to use Abaddon's expression, "What the actual <bleep>?"), then the flight would have to follow the green flight path, adding about 40% to the flight time, so instead of the usual 14½ hours, the flight time would be about 20 hours... well beyond the longest flight duration of any commercial airliner.

[Halcyon Dayz, FCD]

For me, it's the basic questions that are best. So Antarctica is a circle around all of this disc? Why can we not climb up this wall and peer over the edge?

Answer given: The US mans the ice wall to prevent anyone from doing so with a shoot on sight policy.

What the actual <bleep>?

That ice wall would have to be 60,000+ km long.
So where would they get the manpower?

[bknight]

...
That ice wall would have to be 60,000+ km long.
So where would they get the manpower?

You are resorting to logic, that won't compute in the FE model.

[Glom]

This is a timely thread as a read The Ringworld Engineers and their galivanting around the maps of Known Space worlds.

[smartcooky]

For me, it's the basic questions that are best. So Antarctica is a circle around all of this disc? Why can we not climb up this wall and peer over the edge?

Answer given: The US mans the ice wall to prevent anyone from doing so with a shoot on sight policy.

What the actual <bleep>?

That ice wall would have to be 60,000+ km long.
So where would they get the manpower?

A conservative estimate would be a minimum of four armed guards (two on two off) every 100m or so, in three, eight hour shifts. They cannot just be standing outside for eight hours, so they will need a decent sized guard house to live in for their tour of duty.

To cover 60,000 km, that is 600,000 guard houses and 7.2 million armed guards with 1.2 million of them on duty at any one time. And that doesn't even take into account the support staff and equipment to keep these men supplied, fed and watered, plus waste disposal, electrical power, guards going on leave and a raft of other considerations. If typical operational v support staff ratios (about 5:1) were applied, that is a huge army of about 40 million soldiers, several hundred thousand Antarctic-capable vehicles and several thousand helicopters. I haven't even begun to calculate the total cost of such an operation, but even just the wages and benefits using the only figures I could find ("As of 2010, a Congressional Budget Office report estimated that the average active duty soldier receives an average $99,000 per year in compensation that includes pay and benefits, with 60 percent of the total being non-cash compensation.") works out to a wages and benefits bill of 3.96 TRILLION US$ p.a. over six times the current US Military budget, and almost a quarter of the USA GDP!!!

[Peter B]

Personally, if I was to guard such an establishment, I think I could cut down on the number of soldiers by using some sort of early warning system, and a means to transport soldiers from a smaller number of central barracks locations to wherever they were needed. That should be able to reduce the number of soldiers needed by ~90%, although it would in turn require a sophisticated (and weather-proof) transportation system (plus the radar system).

But it does bring to mind a slightly more obscure issue relating to the Age of Exploration: expeditions like those of Captain Cook's in the late 18th century sailed around the world at varying latitudes. If the world were flat, and each parallel of latitude was larger as you headed south, then those sailing ships must have been travelling at quite fantastic speeds as they circled the world in the southern latitudes.

I don't have the means to do it, but someone with access to Cook's journals should be able to plot the Endeavour's location every 24 hours and work out how far it must have travelled in each 24 hour period. I suspect that as the ship headed south after leaving Tahiti the distances required by FE geography would be beyond modern racing yachts, let alone a tub like the Endeavour.

In fact, this exercise might be even more interesting for his second voyage, given its proximity to Antarctica.

[Glom]

For me, it's the basic questions that are best. So Antarctica is a circle around all of this disc? Why can we not climb up this wall and peer over the edge?

Answer given: The US mans the ice wall to prevent anyone from doing so with a shoot on sight policy.

What the actual <bleep>?

That ice wall would have to be 60,000+ km long.
So where would they get the manpower?

A conservative estimate would be a minimum of four armed guards (two on two off) every 100m or so, in three, eight hour shifts. They cannot just be standing outside for eight hours, so they will need a decent sized guard house to live in for their tour of duty.

To cover 60,000 km, that is 600,000 guard houses and 7.2 million armed guards with 1.2 million of them on duty at any one time. And that doesn't even take into account the support staff and equipment to keep these men supplied, fed and watered, plus waste disposal, electrical power, guards going on leave and a raft of other considerations. If typical operational v support staff ratios (about 5:1) were applied, that is a huge army of about 40 million soldiers, several hundred thousand Antarctic-capable vehicles and several thousand helicopters. I haven't even begun to calculate the total cost of such an operation, but even just the wages and benefits using the only figures I could find ("As of 2010, a Congressional Budget Office report estimated that the average active duty soldier receives an average $99,000 per year in compensation that includes pay and benefits, with 60 percent of the total being non-cash compensation.") works out to a wages and benefits bill of 3.96 TRILLION US$ p.a. over six times the current US Military budget, and almost a quarter of the USA GDP!!!

That may ne true, but it's worth it to protect the secret because... er... it's important that people don't know for some reason.

[Peter B]

For me, it's the basic questions that are best. So Antarctica is a circle around all of this disc? Why can we not climb up this wall and peer over the edge?

Answer given: The US mans the ice wall to prevent anyone from doing so with a shoot on sight policy.

What the actual <bleep>?

That ice wall would have to be 60,000+ km long.
So where would they get the manpower?

A conservative estimate would be a minimum of four armed guards (two on two off) every 100m or so, in three, eight hour shifts. They cannot just be standing outside for eight hours, so they will need a decent sized guard house to live in for their tour of duty.

To cover 60,000 km, that is 600,000 guard houses and 7.2 million armed guards with 1.2 million of them on duty at any one time. And that doesn't even take into account the support staff and equipment to keep these men supplied, fed and watered, plus waste disposal, electrical power, guards going on leave and a raft of other considerations. If typical operational v support staff ratios (about 5:1) were applied, that is a huge army of about 40 million soldiers, several hundred thousand Antarctic-capable vehicles and several thousand helicopters. I haven't even begun to calculate the total cost of such an operation, but even just the wages and benefits using the only figures I could find ("As of 2010, a Congressional Budget Office report estimated that the average active duty soldier receives an average $99,000 per year in compensation that includes pay and benefits, with 60 percent of the total being non-cash compensation.") works out to a wages and benefits bill of 3.96 TRILLION US$ p.a. over six times the current US Military budget, and almost a quarter of the USA GDP!!!

That may ne true, but it's worth it to protect the secret because... er... it's important that people don't know for some reason.

Yep, and that's the illogic at the heart of the FE conspiracy: it's one of the most pointless conspiracies I can think of.

I mean, even though Tradosaurus endorsed the views of someone who was an anti-Semite, I still don't see the point - why exactly would The Jews want people to think a flat Earth was actually round?

[smartcooky]

Personally, if I was to guard such an establishment, I think I could cut down on the number of soldiers by using some sort of early warning system, and a means to transport soldiers from a smaller number of central barracks locations to wherever they were needed. That should be able to reduce the number of soldiers needed by ~90%, although it would in turn require a sophisticated (and weather-proof) transportation system (plus the radar system)

The original FE loony argument I read was that you cannot climb the ice wall because it is "patrolled by armed guards". No mention of early warning systems and radar.

Its this loonacy that I was addressing.

[Peter B]

Personally, if I was to guard such an establishment, I think I could cut down on the number of soldiers by using some sort of early warning system, and a means to transport soldiers from a smaller number of central barracks locations to wherever they were needed. That should be able to reduce the number of soldiers needed by ~90%, although it would in turn require a sophisticated (and weather-proof) transportation system (plus the radar system)

The original FE loony argument I read was that you cannot climb the ice wall because it is "patrolled by armed guards". No mention of early warning systems and radar.

Its this loonacy that I was addressing.

Ah. Good point.

I wonder, then, when this guard system was introduced? Seeing as explorers have been visiting Antarctica since the late 18th century, is this where superannuated members of the Continental Army were sent? Or de-mobbed Confederates?