are you claiming that the path deviates from the orbital plane? If so, why and by how much?
No, and I never have. Are you being deliberately obtuse at this point?
I'll write it again to make it easy: orbits on the same
plane do not have 'similar' flight
paths. Is that not clear from the diagram? Even if those orbits are on the same plane they are clearly not similar in any sense when it comes to passing through the van Allen belts.
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Then it is to say any geometric two dimensional depiction would appear as a straight line when viewed from the side view of the plane. Is this not correct?