[RonJ]

As the ship progressed on our route the satellite would get lower & lower towards the horizon. Soon the signal would be lost on the horizon and I would have to make the switch to another satellite further ahead.  On a flat earth I would expect the satellite to get lower in the sky as we progressed a couple thousand miles on our route but I would expect that we could easily use the same satellite for the entire trip from Long Beach, Ca to Shanghai, China via Honolulu and Guam.

I believe this expectation would require a technology that can send such signals through thousands of miles of atmosphere at those lower angles. Not all types of signals can necessarily do that.

You have a big challenge to explain satellites in geosynchronous orbits in FET.  Consider that the satellites are above the surface of the earth at about 22300 miles.  That distance is known for certain because I could measure the travel time for the signal to return when the ship was about directly below the satellite.  If the ship were on a flat earth my worst-case scenario would be a satellite at a longitude 180 degrees opposite the position of the ship.  In that situation I would expect the antenna to be pointed about 75 degrees above the horizon and the signal should still be loud & clear.  The distance change would be less (about 4%) than under the global earth situation (about 16%).  A satellite 180 degrees opposite in longitude on the global earth would mean I would have to aim the dish into the sea because the satellite would be on the opposite side of the earth.  Not a good situation.  Therefore, the small change in distance is not a viable answer at all.  The equipment could tolerate a change in distance of about 25% or more.  Anyone can do a simple diagram to see the problem that FET has in explaining this common situation with geosynchronous satellites.  I would provide a diagram, but it would be better to do your own so you could meet your very, very exacting standards.

[Bobby Shafto]

...In which case, why bother with the SpaceX launch? Why would Orbcomm suggest they have one or more satellites, when they're actually using something else?

Not just Orbcomm. Lots of commercial companies are operating satellite services relying on orbital vehicles launched by services like SpaceX, ArianaSpace, Mitsubishi Heavy, International Launch Services and United Launch Alliance.

Orbcomm
Globalstar
DirecTV
Sirius XM
SES
Iridium
Inmarsat
EchoStar
ViaSat
XTAR
Eutelsat
Intelsat
Optus
Avanti

All of these are providing services to the public marketplace using what they claim are orbital communications technologies, and they're not beholden to or governed by NASA.

It defies logic (to my mind, anyway) that all of these industry entities are either in on a scam or are being duped by the launch services into believing that their payloads are in orbit when they actually aren't. 

[RonJ]

Dish TV makes a system that is suitable for a mobile home and is made to travel.  That would make an ideal experimental tool.  You could combine a traveling vacation with a FET experiment.  I know there's an iPhone application that will tell you where to point your dish antenna.  You could then do a little trigonometry and easily prove that the earth is indeed round.  Probably you could just use the iPhone app, stay at home, and use hypothetical positions to prove the same thing in the comfort of your own home.   

[Spherical1970]

I don't believe this theory and I cant say I ever will but instead of just reading what others have to say about it, others being those who don't believe it either, I thought I should ask what the people who do believe it think so I actually get the truth. Is it true that the main reason for dismissing photo and other such evidence from space that show the earth as a sphere is that they are part of some sort of conspiracy made to make people think the earth is round?

No. The 'conspiracy' extends no further than space travel. It kicked off in the cold war for political gain, was prolonged for financial gain, and nowadays we're in the position where no one can really be the first to come forward and say "So, uh, turns out that's impossible and we've been lying this whole time." Images showing a round Earth do so purely because that was what the paradigm of the time was, and so was what they expected to see.

Where do the rockets go ? At what height does the atmosphere stop? Why can a camera with a telescope lense observe the rocket leaving the atmosphere?

[shootingstar]

The height at which the atmosphere finally ends and outer space begins has never been an exact science. There is no 'hard edge' as it were. The highest layer of the atmosphere is the exosphere and it is generally agreed that this layer reaches the same density level as the solar wind at an altitude of around 10,000km.

As regards rockets. Well since air is transparent there is nothing to stop us tracking a rocket using a telescope equipped with a camera (not the other way round) as it enters orbit. The ground based rocket of course is just the initial carrier and made up of various stages. so the section that actually enters orbit or beyond is much smaller than rocket as a whole.