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Flat Earth Community / Re: The Final Experiment

« Last post by Pete Svarrior on May 17, 2024, 10:16:29 PM »

Yeah, I know, there's probably a deeper underlying issue here. Why wouldn't I trust these upstanding people, especially after they publicly disclosed their financial incentives? It just doesn't make sense.

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Flat Earth Community / Re: The Final Experiment

« Last post by DuncanDoenitz on May 17, 2024, 10:14:16 PM »

It's on the internet, and you suspect its a scam?  Have you no faith in human kindness? 

I'm truly shocked by your cynicism, Pete.  Shocked. 

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Flat Earth Community / Re: The Final Experiment

« Last post by Pete Svarrior on May 17, 2024, 09:52:58 PM »

Oh, and for the sake of clarity: it's also very telling that the only people the YouTube channel refers to as potential FE'ers to be involved are known grifters with a financial incentive. Let's be blunt: this is a scam on both sides, and we should all be better than giving them any time out of our days.

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Flat Earth Community / Re: The Final Experiment

« Last post by Pete Svarrior on May 17, 2024, 09:48:34 PM »

I saw an interview the bloke behind this did with FTFE.

Ah, truly a duo of titans then. A guy whose entire livelihood relies on insisting that the Earth is round and calling his detractors idiots validated this other guy. Yes, quite, indubitably.

You watch too much YouTube. Seriously.

The aim is to send one globe earther and one flat earther to Antarctica to observe the 24 hour sun - which would be an issue for the monopole model.

It wouldn't, though. It's only an issue for the YouTubers' understanding of FE. It's an extremely low bar to set, and one that can be met without wasting a ton of donation money. Like, yeah, those guys are gonna see the Sun for an entire day, and it's gonna accomplish nothing.

Now, what would be interesting is to see how much money they embezzle out of the scheme 👀

Any thoughts on this? Would any of you have liked to be invited or would be interested in going?

I wouldn't go (entirely pointless, we already know the outcome), but I would love to offer independent scrutiny of their finances. I am openly sceptical, perhaps verging on hostile, so if they can open their books to me and get an admission that I saw no irregularities, that would surely boost their credibility. Well, within the limitations of how much credibility a faux-experiment with a predetermined outcome can have.

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Flat Earth Investigations / Re: What is the true map of the earth?

« Last post by Gonzo on May 17, 2024, 07:49:45 PM »

As anyone who has any serious knowledge of aviation knows (air traffic controller for 25yrs here), there's a lot of inaccurate nonsense and claims.

Airspeed indicators are accurate and work fine. As do the varied GNSS and SBAS systems. The various jetstreams are well known, and although always active, strength and location does vary, although can usually be forecast. 'Southern winds' are only 'anomalous' in the sense they are usually very strong. We know why.

The document Tom keeps linking to as evidence of weird flight routes is a red herring, and again written by someone with a demonstrable lock of understanding of how global commercial aviation works.

Again, having been involved in the operational side of aviation for 25yrs, I would say the majority of 'travel' writers have no idea about operational matters, just like the majority of their readers. Airlines cancel flights for all sorts of reasons. For example, yesterday British Airways had cancelled 12 departures from London Heathrow by mid afternoon, out of 347 planned.

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Flat Earth Community / Re: The Final Experiment

« Last post by AATW on May 17, 2024, 03:24:00 PM »

Dunno about this, AATW.  Yes, the ultimate experiment in theory, but the website makes Jeran look like George Lucas by comparison; no pages at all except a bunch of You-Tube links.  If this thing gets as far as the equator I'll eat my tinfoil hat.

I saw an interview the bloke behind this did with FTFE. He sounded pretty serious. Agree the website isn't great though. One to keep an eye on.

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Flat Earth Community / Re: The Final Experiment

« Last post by DuncanDoenitz on May 17, 2024, 03:22:32 PM »

Dunno about this, AATW.  Yes, the ultimate experiment in theory, but the website makes Jeran look like George Lucas by comparison; no pages at all except a bunch of You-Tube links.  If this thing gets as far as the equator I'll eat my tinfoil hat. 

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Flat Earth Community / The Final Experiment

« Last post by AATW on May 17, 2024, 11:43:50 AM »

I think this is the right place for this.
Are you aware of The Final Experiment?

https://www.the-final-experiment.com/

The aim is to send one globe earther and one flat earther to Antarctica to observe the 24 hour sun - which would be an issue for the monopole model. Or, if it doesn't occur would be an issue for the globe.

They have invited high profile people from both sides to participate - I didn't actually see anyone from here on the list, I think they're mostly going for YouTubers.
They say they're going to provide the funding for one person from each side, but others can join at their own expense - it was something like $30,000, so not cheap.

Any thoughts on this? Would any of you have liked to be invited or would be interested in going? Do you think this is a good experiment? If you observed the 24 hour sun in Antarctica would that change your mind about FE or would it just steer you towards a different FE model like the bi-polar one?

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Flat Earth Investigations / Re: What is the true map of the earth?

« Last post by RonJ on May 15, 2024, 10:46:19 PM »

So, you have one sole instance to offer as a counter and it happens to be in a place you would have been able to visually detect a referenced landmark perhaps matching the flight map.

How in the world would this translate to a transoceanic flight having little if any similarity to the flight you cite?

If you need many more descriptions of long-haul airline flight experiences, I have plenty for you.


While I was working, I took lots of long-haul transoceanic flights.  Some were up to 15 hours long.  On those flights I sat in business class or first-class seats.  There was always a map with the aircraft’s position and ground speed displayed on the screen in front of me.  Sometimes there was even a forward-facing camera allowing me to have the same outside view as the aircraft’s captain on my display.  If I wanted to double check I could pull out my GPS receiver and have a 2^nd source of speed & position data. This worked OK especially when I was in a window seat.  I am an experienced commercial pilot/ship’s officer/ and navigator myself and was never surprised when I could confirm the aircraft’s position with landmarks below.  We would always start flying a great circle route to save fuel and sometime would go way up into the Artic on flights from the USA to Asia.  Sometimes that route would be altered to avoid unfavorable weather conditions. You can be sure that high altitude jet streams were taken into account when the pre-flight planning was done. There were times when we did divert for a refueling stop before reaching our destination but that didn’t happen very often.  When it did happen, there was always bad weather along the way and the pilot would make some diversions to avoid thunderstorms, typhoons, or hurricanes.  We did once land in Beijing, China to refuel on the way to Hong Kong but there were frequent storms along the way, plenty of adverse head winds and the weather was foggy in Hong Kong. It made sense to be safe and have plenty of reserve fuel in case a diversion or a holding pattern was necessary near the end of the flight due to the unpredictable visibility at our final stop. 
 
The bottom line is that I have the experience of many hundreds of trans-oceanic voyages by air and sea during my working years.   You always knew your position and speed over the ground very accurately.  If someone tells you the contrary, they might very well not be able to determine their position correctly, but experienced navigators certainly can, very accurately, determine both their position and speed over the ground.  If they can't then there is a serious problem with their equipment.  I don't believe that I ever had that happen to me in over 40 years of traveling.  I always had a backup or two to fall back on if a single piece of equipment failed.  Sure, in my early years, I had some navigational difficulties, but that was due to inexperience.  I got better & better at using the navigational equipment and reading navigational charts as my training & experience progressed. 

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Flat Earth Investigations / Re: What is the true map of the earth?

« Last post by DuncanDoenitz on May 15, 2024, 08:21:43 PM »

A80; I think you'll find 35 on-schedule return flights is 70 instances.  Why, what have you got? 

(And, as you apparently failed to notice, Tom just (once again) reiterated previous apocrypha without actually referencing any single jetsteam-related cancellation).