so I may not be a true flat earth believer, but I have a question that I hope the answer may prove my belief in globe earth wrong. It may be a series of questions, but they are based on one idea: acceleration.
So here is my question: if the planet rotates in a circular motion, why would people not fly off the edge of the planet or die of the rapid changes in acceleration? It’s obvious that this effect applies to small things like those play sets in the park where you spin and feel the forces try to throw you off of it, so why wouldn’t we feel these forces on the flat earth? And if it is the sun and moon that are moving, how is it that the sun and moon end up in specific paths? Wouldn’t that require gravity or rope or some sort of movement based machine? How is it that things we put in space end up going in a perfect circular path when they got up to space? How do they keep spacecraft up in space for such long periods of time if they have a limited amount of fuel?
Simply put, the centrifugal force of the rotation of the earth is substantially less than what people commonly expect it to be without having actually calculated it. From the graph above it can be seen that the difference in gravity (G) from the poles to the equator, which is created by that very rotation, amounts to only .05G, or 5% of the of the centripetal, or inward, force created by the earth's gravity. Zero centrifugal force at the poles, .05G of centrifugal force at the equator.
As for rockets satellites and fuel use, once an "object" attains a sufficient velocity in a (more or less) circular path around a (usually, but not always) larger body (such as the earth), the centrifugal force created by the radial acceleration within that circular path will equal the centripetal force of the larger body's gravity. At that point the "object" will be able to remain suspended above the larger body while following its (more or less) circular path around that body. (I say"more or less" because the orbit of a body around another body can vary from perfectly circular to highly elliptical). Since upward force equals downward force, no fuel need be expended to maintain orbit.
The "specific paths" you mention are the result of highly complex interactions among the bodies which are able to exert gravitational forces on other, relatively nearby, bodies. For example, the orbits of all the bodies in the solar system, from tiny asteroids to Jupiter, have been influenced to a greater or lesser extent by most, if not all, of the other bodies in the system. While a small asteroid will be incapable of measurably influencing the orbit of Jupiter, for example, the reverse case is exactly the opposite, with Jupiter having a large influence on the orbits of small asteroids.