[JHelzer]

On September 15th, the Inspiration4 space flight is scheduled to take 4 civilians to space on board a SpaceX Dragon capsule. These civilians will see Earth from space, take pictures and give first hand accounts of what they see. If they report that they see a globe, will you believe their simple, first hand, observations? Will you acknowledge this large science experiment as proof one way or the other?  One of the Flat Earth values is to just look and believe what your eyes are telling you; to believe the most obvious, simplest truth. Will that apply to the crew of Inspiration4? Will you believe their first hand report or dismiss it? 

[AlephNull]

Governments hire actors all the time - just look at 9/11 - total inside job by Bush Admin but they had us all thinking it was the Iraqis. If they can fake 9/11, they can fake a space launch.

[stack]

Governments hire actors all the time - just look at 9/11 - total inside job by Bush Admin but they had us all thinking it was the Iraqis. If they can fake 9/11, they can fake a space launch.

How many actors did they hire? I think you mean Afghanistan, not Iraq. The former has been in the news a lot lately. Not sure how you missed that.

[JHelzer]

The rocket going up will not be faked. People standing up and down the coast will see it go with their own eyes. The returns are also not faked, unauthorized boaters have watched the dragon capsules return and driven their boats right up to one of them. I suppose these 4 people participating in Inspiration4 could have been hired to act out the part of an amazing space mission.  Just calling people actors is fine I guess. I can also claim that the Flat Earth believers on this site are actors.

Still your answer is valid. Inspiration4 images and personal testimony will not change your perspective.

[AATW]

Governments hire actors all the time - just look at 9/11 - total inside job by Bush Admin but they had us all thinking it was the Iraqis. If they can fake 9/11, they can fake a space launch.

How many actors did they hire? I think you mean Afghanistan, not Iraq. The former has been in the news a lot lately. Not sure how you missed that.

Wasn’t it the Saudis?
And obviously AlephNull has excellent and credible evidence for his claim. So what happened, they hired actors willing to fly suicide missions to simulate a terrorist attack? Honestly, what nonsense.
This is the trouble with some people. They demand evidence and observations but then dismiss them when they are presented.

[jack44556677]

If they report that they see a globe, will you believe their simple, first hand, observations?

It is not so much their observations that are disbelieved - it is their (heavily conditioned/biased) interpretation that is.

We already get plenty of people that say they can see the curvature of the earth (with the erroneous/illogical implicit bias that this proves the world a sphere). They are all deluded or are suffering from lens distortion.

I know that sounds crazy, but it is the reality that everyone observes and there isn't any serious contention on this point.

Let's go through a few examples

• Airplanes - Many people claim (and believe) that they saw the curvature of the world from a commercial airplane.  Both in terms of calculation and observation, this is not possible. This phenomena is caused most often by false expectation causing a "placebo" effect, and lens distortion. The Concorde is another good example, and it has been shown that their passenger windows caused the optical illusion of the "curve of the earth".
• High altitude balloons - Once again, the horizon is easily shown to be completely flat from ground level to max altitude.  This is the highest we as normal individuals can go. The horizon does not curve at any altitude, and this is only believed due to miseducation.  This does not vary whether the earth is flat or round.
• Your example - once again most likely even in theoretical calculation the passengers, like bezos and branson before them, should not see any curvature to the horizon. If they say they did, we know why - the same reasons the people that already come by and swear they saw it on the commercial flight.

What you are missing is that the horizon never curves. And that this has nothing to do with whether it is flat or spherical.

The horizon is always a flat and horizontal line that surrounds you.  As you pull away, that circle expands to the limits of your vision.  If the earth were spherical, you would expect at some altitude (MUCH higher than the "commercial space flights" are going) that the "hump"/"shoulder" of the world ought to jut out, apparently from the horizon line.  The completely flat and horizontal horizon is always there, the curve of the earth appears to jut out of it (IF the world is spherical, that is)

Let me know if you have any questions.

[DuncanDoenitz]

With you 100% on the aeroplanes, balloons and Branson, Jack, and I'd agree with you on the Inspiration4 if it were to (somehow) hover geo-stationary at a low Earth altitude.  But it doesn't; it moves. 

The thing about the horizon is that, like a rainbow, it is only relative to a single, fixed, point of perspective.  In an aircraft, balloon or near-vertical sub-orbital lob the observer's motion across the planet and change of horizon is imperceptible.  At LEO velocity, however, what was "horizon" 20 minutes ago is now beneath you.  Over a flat earth approaching features will simply come into greater clarity, over a round planet they will, literally, appear and disappear over the horizon. 

[ichoosereality]

On September 15th, the Inspiration4 space flight is scheduled to take 4 civilians to space on board a SpaceX Dragon capsule. These civilians will see Earth from space, take pictures and give first hand accounts of what they see. If they report that they see a globe, will you believe their simple, first hand, observations? Will you acknowledge this large science experiment as proof one way or the other?  One of the Flat Earth values is to just look and believe what your eyes are telling you; to believe the most obvious, simplest truth. Will that apply to the crew of Inspiration4? Will you believe their first hand report or dismiss it?

FEers did not come to their beliefs by a scientific review of the available data, so I think they are unlikely to abandon it based on a bit of additional data.
Even if the more extreme posts here are by trolls, actual believers reading them will have their beliefs reinforced.

[JHelzer]

What you are missing is that the horizon never curves. And that this has nothing to do with whether it is flat or spherical.

The horizon is always a flat and horizontal line that surrounds you.  As you pull away, that circle expands to the limits of your vision.  If the earth were spherical, you would expect at some altitude (MUCH higher than the "commercial space flights" are going) that the "hump"/"shoulder" of the world ought to jut out, apparently from the horizon line.  The completely flat and horizontal horizon is always there, the curve of the earth appears to jut out of it (IF the world is spherical, that is)

Let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks Jack. Your point reminds me that there is a distinction between seeing the curvature of the Earth (away from us) and seeing the curvature of the horizon. While I agree with you that windows and lenses can disrupt the perception of horizon curvature from airplane altitudes (10km), I must disagree about the Branson/Bezos flights (100km) and also the Inspiration4 flight (500km).  Everything you say about raising in altitude is true when I climb a mountain or fly in a plane. I agree with you because I have seen this myself. However, from the video footage I've seen, when we pass 100km the curvature of the horizon becomes so pronounced that neither lens distortion nor placebo bias can account for it. There is a point where we have to say, Ok. That curvature is more than what lens distortion can cause.  I am proposing that at 500km, the 4 crew members will pass that point and see it for themselves.

Add to that, they will orbit the earth every 90 minutes and will witness not only the curvature of the horizon, but the curvature of the Earth away from them. This expectation of what they will see comes from my bias to believe what I have seen in previous rocket launches through cameras.  The difference here is that we will have 4 new witnesses who see it with their eyes. They will give their observations when they return, and I, for one, will take their witness as valid first person data.

[DuncanDoenitz]

I've just been reading that the Crew Dragon's normal docking-apparatus in the nose has been replaced for this mission by a "single domed monolithic glass window".  (Second flight of this capsule by the way, following a previous mission to the fictional-ISS). 

I don't know the specific qualities of this window in particular, but the unique thing about a hemispherical window of course is that an eyeball at its geometric centre point experiences no optical distortion whatever due to refractive index, as all observed light is passing through the vacuum/glass and glass/air boundaries at 90 degrees. 

[stankan333]

Governments hire actors all the time - just look at 9/11 - total inside job by Bush Admin but they had us all thinking it was the Iraqis. If they can fake 9/11, they can fake a space launch.

How many actors did they hire? I think you mean Afghanistan, not Iraq. The former has been in the news a lot lately. Not sure how you missed that.

Well, actually the Bush administration did conflate Iraq with 9/11.  They convinced a lot of people that the two were connected as a pretext for the invasion of Iraq.  Most of the terrorists from 9/11 actually came from Saudi Arabia, but Al quida was indeed based in Afghanistan.

[JHelzer]

30 hours of silence from the Inspiration4 crew after the launch. Only a few pictures of the crew in the dragon capsule. No non-fisheye-lens images of earth. They aren't giving me what I'd hoped for to have a conversation in this forum on this topic. Still waiting...

[stack]

30 hours of silence from the Inspiration4 crew after the launch. Only a few pictures of the crew in the dragon capsule. No non-fisheye-lens images of earth. They aren't giving me what I'd hoped for to have a conversation in this forum on this topic. Still waiting...

SpaceX announced that the crew would give a live update from space at 5 p.m. Eastern time. That will be shown on YouTube:

Inspiration4 | In-Flight Update with the Crew



According to the NYT, they've been talking to ground control (obviously) and:

- The crew answered questions from cancer patients at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. St. Jude released recorded excerpts from the chat on Twitter.
- The crew members also had a call with the actor Tom Cruise.

Tom Cruise? I guess maybe because he is supposed to go up to the ISS to film some bits for MI 100, or whatever they're up to now. Why the otherwise radio silence? Anyone's guess. My guess is that Elon's sense of promotion is to not flood the airwaves with updates, but create big splashes with just a few so the world begs for more and stays intrigued.

[AlephNull]

First of all Tom Cruise is part of the Satan worshipping Hollywood pedophile cult that has been exposed by President Trump. So nothing he says can be taken at face value. InspirationX is a hoax using brainwashed actors. The rocket you saw was an unmanned missile that blew up somewhere in upper atmosphere and the interior shots of spacecraft are filmed in a studio probably in Elon Musk basement. Space does not exist - you eventually hit a barrier (the firmament) beyond which you cannot pass - what is above that is only speculation, I think probably just water or ether or something. This is brainwashing for the masses with the goal of Elon Musk and his friends in the 1% getting more and more control of governments and finance - Elon Musk wants to rule the world, that is what this whole thing is about.

[DuncanDoenitz]

"Satan worshipping paedophile cult exposed by President Trump"
 "Probably blew up in the upper atmosphere"
 "I think probably just water or ether or something".

Glad to see you're resisting the brainwashing. 

[AATW]

The rocket you saw was an unmanned missile that blew up somewhere in upper atmosphere and the interior shots of spacecraft are filmed in a studio probably in Elon Musk basement.

And your evidence for any of that is…?

[DuncanDoenitz]

The rocket you saw was an unmanned missile that blew up somewhere in upper atmosphere and the interior shots of spacecraft are filmed in a studio probably in Elon Musk basement.

And your evidence for any of that is…?

I
If I was a bilionaire, I would also have an anti-gravity basement. 

The real elephant-in-the-room question for Aleph; are the kids with cancer also actors?  Or maybe they simply don't have cancer at all.

[JHelzer]

I take it all back. You can totally see the wires on this...

https://twitter.com/i/status/1440314847720132612

[JHelzer]

Ok. Here we go. Jared Issacman provided some real video taken with an iPhone in the cupola.  With the camera in the center of the cupola ring you can see the straight edges of the window frame (at the very end) and the round edges of the Earth. You can also see the Earth curving away around the edges of the globe.

There you have it my flat earth friends. Guy buys flight to space, guy looks out window, guy sees globe.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1440485977059827712

[DuncanDoenitz]

Incredible.  Billionaire Ubers a capsule, orbits the Earth and films the horizon in 'portrait'.  Notwithstanding the sheer awesomeness of this whole enterprise, the incompetence of his cinematography should be enough to convince anyone that neither NASA nor Kubrick's ghost was involved in this.