[huh?]

Even if by treaty it did require some sort of host country permission and FAA type flight plan -the entire continent of Antarctica is more than twice the size of Australia with only about 1000 year round residence peaking to maybe 4000 in summer.

So it is pretty much deserted. I doubt they could even find anyone exploring it much less stop them.   

[wclubin]

What I find odd is the fact that there aren't tons and tons of people trying to cross the antarctic. Many people are up for a challenge as can be seen by the large numbers of people attempting to climb mount Everest. Why are there not the same numbers of people attempting to cross the antarctic. You would think there would be some sort of "pride prize" for people who climb mount Everest and cross the antarctic. You show me one guy here with a story, or an other guy there, to me there just isn't enough people trying it. And add that to the fact that all tourism to the South Pole emanates from South America. Nah my red flag is up on this one. Something weird is going on. Show me a guy who enters antarctica from the australian side and goes south and only south and makes it to Amundsen-Scott base where the official south pole is and I will be more convinced.

[Rayzor]

What I find odd is the fact that there aren't tons and tons of people trying to cross the antarctic. Many people are up for a challenge as can be seen by the large numbers of people attempting to climb mount Everest. Why are there not the same numbers of people attempting to cross the antarctic. You would think there would be some sort of "pride prize" for people who climb mount Everest and cross the antarctic. You show me one guy here with a story, or an other guy there, to me there just isn't enough people trying it. And add that to the fact that all tourism to the South Pole emanates from South America. Nah my red flag is up on this one. Something weird is going on. Show me a guy who enters antarctica from the australian side and goes south and only south and makes it to Amundsen-Scott base where the official south pole is and I will be more convinced.

The only way you will ever be convinced is to go there yourself.   The only weird thing going on is in your mind. 

I suspect you have no real concept of how hostile the Antarctic environment really is,  think of six months without seeing the sun,  howling blizzards,  temperatures so cold you would die in minutes.  The lowest temperature recorded at Vostok station was -89.2C  or -128.6F,  the annual average temperature of the Antarctic interior is -57C.    And you wonder why people aren't queuing up en-masse to go there....  I think I know why.

Here are some webcams that the Australian Antarctic Division maintains.   
http://www.antarctica.gov.au/webcams

[wclubin]

You go there in the summer not the winter. Yeah something is weird going on with the antarctic, there should be tons of people crossing it. There should be trails made from all directions leading the south pole. It should be like mount Everest with large numbers of people making the trip each year. Sure the Antarctic is hostile, and so is Mount Everest but that never stopped huge numbers of people from climbing it.

[huh?]

That seems like a reasonable point to me.

Yes -Why do people risk their lives to climb a mountain and not cross a continent?

This is just conjecture on my part:

Climbing a mountain sounds "sexier"
It is actually much easier because Everest is set up like an tourist activity. All the supplies are there and it is relatively easy to set up.
As has been pointed out there are people who go there for adventure but they tend to fly there or take cruise ships around it or sail around it.
-as well as the thousand or so people who risk there lives living there year round to conduct science and an additional 3000 that are there exploring or conducting science in the summer.


On the flip side, the FE also has an Antarctica  (just shaped different) and no one has ever been interested in exploring it.

Regardless of the number of people that actually do it   -it is still actually done.
So asking why more people do not do it does not effect anything -it is simply an interesting question of human behavior.

[Jura-Glenlivet]

I just wondered if Greenpeace was considered as part of the world conspiracy by "people" as they say they had a permanent base (World Park) there from 1987-92, keeping an eye on the American and French bases to see that they kept to the agreements in place, they report they stopped the French building an airstrip which meant dynamiting a penguin nesting colony.

[Rayzor]

The other barrier to mass tourism to Antarctica,  apart from the sheer inhospitability of the place,  is distance.   

Here is a map of great circle distances to various places around Antarctica.    To travel to the South Pole from Hobart you firstly have a 3443 Km ocean voyage, or flight to get to Casey Station,  then you have a further  2647 km to go to get to the South Pole.   There are no roads,  just thousands of km of ice and blizzards.

http://www.antarctica.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/149172/circle_distances.pdf

The other thing people don't seem to realise is the size of Antarctica. At 14.2 million square km,  It's twice the size of Australia,  and roughly the size of the United States and Mexico combined,   the  hike to the South Pole from Casey Station would be about same distance as walking from Dallas Texas to New York,  but with no roads,  just ice, and blizzards,   no people.

[huh?]

When you look at the terrain they had to cross it is amazing that anyone managed to reach it by land.

Yeah, walking the equivalent distance from Dallas to New York (even in the Antarctic summer) does not seem like a good way to spend a vacation.

[HumptyDumpty]

I've just learned recently that the idea of a flat earth hasn't been totally disproven, so I started looking up whether anyone has actually crossed Antarctica and ended up here. I've read a few articles on people who have. Though after reading quite a few stories none of them have actually disproved the fe theory. Most of them end up making it to the south pole and due to some circumstance have to turn around, others sort of follow that line that divides Eastern and Western Antarctica. I haven't seen anything on whether someone has gone from say  Fossll Bluff to Casey or from like Byrd to Amundsen Scott to Mirayy. In my opinion that supports the ice wall theory.

[Zechariah]

http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/05/travel/felicity-aston-antarctic-explorer/

This news report claims a women crossed Antarctica but as you can see on there map she did not cross through the middle. I believe others in this post have mentioned no one has.

[run13]

Im new to the "theory" and I dont like to pretend I have certainties. I remain open to learning.

My question is: if the earth is flat, then you cant go around it if you go east or west, correct? You can only go around it if its a globe, if its flat, there will be edges.

So, there are edges everywhere, not just on the south pole. So this by itself, to me, already "debunks". I hate that word, but its the only one now.

[run13]

And how about the north pole? Why is everyone talking about the south and not the north? And by that example, why not any edge?
Picture a globe, a ball. You can go around it anywhere, all you have to do is keep going straight. You dont have to go south pole or north pole. So you can go straight and if its a globe, you will reach the other continents and eventually, come back to the same spot. I hope someone has a good explanation to this.

[mikeman7918]

Hey I'm kinda new here. Why are there so few threads? To me there seems to be two ways to prove the earth is round: if a plane can fly across Antarctica, then it supports the round earth.

A second way is to measure the distance traveled by a plane from Mexico to Japan, heading WEST. If the distance is greater than the distance EAST from Mexico to Japan, then it supports the flat earth. Have these things been documented I don't know. Just some thoughts!

Only 2 ways to test the shape of the Earth?  Come on, I could spam experiments that prove Earth's shape all day.  I have even done a few and they all seem to invariably agree that Earth is round.

[Munky]

The problem with the flat earth model where Antarctica is at the very edge as an "impassable" land mass. This model is even more confused with the Sun and moon rotation in this model from the various pictures, diagrams, videos, and animations that are provided by FE'ers

In this theory it states that the sun and the moon circle back and forth but only light the areas of the planet that they are directly above.  In this example, if the sun is on the North America side, then the Russian side had the moon over it, and is lit by the moon.

The problem with this theory is that it doesn't account for the piece of Antarctica that is in that region of the flat earth that is dimly lit by the moon. In this example we will use the Russian part.

Most people have gone to great lengths to explain that the distances are too vast to traverse from the top of Antartica to let's say down the middle and to the other side. Because according to this model, they are on opposite sides of the flat earth map, and to get between the two distances one would have to travel from edge to center to edge on the opposite side of the entire flat earth to make the journey.

In Antartica we have a 24 hour window of sun where the sun will literally go in a circle in the sky. Taking that into account, if you are standing at any point of Antartica in the flat earth model where Antartica lines the edges of the flat earth, you would not have a situation where there is a 24 hour sun period.
 
The link below has several life feeds of Antartica cams for pretty much every day. And it shows the sun lighting up the skies 24 hours.

http://www.antarctica.gov.au/webcams/davis
 The question then, in this model, how is the sun lighting Antartica for 24 hours?

Even the revised version of the flat earth model in which antartica does not line the edge of the map does not support how the sun and the moon would work in this model.

[rabinoz]

http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/05/travel/felicity-aston-antarctic-explorer/ This news report claims a women crossed Antarctica but as you can see on there map she did not cross through the middle. I believe others in this post have mentioned no one has. Who says that she crossed the middle?  She went via the South Pole which is nowhere near the middle! You do realise where the South Pole is?  Explorers Amundsen and Scott entered via the Ross Ice Shelf! See in the picture to the right. But, I thought it was the South Pole that the Flat Earthers claim does not exist, yet it is so well known that numerous people go there.  I do not know about the other parts - not too many just on skis, more like aircraft and heavy vehicles. From: http://www.outsideonline.com/1789801/felicity-aston-arrives-south-pole Felicity Aston Arrives at South Pole Skier halfway in Antarctic crossing     British adventurer Felicity Aston on Tuesday reached at the South Pole, 30 days after setting out from the Antarctic coast on skis. Aston plans to rest briefly at the South Pole Research station, then continue across the continent through January.

The routes to the South Pole taken by Scott (green) and Amundsen (red), 1911–1912.

by: Maximilian Dörrbecker

from: Felicity Aston: Diary of a solo Antarctic crossing

I really do not know why you seem to see a need to denigrate the achievements of people like this.
It's almost as though you think they are just doing it to spite the notion of a Flat Earth!

Now I'm getting suspicious of people's motives - must be catching!

[Munky]

Thank you Rabinoz for setting that straight.

The FE'ers conveniently like to discount anything that goes against their Flat Earth Model.

[TheTruthIsOnHere]

So long story short, no one has ever flown directly south over the continent until they reached the other side and were going north? Also can someone shed some light on why there are "geographic" and a "magnetic" north poles?

[scoii]

I checked for a non-stop from Buenos Aires to Sydney about a week ago and found 1 that was 19 hours.  Currently only a 1 stop.  Most flights stop in  Dubai.  Why?  You might ask (It is in the straight line path on the FE map).  Here is the only currently available 1 stop flight (through Dallas):
Depart:    Buenos Aires - Ministro Pistarini (EZE) to Sydney - Kingsford Smith (SYD)
   
   American Airlines
Flight 996     Departs: Thu Feb 11 9:20pm    Buenos Aires - Ministro Pistarini (EZE)
Arrives: Fri Feb 12 5:24am    Dallas - TX, Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW)
   Flight Duration: 11h 04m
Connection Time:  14h 46m
      
   
   American Airlines
Flight 7375     Departs: Fri Feb 12 8:10pm    Dallas - TX, Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW)
Arrives: Sun Feb 14 6:05am    Sydney - Kingsford Smith (SYD)
   Flight Duration: 16h 55m
      
Operated by: QANTAS AIRWAYS LIMITED

[rabinoz]

I checked for a non-stop from Buenos Aires to Sydney about a week ago and found 1 that was 19 hours.  Currently only a 1 stop.  Most flights stop in  Dubai.  Why?  You might ask (It is in the straight line path on the FE map).  Here is the only currently available 1 stop flight (through Dallas):
Depart:    Buenos Aires - Ministro Pistarini (EZE) to Sydney - Kingsford Smith (SYD)
   American Airlines
Flight 996     Departs: Thu Feb 11 9:20pm    Buenos Aires - Ministro Pistarini (EZE)
Arrives: Fri Feb 12 5:24am    Dallas - TX, Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW)
   Flight Duration: 11h 04m
Connection Time:  14h 46m
   American Airlines
Flight 7375     Departs: Fri Feb 12 8:10pm    Dallas - TX, Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW)
Arrives: Sun Feb 14 6:05am    Sydney - Kingsford Smith (SYD)
   Flight Duration: 16h 55m
Operated by: QANTAS AIRWAYS LIMITED

QANTAS does not fly non-stop Buenos Aires to Sydney,
If you want non-stop QANTAS flights pick routes that QANTAS does fly non-stop, such as Santiago to Sydney or Johannesburg to Sydney. 

Here are today's:

QANTAS Flight 28 Santiago to Sydney

QANTAS Flight 64 Johannesburg to Sydney

These flights simply do not make sense on the usual FE map!
I'll leave you work out the flight times and distances!

[Rounder]

I checked for a non-stop from Buenos Aires to Sydney about a week ago and found 1 that was 19 hours.  Currently only a 1 stop.  Most flights stop in  Dubai.  Why?  You might ask (It is in the straight line path on the FE map). 

You say that, but offer no evidence.  And the one result you do share, goes to Dallas not Dubai.  So I did my own Expedia search between those two airports.  What I see is that ALL flights stop in Santiago Chile, and many also stop in Aukland New Zealand.

https://www.expedia.com/Flights-Search?mode=search&leg1=from:Buenos%20Aires,%20Argentina%20(EZE-Ministro%20Pistarini%20Intl.),to:Sydney,%20NSW,%20Australia%20(SYD-All%20Airports),departure:02/22/2016TANYT&trip=roundtrip&leg2=from:Sydney,%20NSW,%20Australia%20(SYD-All%20Airports),to:Buenos%20Aires,%20Argentina%20(EZE-Ministro%20Pistarini%20Intl.),departure:02/26/2016TANYT&passengers=children:0,adults:2,infantinlap:Y&options=cabinclass:economy&origref=www.expedia.com%2FFlight-Search-All