[Spingo]

In navigation at sea these days most people use either the WGS-84 or Admiralty charts.  Most are Mercator projections and there are distortions in the charts.  Sailors like those charts because it makes plotting a course easier on the spherical earth.  Of course, the charts are just one component of the navigation system.  Celestial navigation wouldn't work at all under the flat earth paradigm and sailors would get lost frequently.  Of course that doesn't happen and I can personally attest to that fact after a few around the world trips, both going East and West.  It has been said that the flat earth paradigm predates the spherical earth one, but I've never seen any flat earth navigation charts or a flat earth nautical almanac.  Those who wish to promote a flat earth could do better by producing flat earth navigation charts and some nautical almanacs that could be used on ships.  Of course they would have to work, or they would be useless.

The whole idea of a flat earth map is something of an impossibility if you care to ponder the matter.
For over five hundred years people have explored all the seas and land masses of our world making ever more accurate maps on their way. There are few nations which don’t have accurate maps of the areas their territories cover. All this mapping information allows long distance international travel to take place by both land sea and air. Every day millions of journeys are undertaken based on this geographical information these maps supply. All commercial maps bar none are based on the Earth being a globe. If you care to buy a map of Europe or anywhere else for that matter, there are no flat earth options, how could there be? What could be different? The location of all towns, cities, rivers, mountain ranges forests.etc....are known and fixed and unmovable.

Over the years I have been fortunate enough to travel around the USA, Canada, Europe, North Africa, and Asia Minor, mostly by road. Back in the day it was using good old foldable paper maps. To say the world is flat  because paper maps are flat is akin to saying the world is two dimensional because picture books and TVs are is rather a silly argument. It’s just a convenient pictorial way of representing the world, or sections of it on paper. During my journeys never once was a town, mountain or river in the wrong place. Every town I traveled to was in the position as indicated by the map.

The accuracy and reality of commercial maps rules out the possibility of any alternativies including a flat earth option, it’s just not possible. The big problem however is...no flat earth map......no flat earth.....sorry.

Of course every single map ever drawn was done so by a person who had no advantage of an overview of a sphere.

Each map was drawn with the same advantages of eyesight and measuring devices (incapable of detecting supposed arc) while performing a journey, during which the entire time a person was uttering the immortal phrase, "It looks flat to me!"

I’m not sure what point you are trying to make.
Have you ever undertaken a long journey by road to a place you have never been to before? If so did you use a map?

Why is it millions of people every day, long distance drivers for example, complete their journeys using roads that were surveyed using conventional maps. All the evidence points to them working.

What you would have to do is supply actual evidence to the contrary.

[RonJ]

Your assessment of the necessity of maps at sea are totally incorrect.  Accurate maps are vital to the lives of the crew, the ship, and the cargo.  The trip from Shanghai, China to Long Beach, CA is more than 6000 miles.  You can have countless storms along the way that need to be avoided when possible.  It can be cloudy or foggy and you can't see any stars for a week at a time.  Often it is necessary to alter course to avoid a known storm that is visible on the satellite maps we get on a daily basis.  Do you really think that we turn left at the next wave and go 100 miles until we see a mermaid pointing us in the right direction?  Usually a container ship will carry 100's of millions of dollars worth of cargo.  Many shippers have their own trackers on top of the containers that can monitor the ship's progress.  They will immediately know if the ship has an incompetent navigation officer.  You can be sure that very little is left to chance.  There is a detailed voyage plan made out and check lists completed before the ship ever leaves the dock.  The trip is long, the weather can be bad, and very good detailed charts are vital to our very survival.  Our charts allow us to navigate a distance about the same as from going from New York to Los Angles and back again without ever seeing any kind of landmark and arrive at our destination safely and on time. 

[JRowe]

Your assessment of the necessity of maps at sea are totally incorrect.  Accurate maps are vital to the lives of the crew, the ship, and the cargo.  The trip from Shanghai, China to Long Beach, CA is more than 6000 miles.  You can have countless storms along the way that need to be avoided when possible.  It can be cloudy or foggy and you can't see any stars for a week at a time.  Often it is necessary to alter course to avoid a known storm that is visible on the satellite maps we get on a daily basis.  Do you really think that we turn left at the next wave and go 100 miles until we see a mermaid pointing us in the right direction?  Usually a container ship will carry 100's of millions of dollars worth of cargo.  Many shippers have their own trackers on top of the containers that can monitor the ship's progress.  They will immediately know if the ship has an incompetent navigation officer.  You can be sure that very little is left to chance.  There is a detailed voyage plan made out and check lists completed before the ship ever leaves the dock.  The trip is long, the weather can be bad, and very good detailed charts are vital to our very survival.  Our charts allow us to navigate a distance about the same as from going from New York to Los Angles and back again without ever seeing any kind of landmark and arrive at our destination safely and on time.

Cool. Please point out the storms on a map.


Satellite maps, like you refer to, are a whole different beast and if you look up how they work, they literally do just function by referencing how far you are from the location of trasmitters. It's precisely the same system on a grander scale. The charts give you the relationships between landmarks, they don't replace them.

[stack]

For long haul transport, navigation is predominantly via great circles, not rhumblines. So on a mercator globe projection map, the path appears arced to take advantage of the shorter distance assuming a globe. Many nautical charts come in a great circle format:

[RonJ]

Again, you are way off.  Our weather maps usually come from the Japanese or American weather bureaus and we get them via the internet via our KVH satellite system aboard ship.  At sea you can be 1000's of mile from any land and satellite is the only form of communication other than HF radio.  Yes, we also get our weather maps via HF weatherFAX but we used that mostly for backup in case the satellite system went off line.

[JRowe]

Again, you are way off.  Our weather maps usually come from the Japanese or American weather bureaus and we get them via the internet via our KVH satellite system aboard ship.  At sea you can be 1000's of mile from any land and satellite is the only form of communication other than HF radio.  Yes, we also get our weather maps via HF weatherFAX but we used that mostly for backup in case the satellite system went off line.

Weather prediction has nothing to do with maps, beyond the basic 'it's here.'

Simple question: do you simply use data saying a preprogrammed route and do that blindfolded, or do you constantly need to respond to new information and things, lite satellites, that let you know where you are relative to everything else?

[RonJ]

Many times we must respond often with a course change due to weather and/or other factors.  Other times the course may be clear and we can navigate the whole distance using a pre-programmed route. We rely on accurate charts EVERY time.  Our speed can vary due to winds and waves and the weather may be foggy or cloudy for more than 90% of the trip.   

[JRowe]

Many times we must respond often with a course change due to weather and/or other factors.  Other times the course may be clear and we can navigate the whole distance using a pre-programmed route. We rely on accurate charts EVERY time.  Our speed can vary due to winds and waves and the weather may be foggy or cloudy for more than 90% of the trip.   

Are you purposefully ignoring every word I've said, or are you just not reading my posts?

[RonJ]

Again, you are way off.  Our weather maps usually come from the Japanese or American weather bureaus and we get them via the internet via our KVH satellite system aboard ship.  At sea you can be 1000's of mile from any land and satellite is the only form of communication other than HF radio.  Yes, we also get our weather maps via HF weatherFAX but we used that mostly for backup in case the satellite system went off line.

Weather prediction has nothing to do with maps, beyond the basic 'it's here.'

Simple question: do you simply use data saying a preprogrammed route and do that blindfolded, or do you constantly need to respond to new information and things, lite satellites, that let you know where you are relative to everything else?

We don't navigate anywhere 'blindfolded' we follow the best route to get from point A to point B based upon all the variables like weather and traffic conditions.  We always try to stay on a great circle route because that's the shortest distance between point A and point B.  We constantly respond to new information and use satellites to let us know where we are relative to everything else.

[JRowe]

We constantly respond to new information and use satellites to let us know where we are relative to everything else.

And there you go.

[RonJ]

Just keep in mind that we use WGS-84 or British Admiralty charts that are strictly based upon the Globe Earth paradigm.  A flat earth chart would quickly get us lost.

[Spingo]

I think most people are missing an important fundemental point. The world map was not created overnight by one person or even one group or even one nation. It was an international effort that took hundreds of years to complete. Much of the impetus came from either commercial or military interests when nations were empire building and accurate maps were of vital strategic importance.

Accurate maps were made of both nation states and the land and sea routes between them, such as the most efficient and fastest sea routes between the ports of India and Britain. I think we forget how vital and important accurate maps were in those days and how much effort was put into their creation.

The idea that a single or even a group of flat earth believers could come together and produce alternative maps of the world is just preposterous as well as totally impossible.

To answer the original question, the idea that a flat earth map could be produced that someone could navigate by is an impossibility.

[Tom Bishop]

To answer the original question, the idea that a flat earth map could be produced that someone could navigate by is an impossibility.

Have you assessed all possible layouts, continental configurations, jet stream paths, navigational assumptions, to make that statement?

[RonJ]

It's impossible at the present time to make any navigation paths on a flat earth chart because there are no detailed paper charts available that I know of.  I can't even find a usable one on the FET website that I could download and print.  One is needed that shows accurate latitude and longitude lines on it.  Additionally it would have to have a good, accurate scale so distances could be determined.  If one becomes available please let me know.  Then I would be happy to show you that it would never work for any practical navigational purposes.

[Tom Bishop]

It's impossible at the present time to make any navigation paths on a flat earth chart because there are no detailed paper charts available that I know of.  I can't even find a usable one on the FET website that I could download and print.  One is needed that shows accurate latitude and longitude lines on it.  Additionally it would have to have a good, accurate scale so distances could be determined.  If one becomes available please let me know.  Then I would be happy to show you that it would never work for any practical navigational purposes.

I don't recall us ever designing or making a map; only discussions about models with one or two poles. If you are trying to disprove something, then we expect you to disprove all possibilities.

[RonJ]

How can I disprove "A" unless I know exactly what "A" is.  I could never prove that an animal inside a box was a cat if you were looking for a proof for a dog.  For FET to be anything but a farce you should  'square yourself in the hatch' and put out a map defining exactly what you consider the flat earth geography to be.  Otherwise it looks like you aren't really trying to get to the truth, but just trying to encourage more controversy.   

[stack]

It's impossible at the present time to make any navigation paths on a flat earth chart because there are no detailed paper charts available that I know of.  I can't even find a usable one on the FET website that I could download and print.  One is needed that shows accurate latitude and longitude lines on it.  Additionally it would have to have a good, accurate scale so distances could be determined.  If one becomes available please let me know.  Then I would be happy to show you that it would never work for any practical navigational purposes.

I don't recall us ever designing or making a map; only discussions about models with one or two poles. If you are trying to disprove something, then we expect you to disprove all possibilities.

So far the possibilities presented by FET have shown to be inadequate and inaccurate in comparison to what is successfully used globally for navigation/transport, which are maps based upon a spherical earth. If there are other possible models that haven't been presented, then they should be presented so that they may be examined as well.

[Tom Bishop]

How can I disprove "A" unless I know exactly what "A" is.  I could never prove that an animal inside a box was a cat if you were looking for a proof for a dog.  For FET to be anything but a farce you should  'square yourself in the hatch' and put out a map defining exactly what you consider the flat earth geography to be.  Otherwise it looks like you aren't really trying to get to the truth, but just trying to encourage more controversy.

There is zero budget to map the world. A lot of the real data is hidden behind multiple layers of assumptions, fixes, and mapping re-projections. I am planning to explain more as my next project after the Universal Accelerator project.

[inquisitive]

How can I disprove "A" unless I know exactly what "A" is.  I could never prove that an animal inside a box was a cat if you were looking for a proof for a dog.  For FET to be anything but a farce you should  'square yourself in the hatch' and put out a map defining exactly what you consider the flat earth geography to be.  Otherwise it looks like you aren't really trying to get to the truth, but just trying to encourage more controversy.

There is zero budget to map the world. A lot of the real data is hidden behind multiple layers of assumptions, fixes, and mapping re-projections. I am planning to explain more as my next project after the Universal Accelerator project.

With some budget how would you map the world? How do you explain that measured distances help determine the shape of an object and do you agree the WGS84 shape is correct?

[Spingo]

I'm going to say something that's more than likely going to be taken out of context for people to jump down my throat for, but hear me out: people don't use maps for navigation.

On any scale beyond your basic shopping center map, they aren't going to be nearly as useful as landmarks. Ok, yes, you need a map to get a vague idea of what's near where, but that doesn't need to be particularly accurate. Does it really affect your driving if the roads on an atlas are a few degrees off, or centimeters too long, or do you just care about the road names and junctions?
Even at sea, they use the stars as reference points. All they really need a map for is to work out which constellation to head for, and by the time they get closer they can just use their eyes. Ok, we can see land, it has that feature which exists there, so we want to head that way... You don't need a particularly accurate map for any of that.
Landmarks are the most important part of navigation, far more than a 100% accurate map. A sketched out sheet that notes down roughly how they relate to each other is as useful as the most accurate flat or spherical map in the world, and even that can be replaced by a few notes. If you try to follow a map alone by, say, ship, you're going to get screwed over in your first day at sea if your angle isn't accurate to within 0.01 degrees, or if there's a single wave or odd wind that adjusts that angle. That's true for any journey, there's no perfect means to point yourself in one direction and go, so the means to course correct are required for navigation, and that's where landmarks come in. 'Head 100km 10 degrees from North,' isn't nearly as useful as 'take the third left, if you reach Burger King you've gone too far.'

So in answer to your question:
1. Yes, there are flat Earth maps that work just fine so long as you use your common sense.
2. No, they don't work alone, but then no map does.

From your answer I don’t think you have either hiked in really wild remote country or sailed in dangerous rock strewn costal waters where navigation and proper use of maps is vital. In fact sailing in costal waters without proper maratime charts and navigational knowhow is dicing with death.

If you were to embark on a journey by car you have never done before, for example Calais to Athens, to do that without a proper map would be impossible, excluding of course the use of GPS. I think neither the stars or common sense would be of much help.

You mention flat earth maps, what are they, where did you get them, who made them and how do they differ from real maps?