The last I checked, Segway inventor Dean Kamen is still very much alive. The British businessman who acquired the company from Kamen in 2009, rode one over a cliff and into a river the next year: Segway company owner rides scooter off cliff - Europe
The artificial curvature seen in some high altitude balloon videos is so severe that as the camera swings, we can see the horizon rapidly oscillate between sharply curved down and sharply curved up. My personal preferred evidence from aircraft windows is described in post #4 of this very thread: "Personally, I find sunrise & sunset views from aloft much more convincing. E.g. look at Image #17 in that "Pilot's spectacular photos ..." article you linked a few days ago: Pilot's spectacular photos taken from an airplane cockpit | CNN Travel" I've never seen anything from the cockpit, but have watched numerous sunrises and sunsets from passenger windows. At the moment the earth directly below is experiencing sunrise or set, I can see the sun already several solar diameters above the dayside horizon, while the ground in the nightside direction is still dark, with the purple curtain of dusk still well above its horizon. I.e. I am directly seeing the Earth's curvature."
Thanks for the correction. I still don't understand why the guy couldn't step off of his Segway for a better look.
some folks really tie themselves to their tech. like the japanese guy who rammed the elevator with his motorized wheelchair until the doors gave way and he plummeted to his death.
Something tells me the easiest way to change the 'flat earthers' opinion would be for everyone to agree with them so they didn't get any attention- I think they would immediately become 'round-earthers' to set themselves apart and get the attention they crave.
Many times, genetic changes appear to happen ‘instantly’ or over 3 orders of longer intervals. Yes, I was looking in the past. How recently our species ‘burned’ witches and heretics. Bob Wilson
Obviously in poor taste to joke about demise of a fearless DIY-er. So, to change the subject, How can a flat earther interpret sunrise or sunset? I have read that 'the beam' just points somewhere else, but that seems an incomplete explanation.
Nice animated gif over at The Flat Earth Society FAQ. Seems to show sun and moon nicely following each other around in circles overhead, sun having a highly directional light output (they describe it as a spotlight). They apologize that the gif shows the moon always in the same phase wrt the sun; would have taken a much bigger gif/more frames to show that more convincingly, I suppose. It wasn't quite clear to me what the sun and moon were orbiting in that picture. Maybe there is some object at the center, invisible and way more massive than either. But maybe they just don't think stuff orbits stuff the way I was taught. The FAQ does seem to downplay gravity as an influence, and instead attribute our weight on the ground to the fact that the disk really is under constant 9.8 M/s² acceleration. So, they don't seem to feel bound by all of the sciencey stuff I was fed in school, but interestingly, they do make grateful use of special relativity in the last question.
That's NOT a high bar lately....admittedly for us all. At least we're not in it for the ratings or advertising bucks. I didn't notice any LEO activity or any trivialities like a NOTAM. Had this been a differently themed channel then there would be ribbons and demands for new laws..... As it is......somebody should have just bought our intrepid would-be aviator a ticket for a flight on a 787. They fly a little higher......and occasionally offer cabin service. They have a better safety record too. ...even Boeing.
WaPo article has some interesting color about his interactions with FAA, at least around 2010 when he was getting started:
Nice animated gif@96. Thanks Chap but for whatever reason I can't view it. What I still don't understand is how or why setting sun dips below horizon. It could get lower (by geometry) and then the beam would disappear (pointed elsewhere). But why below horizon? Seems like that would make it night everywhere.
