49 minutes ago, rattlesnake said:

If you get a chance to chat to the pilot, ask him if the Earth is flat or curved. 😉

I had my time in airplanes, so Im not worried about what the pilot thinks, he knows,

16 minutes ago, Hummin said:

he knows,

Yes, but how do you know what he knows without asking ?

24 minutes ago, johng said:

Yes, but how do you know what he knows without asking ?

28 minutes ago, johng said:

Yes, but how do you know what he knows without asking ?

Have you ever seen a credible documented case of an active commercial airline pilot officially claiming the Earth is flat. In any case, airline training and real-world aviation practice are based on a spherical Earth, not a flat one.

The question was how do you know what he knows without asking him ?

and much like the previous question about upside down persons and buildings on the surface of the earth if viewed from a distance..the answer is not forthcoming..just a trust me bro the 'science' says so don't question the science or ya'll be a tinfoil flat earth hatter.

ohh and I think the earth is not technically described as 'round'..but my education has been called into question numerous times so probably it is 'round'

For the record I do not believe the earth we live on is flat..

but I'm not a pilot/astronaut because of my 'low education' so can not be 100 % sure 😋

The reason why there are so many conspiracy threoists around is because government departments in general don't want to answer any questions and everything being opaque is convenient. You have to also realise that having it like this is good for the authorities... because they can wash their hands and claim no-one knows anything and that it is all a bunch of BS... muddy the waters and get off the hook. No reason to tell the truth, just let everyone think what they want and be ridiculed for it... serves the government's ends.

You can guarantee that whatever the truth is, we are not being told it in multiple fields... why would they? It's all about control.

27 minutes ago, Hummin said:

Have you ever seen a credible documented case of an active commercial airline pilot officially claiming the Earth is flat. In any case, airline training and real-world aviation practice are based on a spherical Earth, not a flat one.

Best way I can put it is this...

your habit of quoting without a quote is also a very telling way to reply. A few other nicknames come to mind

41 minutes ago, Hummin said:

Have you ever seen a credible documented case of an active commercial airline pilot officially claiming the Earth is flat. In any case, airline training and real-world aviation practice are based on a spherical Earth, not a flat one.

There used to be a pilot on this forum.

One reason he probably quit the forum is all the flat earth discussions.

4 hours ago, johng said:

the answer is not forthcoming..just a trust me bro the 'science' says so don't question the science or ya'll be a tinfoil flat earth hatter.

7 hours ago, emptypockets said:

Comes from years of boredom and watching YouTube.

Particularly those who are post retirement and have no real purpose in their lives.

I'm in my 40s and very busy, this is a little hobby on the side. It comes from years of reading books, you will not learn a lot on YouTube.

7 hours ago, save the frogs said:

Here, I got another absurd crazy wacky conspiracy for you.

It may not be true, but it would explain why the conflict in Israel never gets resolved. No one else has a better explanation that I am aware of. No one and everyone owns the land.

In 1917, Britain wrote a 67-word letter that promised a land it didn't own, to people who didn't ask for it, over the heads of those already living there. That letter — the Balfour Declaration — is still reshaping the world today. But the story you've been told leaves out the most important part. By 1917, Britain was financially collapsing. Its national debt had exploded from six-hundred-and-fifty million pounds to nearly eight billion. Its overdraft at J.P. Morgan had hit four-hundred million dollars. Woodrow Wilson was using American money as a weapon, threatening to cut off the loans keeping the Allied war effort alive. So Britain did what desperate empires do. It made deals. It promised Palestine to the Arabs in exchange for the Arab Revolt. It secretly agreed with France to place Palestine under international administration. And then, two years later, it promised the same land to the Zionist movement — addressed personally to Lord Walter Rothschild, the most powerful banker in the world — in exchange for financial influence, propaganda leverage, and a foothold in the post-war Middle East. Three promises. Three incompatible destinations. One piece of land. And none of the people actually living there were consulted once. This is the full story of the Balfour Declaration — the financial crisis behind it, the competing secret agreements that contradicted it, the chemistry of explosives that helped make it happen, and the consequences that have never stopped unfolding.

French researcher and author Pierre Hillard uncovered the documents proving that the Zionists, who already controlled the US Congress at the time, negotiated the Balfour Declaration in exchange for US intervention in WWI. The desperate British accepted, and that is why Germany lost because otherwise they would have won.

Officially, the Orion capsule was a fireball as it reentered Earth's atmosphere at 25,000 mph (Mach 32). Shame CNN didn't capture that and instead chose to show a transition from generic 'above Earth' first-person footage to showing the parachutes in the final landing phase. But I'm sure Science has an explanation for that…

43 minutes ago, rattlesnake said:

Officially, the Orion capsule was a fireball as it reentered Earth's atmosphere at 25,000 mph (Mach 32). Shame CNN didn't capture that and instead chose to show a transition from generic 'above Earth' first-person footage to showing the parachutes in the final landing phase. But I'm sure Science has an explanation for that…

Enjoy

30 minutes ago, Hummin said:

Enjoy

Thank you, this is much appreciated. The "VISUALIZATION" indicator on the top left hand-side of the screen (which I indicated in a red rectangle for your convenience) means it is not live footage, but a CGI rendition. This is nothing alarming as the vast majority of NASA visuals are CGI-generated. However, though I do acknowledge this scientific prowess, as I said, I would have appreciated some actual footage of the ball of fire entering the atmosphere, not a rudimentary transition from CGI to the parachutes approaching the ocean, but I understand this is Science and I don't have the required education to understand the specifics. I look forward to Artemis III.

On 4/15/2026 at 12:08 AM, rattlesnake said:

Just as a friendly FYI, all the existing AI engines are programmed to say that the flat Earth model is invalid, so when asking any AI engine about this issue, you are not relying on an objective source.

Apparently, as in other areas of science, you know NADA about how AI functions. AI is NOT programmed. AI constructs huge matrices that are used to derive relationships between ideas/words. The matrices are formed during the training of the LLM. The information used for the training has human origin in the form of written material. The matrices are processed by chips similar the those use in processing bit-mapped (modern computer) graphics. Those chips are able to use parallel processing to massively speed up the matrix operations.

Since most CT's are not factually based or supported by documented evidence, the matrices formed from the 'data' used by the CT believers do not yield strong relationships. Weak relationships are not used by AI.

There are of course specialized AI that are not trained in the same manner.

2 hours ago, rattlesnake said:

I would have appreciated some actual footage of the ball of fire entering the atmosphere

You may not believe it because it definitely shows the Earth's curvature.

Here's onboard footage from Artemis I

22 minutes ago, gamb00ler said:

You may not believe it because it definitely shows the Earth's curvature.

Here's onboard footage from Artemis I

Very interesting! Thanks for posting.

I had imagined the reentry was one continuous process. Looks like Artemis does it in two stages, as can be seen by the increasing altitude after the first 'bump'.

3 minutes ago, emptypockets said:

Very interesting! Thanks for posting.

I had imagined the reentry was one continuous process. Looks like Artemis does it in two stages, as can be seen by the increasing altitude after the first 'bump'.

yes... Artemis I re-entry was implemented as a few skips through the top of the atmosphere to allow some time for the heat of re-entry to dissipate a little. Artemis II did not do that.

All fake

6 hours ago, gamb00ler said:

Since most CT's are not factually based or supported by documented evidence, the matrices formed from the 'data' used by the CT believers do not yield strong relationships. Weak relationships are not used by AI.

CTs are, in fact, often factually based and supported by evidence, but these facts and evidence are deemed 'not credible' from the onset, which raises the question of who decides what is credible or not… The AI engines are fed data – if the bulk of said data leans in one direction rather than another, this will reflected in the engine's diction on an issue, usually in a categorical and authoritative tone ('this is the way it is' as opposed to 'most people say it is that way'). The results are not based on rational or objective analysis of information, but simply on what is the prevailing sentiment. It certainly does not prove anything to produce and AI-generated opinion, it does not strengthen an argument and it is not an objective arbiter of truth.

People sometimes need to be reminded of that as they will tend to put forward an AI-generated statement as if it were 'case closed' on a contentious issue.

6 hours ago, gamb00ler said:

You may not believe it because it definitely shows the Earth's curvature.

Here's onboard footage from Artemis I

Curve noticeably less prominent at three minutes than at the beginning…

#fisheyelensmishap

23 hours ago, rattlesnake said:

If people really believed it to be so absurd and ridiculous, this thread would be one page long.

You’ve just demonstrated Brandolini’s Law.

For anyone not familiar, Brandolini’s Law is simple: the amount of energy needed to refute nonsense is an order of magnitude greater than the effort required to produce it. And that’s exactly what’s going on with Moon landing denial, Artemis denial, and flat Earth claims.

It takes seconds to say “the Apollo 11 Moon Landing was faked” or “the Artemis program is a hoax” or “the Flat Earth theory is real”... It takes seconds to copy and paste memes and excerpts from 'deiners' facebook groups and pages, it takes seconds to copy and pasted in oneliners that sound catchy to the uneducated layman....

It takes vastly more time to walk through orbital mechanics, telemetry records, independent tracking data, lunar geology, satellite systems, and centuries of observational science just to explain why those claims fall apart.

That imbalance isn’t proof of a cover-up - it’s the whole point of the tactic.

It's why I avoid engaging in most scepticism - because you’re exploiting asymmetry. Dropping dismissal demands exhaustive proof in return, the dismissial isn’t critical thinking, it’s intellectual freeloading. You offload all the effort onto everyone else while contributing nothing but doubt.

And the kicker is this: the evidence isn’t hard to find, it’s just hard to ignore if you’re committed to the conclusion first. The data is public, the methods are repeatable, and the verification comes from multiple independent sources across decades.

Your's - this isn’t some brave challenge to orthodoxy. It’s simply a textbook case of Brandolini’s Law: minimal effort to assert maximum noise, maximal effort to correct - you’ve mistaken that imbalance for having a point.

31 minutes ago, rattlesnake said:

Curve noticeably less prominent at three minutes than at the beginning…

#fisheyelensmishap

Ah, easy explanation.

As re-entry progressed, more people started understanding what they were actually watching and quietly abandoned the whole denial angle.

That global drop in collective stupidity caused a measurable decrease in cognitive density - ergo the Earth’s density dropped too. Naturally, the planet expanded slightly, reducing the apparent curvature.

Amazing what a loss of mass scepticism can do for planetary geometry.

Now - can you prove that isn't the case - you can thank Alberto Brandolini later...

5 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

It takes seconds to say “the Apollo 11 Moon Landing was faked” or “the Artemis program is a hoax” or “the Flat Earth theory is real”...

Because this is, of course, what I am doing. 425 posts of one-liners, eh? By all means depict reality under this angle if you so wish to.

1 minute ago, richard_smith237 said:

Ah, easy explanation.

As re-entry progressed, more people started understanding what they were actually watching and quietly abandoned the whole denial angle.

That global drop in collective stupidity caused a measurable decrease in cognitive density - ergo the Earth’s density dropped too. Naturally, the planet expanded slightly, reducing the apparent curvature.

Amazing what a loss of mass scepticism can do for planetary geometry.

Now - can you prove that isn't the case - you can thank Alberto Brandolini later...

Good to see you, Richard.

31 minutes ago, rattlesnake said:

38 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

It takes seconds to say “the Apollo 11 Moon Landing was faked” or “the Artemis program is a hoax” or “the Flat Earth theory is real”...

Because this is, of course, what I am doing. 425 posts of one-liners, eh? By all means depict reality under this angle if you so wish to.

I still struggle to beleive someone of your intelligence is such a conspirasist on these matters - you do stay loyal to ideas long after they’ve been disproven, and remarkably consistent at drawing the wrong conclusion - its quite fascinating how you always arrive at the least accurate take.

While you have (plenty of times) posted memes or snapshots - what you also do is something more subtle: selective fact-framing built on broken or incomplete premises.

You take a real fragment - say, something about visibility, curvature, or re-entry footage - then strip away the underlying physics, context, and scale, and present it as if it raises a fundamental contradiction. It sounds “fact-based” but the foundation underneath it is flawed from the start.

That’s exactly where Brandolini’s Law kicks in.

Because now, to respond properly, someone has to:

- Reconstruct the missing context.

- Explain the actual science (optics, perspective, atmospheric effects, orbital mechanics, etc).

- Correct the false premise you started with.

Meanwhile, your original claim is fast to write and looks reasonable on the surface.

That’s the asymmetry (you've just provided that very example with two separate photographs if differing scale): it’s easy to pose a question built on partail science, but it takes disproportionately more effort to unpack why the premise itself is wrong.

And that’s the key point - this isn’t about how many posts you’ve made. It’s about the pattern:

- Cherry-picked “facts”.

- Missing foundational principles.

- Implied contradictions that only exist because of those omisssions

So yes, you’re engaging - but not in a way that moves the discussion forward. You’re creating work, not insight.

It’s not scepticism if the starting assumptions are broken. What you do represent is a very exceptional and more more elaborate way of being wrong - its quite outstanding to read - but so obviously flawed from the out-take... People like Stiddle are far less refined in their approach with 'viruses don't exist' - hardly worth engaging with - your approach is a little more nuanced - yet quite impossoble to deal with on any serious intellectual level because of the principle quoted by Alberto Brandolini.

1 hour ago, richard_smith237 said:

I still struggle to beleive someone of your intelligence is such a conspirasist on these matters - you do stay loyal to ideas long after they’ve been disproven, and remarkably consistent at drawing the wrong conclusion - its quite fascinating how you always arrive at the least accurate take.

While you have (plenty of times) posted memes or snapshots - what you also do is something more subtle: selective fact-framing built on broken or incomplete premises.

You take a real fragment - say, something about visibility, curvature, or re-entry footage - then strip away the underlying physics, context, and scale, and present it as if it raises a fundamental contradiction. It sounds “fact-based” but the foundation underneath it is flawed from the start.

That’s exactly where Brandolini’s Law kicks in.

Because now, to respond properly, someone has to:

- Reconstruct the missing context.

- Explain the actual science (optics, perspective, atmospheric effects, orbital mechanics, etc).

- Correct the false premise you started with.

Meanwhile, your original claim is fast to write and looks reasonable on the surface.

That’s the asymmetry (you've just provided that very example with two separate photographs if differing scale): it’s easy to pose a question built on partail science, but it takes disproportionately more effort to unpack why the premise itself is wrong.

And that’s the key point - this isn’t about how many posts you’ve made. It’s about the pattern:

- Cherry-picked “facts”.

- Missing foundational principles.

- Implied contradictions that only exist because of those omisssions

So yes, you’re engaging - but not in a way that moves the discussion forward. You’re creating work, not insight.

It’s not scepticism if the starting assumptions are broken. What you do represent is a very exceptional and more more elaborate way of being wrong - its quite outstanding to read - but so obviously flawed from the out-take... People like Stiddle are far less refined in their approach with 'viruses don't exist' - hardly worth engaging with - your approach is a little more nuanced - yet quite impossoble to deal with on any serious intellectual level because of the principle quoted by Alberto Brandolini.

I beg to differ. While I do occasionally josh a little, or post a meme, it is essentially to keep the temperature down and make it consistently clear that I don't take myself too seriously. These science-centric debates tend to devolve into standoffs where each side will defend their belief as if they were guarding a sacred citadel…

Asking questions is good as it often allows for knowledge expansion. For example, a few pages back, I asked why the ISS doesn't capture any satellites in its livestream. Of course, some will be a little irritated as they know Rattlesnake doesn't even believe the ISS exists and is therefore making insinuations, laying pre-loaded debates on the table, etc. True, I am to some extent, but the question is an honest one. I had the ISS livestream on for two hours on a second screen, and didn't see a single satellite, though there purportedly are 10,000-15,000 of them, of which several thousand are the size of a school bus, in lower Earth orbit.

• Hummin said his knowledge of video allowed him to assert it was normal: they can't be captured for technical reasons, he claims;

• Yellowtail said they do appear once in a while, but the area is so huge that it is bound to be a rare occurrence (to which I asked how long the stream would have to be watched in order for it to be mathematically impossible to not see a single one – still to be determined);

• gamb00ler suggested it could be related to height, i.e. the ISS and satellites could not be on the same level (an astute remark which we still need to look into).

In any case, you have three people who are on the same side of the debate coming from different angles. Once we have figured it out, everybody will be more knowledgeable and therefore these threads are not the abyssal depths of ignorance you sometimes imply they are.

3 minutes ago, rattlesnake said:

I beg to differ. While I do occasionally josh a little, or post a meme, it is essentially to keep the temperature down and make it consistently clear that I don't take myself too seriously. These science-centric debates tend to devolve into standoffs where each side will defend their belief as if they were guarding a sacred citadel…

Asking questions is good as it often allows for knowledge expansion. For example, a few pages back, I asked why the ISS doesn't capture any satellites in its livestream. Of course, some will be a little irritated as they know Rattlesnake doesn't even believe the ISS exists and is therefore making insinuations, laying pre-loaded debates on the table, etc. True, I am to some extent, but the question is an honest one. I had the ISS livestream on for two hours on a second screen, and didn't see a single satellite, though there purportedly are 10,000-15,000 of them, of which several thousand are the size of a school bus, in lower Earth orbit.

• Hummin said his knowledge of video allowed him to assert it was normal: they can't be captured for technical reasons, he claims;

• Yellowtail said they do appear once in a while, but the area is so huge that it is bound to be a rare occurrence (to which I asked how long the stream would have to be watched in order for it to be mathematically impossible to not see a single one – still to be determined);

• gamb00ler suggested it could be related to height, i.e. the ISS and satellites could not be on the same level (an astute remark which we still need to look into).

In any case, you have three people who are on the same side of the debate coming from different angles. Once we have figured it out, everybody will be more knowledgeable and therefore these threads are not the abyssal depths of ignorance you sometimes imply they are.

You have yet to provide the camera's field of view, which is required to complete the calculations,

Neither have you explained why you can't see the entire Chicago skyscape from 50 miles away,