Can do all sorts of experiments with the sticks. Hell, if you can't find someone else that's done it, it's not too hard of an experiment if you're careful. Maybe you could be the first!
GPS and other satellite systems are far too dynamic to be balloons. Signals drop in and out, some are stationary (geostationary orbit), some are high speed movement. Many of these systems rely on triangulation; that is to say measuring distances (likely often by measuring transmission delay) and using some fairly straightforward geometry to determine position on the ground. If you were to dig around enough and find the programs or some data from one of those calculations, you could see that the distances reported are properly aligned with round earth.
And that's without considering the satellites you can observe moving at high speeds in the night sky; too high of speeds for balloons.
That part of the map you've picked out is rightfully a pretty circular sentiment, but my original point of the differences in projections and so on stands regardless of that.
I'd need more context on the sailor thing. What time in history? Any time before satellite mapping will have some pretty big inaccuracies just because ground mapping is not easy and navigation wouldn't be as high accuracy or quality either [as in, getting "coordinate" positions or the likes].
The bridge compensation is still a pretty significant amount in engineering and construction. Just because it has the capacity to flex doesn't mean that the position when it comes to "true" isn't important. Hell, if that compensation weren't needed and the earth were flat, the natural resting position should be flexed towards equal distance at top and bottom, but it isn't.
For the final point, you'll need to provide more direct context. where can an image be seen, at what distance, of what. There are a lot of factors that come into play with stuff like that, just saying an ethereal "people can see an image 25 miles away without distortion and clear" isn't exactly a scientific argument. If it were, so would "Humans can see their toe when their foot is behind their head"; it's an unapproachable statement that can't be scientifically explained when left so detail-less and nebulous.
Can do all sorts of experiments with the sticks. Hell, if you can't find someone else that's done it, it's not too hard of an experiment if you're careful. Maybe you could be the first!
Source wise it traces back to this document: https://www.eugeneleeslover.com/USN-GUNS-AND-RANGE-TABLES/OP-770-1.html which admittedly could be faked, but I don't know if you could really get that much in a way of a direct military source for range tables for antique weapons systems.
GPS and other satellite systems are far too dynamic to be balloons. Signals drop in and out, some are stationary (geostationary orbit), some are high speed movement. Many of these systems rely on triangulation; that is to say measuring distances (likely often by measuring transmission delay) and using some fairly straightforward geometry to determine position on the ground. If you were to dig around enough and find the programs or some data from one of those calculations, you could see that the distances reported are properly aligned with round earth.
And that's without considering the satellites you can observe moving at high speeds in the night sky; too high of speeds for balloons.
That part of the map you've picked out is rightfully a pretty circular sentiment, but my original point of the differences in projections and so on stands regardless of that.
I'd need more context on the sailor thing. What time in history? Any time before satellite mapping will have some pretty big inaccuracies just because ground mapping is not easy and navigation wouldn't be as high accuracy or quality either [as in, getting "coordinate" positions or the likes].
The bridge compensation is still a pretty significant amount in engineering and construction. Just because it has the capacity to flex doesn't mean that the position when it comes to "true" isn't important. Hell, if that compensation weren't needed and the earth were flat, the natural resting position should be flexed towards equal distance at top and bottom, but it isn't.
For the final point, you'll need to provide more direct context. where can an image be seen, at what distance, of what. There are a lot of factors that come into play with stuff like that, just saying an ethereal "people can see an image 25 miles away without distortion and clear" isn't exactly a scientific argument. If it were, so would "Humans can see their toe when their foot is behind their head"; it's an unapproachable statement that can't be scientifically explained when left so detail-less and nebulous.