All aboard the Flat Earth cruise - just don't tell them about nautical navigation

[muriel_volestrangler]

A group of people who believe the Earth is flat have announced their “biggest, boldest, best adventure yet”: a Flat Earth cruise scheduled for 2020.

The cruise, organized by the Flat Earth International Conference, promises to be a lovely time. Flat earthers – who include the rapper B.o.B. and reality television person Tila Tequila – will be able to enjoy restaurants, swimming pools and perhaps even an artificial surf wave.

There’s just one problem for those seeking to celebrate the flatness of the Earth. The navigational systems cruise ships, and other vessels, use rely on the fact that the Earth is not flat: theoretically puncturing the beliefs of the flat Earth crowd.
...
The FEIC did not respond to requests for more information on the Flat Earth cruise. The organization could potentially try to staff the cruise ship with a crew which does not think the Earth is round, but Keijer said that would be difficult.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jan/09/flat-earth-cruise-nautical-navigation

It's not just GPS, of course; navigators have been using latitude, and observations of the sun and stars, to calculate their position based on a globe, for centuries.

[DetlefK]

1. Give them compass, sextant, log and line and then have them figure out how to get back to shore.

It will be an enlightening experience.

[Girard442]

2. Haven't you heard? Their faith will enable them to walk home.

[LunaSea]

3. Has no one introduced these people to Eratosthenes?

In Egypt, a Greek scholar and philosopher, Eratosthenes (276 BCE – 195 BCE), devised a method for a more explicit measurement of the earth's size. Reports from the ancient city of Swenett, later known as Syene, stated that on the day of the summer solstice, the midday sun shone to the bottom of a well. He observed in Alexandria, that the sun was not directly overhead. Instead, it cast a shadow with the vertical equal to 1/50th of a circle (7° 12'). To these observations, Hellenistic Astronomy and knowledge of the local geography had already established that; (1) on the day of the summer solstice, the midday sun was directly over the Tropic of Cancer; (2) Syene was on this tropic; (3) Alexandria and Syene lay on a direct north-south line; (4) The sun was a relatively long way away (which would later be known as the astronomical unit). He determined that distance between Alexandria and Syene was 5000 stadia, (possibly by having hired someone to walk and measure the distance, but more likely using reports of travelers of the distance) or at the usual Hellenic 185 m per stadion, about 925 km.

From these observations, measurements, and/or "known" facts, Eratosthenes concluded that since the angular deviation of the sun from the vertical direction at Alexandria was also the angle of the subtended arc (see illustration), the linear distance between Alexandria and Syene was 1/50 of the circumference of the Earth which thus must be 50×5000 = 250,000 stadia or probably 25,000 geographical miles. The circumference of the Earth is 24,902 mi (40,075.16 km). Over the poles it is more precisely 40,008 km or 24,860 mi. The actual unit of measure used by Eratosthenes was the stadion. No one knows for sure what his stadion equals in modern units, possibly it was the Hellenic 185 m stadion.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_geodesy#Hellenic_world

[DetlefK]

5. Flat-Earthers are Flat-Earthers for psychological reasons:

Everyone believes that Earth is spherical. Spherical-Earthers are sheeple who believe what they are told.

Believing that Earth is flat automatically makes you special. It makes you an outsider, a hero, a bearer of secret wisdom, elevated over everyone else.
By parroting baseless speculation about Flat Earth, you are automatically a bold scientist.

Flat-Earthers imagine themselves to be wise by imagining everyone else to be stupid.




For example, I once saw a Youtube-video of some Flat-Earther. He mused how smart the Flat-Earthers are and how one day everything we know about the world will come crushing down and how the scientists will come to the Flat-Earthers, begging them to explain to them how the world works.

And then he had a hearty chuckle, knowing that one day his ability to parrot evidence-free speculation would elevate him to his rightful position above everyone else.

[DetlefK]

4. "Attention everyone, this is your captain speaking..."

"I would like to welcome everyone aboard.

Please enjoy this cruise, safe in the knowledge that this ship has a state-of-the-art navigation-system. It has a never failed at charting a course, ever, even though all the calculations are based on the premise that Earth is spherical.

Enjoy your stay and relax. You are now in the firm and strong hands of the Global Positioning System, sponsored by NASA. Hail NASA and have a nice day!!!"



And that's how you get a mutiny.

[TreasonousBastard]

6. Spherical trigonometry exists for more reasons than just annoying advanced high school students...

Now, here's a fun forum about the trip from the Flat Earth Society:

https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=69146.0

Seems some of them think Antarctica is the wall stopping us from falling off the edge.

Do not refuse to click this link simply because of the title-- this guy knows his math:

https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/danny-faulkner/2018/12/14/second-flat-earth-international-conference/

It has been suggested that Flat Earth is merely a joke and no one really believes it, but one can never really be shocked by the levels of ignorance out there.

[Atticus]

7. Are they not afraid of sailing off the edge and down into---????? nt