Um, OK, so why don't the satellites crash? We're still heading upwards...And why doesn't this mass have any effect on the Earth itself?
And I know about Satellite TV, I just thought that sustained space flight wasn't possible on a Flat Earth... I heard this somewhere. I though the FEers thought this was from towers or something. And yes, Gin is right, magnetic and gravitational fields have no limit. If an object were left in space with only one other object in the Universe, they would eventually attract one another. And don't go off topic, answer our questions.
We are heading upwards, but so is that invisible center of mass along with the Sun, Moon, and Stars. The Universal Accelerator is a universal constant which affects all objects, propelling them upwards and away from the origin of the Big Bang at 9.8m/s
2.
As a rocket ascends from the sea-level of the earth it is affected by the Universal Accelerator until it reaches an equilibrium and it is able to maintain an "orbit." Part of the satellite is attracted to the celestial bodies above, and part of the satellite is attracted below to the earth due to gravitation via acceleration.
The Earth itself does not emit a gravitational field because it is perhaps the largest object in the universe. How deep the earth extends, how far the lands of icy tundra extend beyond the ice wall, is unknown to present human knowledge.
That's a real long delay down south. The delays your talking about in hours don't happen all the time, which they should.
For the rare flight that does occur between the extremities of the earth; along the courses of international flights between points in the Southern Hemisphere exist enormous jet streams located at around 35,000 ft above the surface of the Earth. In the Southern Hemisphere there are both eastward and westward jet streams. By necessity, in relation to the polar front and subtropical jets, easterly jet streams in the Southern Hemisphere propagate at rates even faster than the westward ones. The winds in a jet stream regularly reaches speeds of over 400 km/h. Airliners use these jet streams to faster reach a destination.
This variable contributes significantly to the travel time between Argentina and New Zealand, for example. While an airplane may have a rated cruise speed it can provide under its own power, the extreme winds of the jet stream adds enormously to the actual velocity of the plane over the surface of the Earth.
For every moment the plane stays in the jet stream it is being accelerated until it matches the surrounding velocity and momentum of the air around it. From there the plane can use the limits of its power to travel faster than the jet stream. Thus, seven hours of travel time between Argentina and New Zealand becomes extremely possible.
In general, it has been found that winds are strongest just under the tropopause. If two air masses of different temperatures meet, the resulting pressure difference (which causes winds in FET) is highest along the interface.
These facts are a consequence of the thermal wind relation. The balance of forces on an atmospheric parcel in the vertical direction is primarily between the pressure gradient and the force of gravitation by acceleration is a balance referred to as hydrostatic. In the horizontal, the dominant balance outside of the tropics is between the Coriolis effect and the pressure gradient is a balance referred to as geostrophic.
Given both hydrostatic and geostrophic balance, the Flat Earth Society derives the thermal wind relation: the vertical derivative of the horizontal wind is proportional to the horizontal temperature gradient. The sense of the relation is such that temperatures decreasing polewards implies that winds develop a larger eastward component as one moves upwards. Therefore, the strong eastward moving jet streams are in part a simple consequence of the fact that the equator is warmer than the poles.