Satellites

ION DRIVES!!!!

How can you give credence to a technology that has been developed for deep space flight and is the result of NASA research!!! If we can't trust NASA to tell us when the space station will pass over head how can this so called ION drive be feasible since NASA is the one primarily responsible for it. 

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/ion/

How do you know it exists Tom, have you seen it? When I look out my window I don't see any ION drives therefore they don't exist.

Quote

Not at all.  the onus is on you to back up your claim that they move slowly.  For example, the ISS is due to appear over London at  Wed Mar 05, 05:06AM and then Manchester at 05:07, covering a distiance of 200 miles in ~1 minute (12,000+ miles an hour)

Do you really expect us to believe something written on a NASA website?

I've been believing them for that last two weeks, and every time they've been correct to the nearest minute.

Quote

Again, no.  I am saying that it is ancient AND it is flawed.  I don't see why people are still interested in it, after 100+ years of being flawed.

Care to point out what's so flawed about looking across a body of water and measuring the amount of curvature to the earth?

I've read Earth Not a Globe and I haven't seen anything flawed about Dr. Rowbotham's math or experiments.

Follow links for arguments:
1. The size of the sun in the sky (chapter 10).  The heavens again.
2. Perspective:  Bottoms of ships, etc.  -This has been done to death.  Rowbotham simply misses by a mile.
3. The body of water experimments.  Incorrect assumptions regarding the effect of refraction.

Quote

I don't care how much money you throw at a balloon, or how advanced you make it, there are too many factors involved for it to be a reality on an FE, or even RE at that.

You should tell that to Sanswire, who operate a number of high altitude Stratellites.

Oh I'm aware of them. I'm also aware that they are:

- stationary (otherwise they're useless)
- big and slow moving
- Have an altitude of 70k km
- have a line of sight that is less than that of a satelite.

Can you see a plane from all corners of a quarter hemisphere? No.

Quote

I don't care how much money you throw at a balloon, or how advanced you make it, there are too many factors involved for it to be a reality on an FE, or even RE at that.

You should tell that to Sanswire, who operate a number of high altitude Stratellites.

I'm sure they didn't travel across the sky anything like satellites do.

Quote

Not at all.  the onus is on you to back up your claim that they move slowly.  For example, the ISS is due to appear over London at  Wed Mar 05, 05:06AM and then Manchester at 05:07, covering a distiance of 200 miles in ~1 minute (12,000+ miles an hour)

Do you really expect us to believe something written on a NASA website?

People use it all the time.  If they were lying, people would notice. 

Care to point out what's so flawed about looking across a body of water and measuring the amount of curvature to the earth?

Nothing.  But you cannot explain why some days you can see for 100 miles and some days you can't. 

I've read Earth Not a Globe and I haven't seen anything flawed about Dr. Rowbotham's math or experiments.

There's nothing sound about the shadow object. 

Billions of dollars have gone into developing such technologies. I don't see what's so impossible about a ridged blimps with solar panels and thrusters/propellers. Another possibility is the use of ion drives for mobility. At that altitude there's not much wind resistence, so it's not so surprising that Satellites can reach high velocities.

People would notice that a satellite is powered.  Also ion drives aren't even close to strong enough.

I've read Earth Not a Globe and I haven't seen anything flawed about Dr. Rowbotham's math or experiments.

Ha, read Chapter III.  It says that a ball thrown upwards on a moving boat will go up, fly backwards, and land behind the boat.  I'm inclined to disbelieve anyone who says something egregiously wrong like that.

Care to point out what's so flawed about looking across a body of water and measuring the amount of curvature to the earth?

Nothing at all.  But, I think it is unsafe to come to the conclusion that the earth is flat from these experiments.  You see, Rowbotham assumed the earth was a perfect sphere in his math.  When what he saw didn't agree with this, he came to the conclusion that the entire earth was flat.  There are a number of flaws.  The assumption of a perfectly spherical earth is outright wrong especially on the small scale of his experiments.  The oblate spheroid shape of the earth and gravitational variations due to landforms and crust irregularites cause deviations on the order of 10-100ft from a perfectly spherical water level.  The result is that water can appear to have a more flat surface than would be expected.  A number of studies and surveys of sea levels around the world have indeed shown this.  In short, Rowbotham only showed that earth is not perfectly spherical and can appear to be locally flat at certain locations.  There is no reason to conclude that the entire earth is flat from his experiments.