I put together an animation to help me explain this properly. It'll take a sec to load on dialup, if you're unlucky enough to still be on it. If the text that follows is too much for you to read, just move on to another thread now. No tl:dr posts please.
Here we have the flat earth, the round earth, and 3 satellites. The red satellite is an equatorial geostationary satellite, the yellow is an equatorial non-geostationary satellite, and the blue is a polar orbiting satellite. Various factors and scales are exaggerated and highlighted to make the animation more viewer accessible.
Over on my RE side, I only need one formula to explain the dynamics of all 3. Forward momentum is equal to gravitational pull, so it basically falls in a circle. Each satellite has several decades of sufficient on-board propellant to correct eventual orbital decay caused by upper-atmospheric drag, gravitational flux, minor collisions, solar wind, etc...
Over on the FE side though, you have some quite different paths going on. I'm interested in hearing some thoughts on these very different orbital paths.
Some ground rules though: If you don't agree to these rules, don't bother responding to this topic.
1) Given that this is a satellite dynamics discussion thread, If you don't believe in satellites, don't bother discussing here. Take it to some other thread.
2) Given that with only 3 terrestrial reference points you can triangulate a satellite's distance and location, the satellites locations are considered verified, and cannot be questioned.
3) Given that this is the only map put forward, and confirmed by the owner of this site, any references to any other maps real, or that "you are planning to get around to drawing up" are disavowed until a graphical representation of said map is physically posted in THIS thread.
4) No fellow RE posters piping in to say that the FE posters won't answer. I'm a relatively new poster, but a long term lurker, and I've seen a lot of threads devolve quickly into name calling. Whether you're FE or RE, please don't post unless you can add to this particular discussion.
Other than that, I'd like to hear some opinions.