Light, unless deflected, or it striking matter, will travel forever in a straight line. What makes things go hazy is atmoshperic conditions, such as excess water vapor (humidity), pollen, dust, pollution, etc. floating around in the atmosphere. (Not to disagree with your aether but no air hypothesis, just other things floating in it.)
Also to remove the conspiracy, you would have to accept the recorded and live streams of the ISS viewing the Earth as it orbits a sphere. You can watch it long enough to see the same continents come back into view, all while the Earth looks to be moving in one direction below the ISS. Also to have something staying up there with no constant propulsion, means that they cannot be above something accelerating upwards (standard FE model), but must be falling around it. With gravity, the mass of the Earth would "pull" itself into a sphere.
Now, is the ISS caught in a aertheric whirlpool? Since there is no evidence observed at the ISS, and the stars, sun, and moon are not moving with the ISS, then it cannot be in the same whirlpool system, also from Earth the ISS seen to be moving in one direction. The whirlpool's wouldn't quite work in this scenario.
Back to its movement around the Earth. Since it crosses the equator regularly in its orbital path, and the altitude it orbits at, one should be able to see clear signs of a disc shaped Earth.
That's just some of the things in the ISS that would have to be faked.
So no, you can't take away the conspiracy and not have a spheroid model Earth.
Side note, imagine yourself as a particle passing beside the Earth, also imagine your self going at 99.9% of the speed of light. Earth would appear to be only a few meters thick (basically looking like your dual Earth model but the two sides would be dependent on which direction the particle was coming from. If it was north to south, then it would look very much like it.