koods said:

You’re gonna need to get about 20,000 miles up to do that

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Asante said:

koods said:

You’re gonna need to get about 20,000 miles up to do that

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If you fly from Marakech, Morocco to Nuuk, Greenland, Africa-greenland is only 4700km = 2900 miles.


So, there. Distortion much?

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natedawgnow said:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great-circle_navigation

It only seems like a longer path because you are naturally envisioning
it on a flat surface and not a 3 dimensional sphere. On a sphere the
path parallel to the equator is the longest path. Fly at a curve and th
path length decreases

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The surface of the earth is not three dimensional, is simply a curved two dimensional surface, and the shortest distance on that surface is still a straight line. It is curved in 3 dimensional space, but straight in two dimensions. The technical term for this is a geodesic. Think about walking or flying along the surface of the earth without turning at all - your motion is 100% straight ahead. That path would be the great circle.

Stable orbits of satellites are geodesics as well. Satellites do not turn. They simply fly straight ahead according to the law of inertia. From the Newtonian perspective, gravity causes the satellite to curve around the earth in a continuous repeating loop.

The satellite is flying in a great circle.



That path projected onto a Mercator map looks like this and is actually takes the shape of a sine wave (the gap in the path is due to the rotation of the earth under the orbiting satellite. Doesn’t apply to earth bound objects)



As for flying along the equator, if your starting point and ending point  are on the equator then the equator is the shortest path. There is a special case of getting to the opposite side of the earth - Any straight path will be the same. Any starting direction will work.

Geodesics can be crazy. For example this is the shortest distance between Boston and Perth Australia. It strains intuition that you would almost go over the  North Pole to get to Australia.