The Earth might not be flat, but it isn't round either. That one is a lot more wrong than the other matters little if you're trying to land a spaceship.
The Earth being flat is a very useful approximation in all cases where you don't need to land as spaceship. Just because something is useful doesn't mean it's true.
I doubt anyone in a position to land a spaceship would be convinced that the earth is flat. And just because something isn't 100% true doesn't make it useless. Newtons laws are very useful in most real life situations, even though we know them to be wrong.
That doesn't prove anything. What it does clearly prove, though, is that the Earth is flat. Think about it: have you ever successfully landed with a parachute on a spherical object like a soccer ball or large marble? See?
You can verify the roundness of the earth in a wide range of ways using only trivial observations. But I don't expect people who believe the earth is flat are likely to do that.
"when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." -Asimov
My point was most people do cargo cult and that's bad, no matter what. And the notion that you have to go to space to know the earth is round is flawed, as I tried to illustrate using several examples that didn't necessitate traveling to space to infer that the earth is not flat.
After all, Eratosthenes was able to calculate the circumference of the earth with approximately 0.5% margin of error[0]. Since they didn't have rockets in 250 B.C, it should be clear that there are other empirical methods to test these hypotheses.
To reiterate, cargo culting is always bad. If you don't have a reason for what you believe, then there's a chance your belief is flawed and it would behoove you to research your question and prove to yourself the validity or invalidity of your belief.
I've seen religious freaks all over the net promoting this. But seriously? Once who have ever say in a plane have seen that the horizon isn't flat. It's curved. And if the earth were to be flat, how would the satellites stay up? Wouldn't possible to orbit something that's shaped in that way. But then I guess space travel is just bogus according to the religious freaks as well.
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