this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2024
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The picture was about sailing the longest direct line.
It's not the longest anyway, but that's what it was about. Technically one could sail infinitely many times around Antarctica in a straight line.
No, that's not Earth's great circle, you'll be turning slightly. It only seems straight on most map projections because they want latitudes to be horizontal.
Well, I stand corrected. I guess we'll need to wait for the ice on the North pole to melt before we can make a more stupid voyage.
It would, however, seem like a straight line to whoever was on the boat, because they'd be traveling due west the whole time, and the course corrections they'd have to make to keep going west would look the same as course corrections needed to account for wind, ocean currents, etc.
I know but you need to be the right amount of pedantic. Too little and any sufficiently large curve seems straight, too much and you point out that there is no straight line on the surface of a sphere.