Somebody had to do it, and so I did.
I wanted a definite reference to the globe heads spherical earth curvature. Since I didn't find one, I MADE one! In a 3d program, I created a sphere equal to the radius of the earth. Yes, the ball you see below in the image IS indeed 6371 km's in radius!! {My 3d program began to behave weird at this scale.) I had trouble placing the green box on top. But I managed it. The green box is 50 km in width and breadth, and height increases incrementally to show you the real curvature of the NASA spherical earth. (The top of the box is viewed always at eye level.)
.
You will note that significant curvature is seen only beginning at 50 km. (31 miles or 164,000 feet.) This is massive scale, which should not discount the fact that at small distances of a few miles you should be seeing objects at least a few 100 feet below the curvature. So if you see the bottom of a building across a 60-mile lake, then you are right in wondering what happened to the curve.
The following renders give you an idea of the curvature you would see looking out from an airplane window, or a balloon door, or a spaceship portal.
Click on image to view a larger version:
No comments:
Post a Comment