OT: Re: Looking For Geodetic Python Software

[Tim Daneliuk]

Diez B. Roggisch wrote:
> Tim Daneliuk wrote:
> 
>> Casey Hawthorne wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Do your planes fly over the earth's surface or through the ground?
>>
>>
>>
>> Why do you presume this has anything to do with airplanes?
>>
> 
> That was supposed to be a funny remark regarding that  your 
> "straight-line-distance" makes no sense at all - because that would mean 
> that you'd have to go underground. So it has no real-world-application - 
> unless you actually have underground-planes ;)
> 
> Diez

Huh?   When traversing along the surface of the earth, it's curvature
is relevant in computing total distance.  An airplane flies more-or-less
in a straight line above that curvature.  For sufficiently long airplane
routes (where the ascent/descent distance is trivial compared to the
overall horizontal distance traversed), a straight line path shorter
than the over-earth path is possible.   That's why I specified the
desire to compute both path lengths.  Where's the humor?

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Tim Daneliuk     tundra at tundraware.com
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