Longest Straight Line Sea Voyage Route on Earth!

[Macblaze]

Originally Posted by IdoraKeeper

If my sons are steering there are no straight lines.

ROTFLMAO!

[reed1v]

Originally Posted by jheldatksuedu

I also have always enjoyed maps, I'll do some more looking into this, I've seen this longest straight sail a couple times before, there have been ones with keeping the same compass heading, and then great circle routes. Also I was just told that Marvin Creamer just celebrated 100 years old, he was the first sailor to circumnavigate, at least in recent history, without any instruments. He did it to prove that it could be done and that man could sail the oceans before and without the aid of a compass and clock. His book is an extremely good read. I just got an email, they just put up a monument to him in south New Jersey.

Gee, all he did was sail east from the east coast. Guess your going to hit something. All he did was prove you will hit either Europe or Africa. He could not predict which he would hit. Then he bumped around continents till he hit home(well not quite, within about 800 miles of home base). Proves the world is round and you can waste a lot of time bumping into continents to get around the globe.

[Dauntlessny]

Originally Posted by reed1v

Straight line or big circle route? Obviously from the tip of southern Australia you need to hang left to get to northern US.

check a globe

[reed1v]

Originally Posted by Dauntlessny

check a globe

Did, my 60 inch diameter library globe with sticky string. No straight lines.

[valhalla360]

I believe at around 60S, you can head due west or due east...forever, so if we are going to ignore the curvature of the earth, I think that wins to the longest straight line.

[StuM]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

I believe at around 60S, you can head due west or due east...forever, so if we are going to ignore the curvature of the earth, I think that wins to the longest straight line.

So any circle is infinite in length according to you? What does that do to pi

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by StuM

So any circle is infinite in length according to you? What does that do to pi

Once we said straight line on a spherical surface, PI goes out the window.

But then again, the original post said the longest straight line voyage without hitting land. Theoretically, if you point the boat west and keep going until you hit land....it never said that straight line couldn't run over itself.

Another alternative would be to start at the northernmost edge of the band that doesn't contain any land and pick a heading of 90.00000000000000000000000000000001. I would have to run the math but that should result in looping antartica many times without touching land or overlapping the route.

This is before we even consider the complications frame of reference for actual motion on a planet rotating once a day on it's axis, around the sun once a year, wobbling a bit due to the moon rotating around it once a month and the whole solar system rotating around the milkyway and the whole milky way wandering thru the larger universe.

[Juho]

You could circumnavigate the globe heading all the time east or west all the time also round the North Pole, using a submarine. The line would be rather curved if you are close to the pole.

The original question was however about the longest straight line. Submarines could navigate maybe about 400 nm straight line at the Mariana Trench, before hitting the surface again.

[StuM]

The problem of no straight lines on the surface of a sphere is only an artifact of 3 dimensional Euclidean geometry (specifically Euclid's 5th postulate).

If you use a 2 dimensional elliptic (Reinmannian) frame of reference then it is no longer a problem.

[Steadman Uhlich]

You guys are hilarious. LOL. I mean that is a good way.

I am enjoying reading the semantical smacks and the gybes at logic and nautical sense.

The purpose of the Original Post was simply to share an interesting Google Earth graphic animation that shows a straight "line" course that would be the longest.

It does not show a full circumnavigation (as the boat would hit land when it comes back to North America, but it does show a very long voyage that misses the hard bits without resorting to zig zag course.

Anyway, I enjoyed seeing the graphic and have also enjoyed your comments, even if I don't agree with all of them.

[Juho]

I tried to reproduce the proposed great circles with this tool: Mapping and Distance Tools .

The Kamchatka - Pakistan circle worked fine.

I could generate also a Saint Lawrence River - Vancouver Island circle, but that circle was not a great circle. Near but not quite. (the tool can draw also circles whose radius is not that of a great circle)

When I tried to generate a great circle that would narrowly escape Senegal, Antarctica and Tasmania, the end result was that it touched all these three at the same time. This suggests that the Kamchatka - Pakistan great circle still holds the record.