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? -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tim Daneliuk [EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP Key: http://www.tundraware.com/PGP/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
