Engineers don't calculate for Earth's curve ever because it doesn't exist. Go ask a railroad engineer about it, ask him why he never makes allowances for Earth's curvature? I'm not the one living in a fantasy world.
Why don't engineers generally need to calculate for the curvature of the earth? Because the curvature is on such a vast scale that it is unnecessary to take it into account. It appears not to exist. If the earth were a mere 100 miles in diameter, they would have to take it into account.
Engineers calculate for flat and straight. They do not calculate for something like a horizon curving up.
Make up your mind. Either the engineering calculation that works is wrong, or flat-earth curving up is wrong. The two sciences don't mix.
Formulate a complete FE science that works, stop combing it with standard science, and go back to school.
What, did the liqueur store run out of Everclear? The claim is 8" per mile squared and you say a railroad engineer can just ignore that?
This is engineer talk that doesn't reflect true math. Also, it is a rule of thumb. Consider:
It seems to be the only math which many flat-Earthers are willing to consider accurate. The Earth, they say, supposedly curves away at a rate of eight inches times the distance in miles squared. Which is true. Kind of. But not really.
The figure, which they say comes from NASA, or "science," actually comes from a very different source. Flat-Earthers, no matter where they got it themselves, owe it to none other than Samuel Birley Rowbotham, author of Zetetic Astronomy. He got it from the Encyclopedia Brittanica, where it is cited under the heading "Leveling." You'll find his lengthy quote (I doubt that he got permission to use it, by the way) starting on page 8 of the 1865 edition of his book.
The problem is that this is in the context of civil engineering, not mathematics, and it's just a rule of thumb employed by plane surveyors to compensate for the drop in a target of the same height as the surveyor's transit. It builds up inaccuracy as the distance increases for two reasons, the first being that it is not exact, and the second being that it is not based on the formula for a circle. It actually plots out to be a parabola.
But, you can calculate it out yourself, easily, using trig or calculus. Or are you going to say that math is off, so that you can't use trig or calc in this?
However, if the drop is 8 inches per mile, this means less than 3 thousandths of an inch bend in a 15-foot railroad rail. You couldn't even notice this, so who who cares? Certainly not railroad engineers (or the conductors, for that matter
). Rails expand and contract way more than this with seasonal temperature changes.
But if you are using 8 inches squared, you are using 64 inches, or 8 times the, above, 3 thousandths of an inch. Then the amount would be barely over 2 hundredths of an inch. Again, this is less than climate change contractions and expansions, and less than a 15-foot rail bends because of anomalies in railroad track roadbed.
In other words, railroad engineers have to take into account way more for hills and valleys. So, why would they want to even consider the curvature of the earth, which is automatically figured into the way the metal bends, naturally, because of the size of the earth, and the tiny amount of drop in curvature?
Keep on digging yourself into a hole that you can't get out of.
