solarpunk memes

It's a Charismacracy; those who can out-popular the others wins.

True meritocracy had never been implemented in any human society larger than a small village.

It had been partially implemented in several places/times

What we have today is a partially implemented one in middle management, technocrats and engineers.

Where out of touch upper management and owners are the rule. But if I look at any successful company I will find the tech and middle management running it day to day

Elon Musk "rocket scientist"

There’s also the Great Circle flight paths. Essentially, because the earth is round, it’s actually a shorter distance to fly in an “arc” (when looking at a flat map). In the below picture, the upper curved line is actually shorter than the lower straight line:

Here’s another image which demonstrates why the curved line looks longer on a flat map:

And because of how map projections work, this applies to virtually any flight path that isn’t directly north/south… Just like the one in OP’s photo.

There's also the fact that the earth is an oblate spheroid and great circles are the shortest distance between two points on that shape. (Though this may not apply for short flights like this.)

no, this is SF to LA. It was the estrogen in the water that turned the flight path gay.

edit: we may also have local aviation laws that prevent straight flight paths. I'm not familiar with california aviation laws.

For now I assume that the whole thing is working out well for Mr. Musk. By now he has probably weakened the specific agencies that were a thorn in his side sufficiently he'll earn back the few hundred million it cost him to buy that position.

So he's not an idiot, but he's a problem.

Yes, the person who hired Musk

It's still presented in an anti-intellectual "just asking questions" format though.

Further we are all just internet jabronis. It isn't literally our job to know this stuff. Knowing this stuff is kind of literally this guys job. Knowing the things you just described is kind of the whole "logistics" thing.

Whatever the reasons for the path are, we accept that qualified people know what they are doing. In asking this question, he is showing how unqualified he is.

It's wild to me that consumting has become such a massive industry in the last 20 years. It's all just a bunch of kids freah out of college with zero experience in anything practical telling you to cut costs, raises prices, and do light crime. Why do companies pay millions when the CEO's dumbass son could have just told them the same thing?

Planes don't fly great circle routes though, there's overfly fees, weather, mountains, ETOPS and just plain politics... This route looks ordinary compared to some international routes, eg Helsinki to Singapore where you dodge Russia and Ukraine for politics, taking you way below the great circle route, then Turkey for overfly fees and Iran for politics, taking you almost back up to the great circle route, before dipping down again to avoid the Himalayas

The question is very reasonable - and the answer far from obvious as evident from the wrong one being uprooted in this thread. To be clear: I don’t know the answer either, only that you’re right about the curve going the wrong way.

What’s more worrying is the CEO of a global logistics company asking it - and on a public forum rather than of his employees.

It’s akin to a school director standing in the schoolyard during recess and asking why his teachers aren’t in the classroom teaching at that moment.