The Amateur Rockets That Showed the Curve

The curve of the Earth is only visible from orbit (or with special equipment) - an amateur rocket flight can't show it.

Kip Daugirdas, an amateur rocketeer and University of Michigan alum, has been flying self-funded rockets to the edge of space since 2019. His December 2019 flight reached ~90 km (video: '56 Miles (90 km) Above Earth'); 2019 press reported him as the first self-funded private citizen to reach the edge of space. In October 2022 he flew MESOS - a two-stage rocket he built over three years (12.3 ft, 87 lb, O4500 + M830 motors) from Black Rock Desert, Nevada: GPS-verified apogee 293,488 ft (89.5 km, 55.6 mi), Mach 4.18, 15.6 g, safely recovered. MESOS flew successfully again in October 2023 (89.5 km). GoPro cameras with special rectilinear low-distortion lenses recorded the flights.

The horizon's curve is clearly visible in the footage - whether the horizon sits above or below the centre of the frame (MCToon's analysis links both positions, at t=494s and t=501s). The rectilinear lens was specifically chosen to eliminate lens distortion, and the same curve appears at different positions in the frame. The University of Michigan featured the 2022 flight: 'U-M alum launches rocket 55.6 miles above Earth's surface.'

The usual flat-earth responses followed: 'camera distortion', 'the lens does it'. But the lens was specifically a low-distortion rectilinear one, the same curve appears at different frame positions, and the apogee is GPS-verified - a lens artefact cannot explain all of that.

You don't need a $35,000 expedition to see the curve - an amateur rocket and a $300 action camera do. The barrier to verifying the shape of the Earth keeps falling: satellites, then flights, then balloons, now private rockets.