The first muscle cars were fast horses....

Instead of fast horses, I would say actual muscles...

or better still...

That looks more like a truck...

Not fast but powerful...

Luxury version....you can't afford

Economy version....

we actually raked hay with a team of Belgians... a lot quieter.. and really about the same speed.

No offense intended but you need to learn a bit about great circle navigation before you try to describe intercontinental aerial navigation.

Read the Wiki here.

Hooker

No offense, but maybe the issue is, to accept, that Earth is indeed a sphere!

There was me thinking this blog was about muscle cars.

Bazzer.

"to save time and fuel, aircraft shoot their way north and arc gently south."

a.k.a a 'great circle' - the shortest distance between two points on a sphere.

Or on a near - sphere.

What flat maps do to beautiful planets is the problem.

I had this very car except mine was black including the bumpers, It had cream leather upholstery & was amazing to drive, I was doing 90mph down the M20 & floored the gas & I got wheel spin, if I pulled away from standstill in 1st I'd get wheel spin so I used to use 2nd instead, I sold it in the end as I didn't think I would be able to control myself to not race it.

Happy days.

Bazzer.

An airplane could try to fly in a straight from, say, LA to Hong Kong. But the flight would soon encounter a lot of water, then an awful lot of land.

Let's just say the straight line track would take a lot longer to reach Hong Kong than the great circle route. A LOT longer.

A Stanley Steamer set the world record for the fastest mile in an automobile (28.2 seconds) in 1906. This record (127 mph (204 km/h)) was not broken by any automobile until 1911,

The shortest distance between two points in a plain is a straight line. That is the full sentence. Take a string and stretch it tight between the two cities. That is the route that a plane will fly. It is a straight line, and it is the shortest straight line that you can draw on a sphere between two points. I have a question for any one who cares to answer. Do they still teach geometry in high schools?

What is a high school?

If you are not high in school you are a teacher?

High school is at the top of a hill!

The shortest distance between two points in a plain is a straight line. That is the full sentence. Take a string and stretch it tight between two cities on globe. That is the route that a plane will fly. It is a straight line, and it is the shortest straight line that you can draw on a sphere between two points. I have a question for any one who cares to answer. Do they still teach geometry in high schools?

Plane, not plain.

And while were discussing time and distance between two points, let's mention the cycloid curve and the brachistochrone.

https://youtu.be/li-an5VUrIA

And no most schools don't - and have never - taught spherical trigonometry in high school. I learned spherical trig in college as part of an astrophysics class. I'd even bet it's not covered much in Calculus class when analytical geometry is covered.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great-circle_navigation

I remember high school geometry. The teacher said you could draw an equilateral triangle or a right triangle, but not a right equilateral triangle. The next day I brought in a ping-pong ball with a right equilateral triangle drawn on it.

And just to be really precise, the great circle routes are modified slightly according to weather conditions, no-fly zones, mountains, tall man-made structures, and flight rules:

"Commercial aircraft are not allowed to operate along a route that is out of range of a suitable place to land if an emergency such as an engine failure occurs. The ETP calculations serve as a planning strategy, so flight crews always have an 'out' in an emergency event, allowing a safe diversion to their chosen alternate." -Wiki

(The ETP = Equal Time Point is similar to the 'point of no return'.)

The original statement that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line remains correct for ANY Euclidian space. That statement does not include a surface constraint. That statement also does not address feasability.

As another poster mentioned, a straight line from Hong Kong to L.A. will encounter water and land, so it is not usable. It is still the shortest distance.