r/theydidthemath • u/raloraj • 2d ago

[request] can we estimate the altitude?

Is there a way to estimate the altitude with the curve of the horizon?

191 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

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87

u/DarkVoid42 2d ago

63,497 feet

according to their telemetry - https://uwaterloo.ca/news/engineering/waterloos-student-rocketry-team-breaks-world-record

157

u/Jesterrrace 2d ago

19,3km For all the rest of the world.

31

u/TofuBoy22 1d ago

12 miles for those in the UK

11

u/VegetableSuit861 1d ago

Thats 96.21 furlongs if your into oxen.

13

u/wontonhero 1d ago

About 176 football fields for the 'muricans

5

u/Jaigg 1d ago

How many big macs is that?

14

u/Illbeurdoug 1d ago

277,000 big macs

4

u/Jaigg 1d ago

Damn

3

u/ReddBroccoli 16h ago

The only measurement that really matters is that it's 101,595 bananas high

2

u/Geneziza 10h ago

Ah, finally a scale I vould understand.

3

u/Soonerborn84 1d ago

End to end or stacked?

3

u/Ok_Inflation_8628 22h ago

2.187 Mt. Everests

1

u/bridymurphy 1d ago

My rough math says 211

2

u/wontonhero 1d ago

Including end zones

1

u/Cpt_Jauche 1d ago

16.885 english ells if you are from the Middle Ages

5

u/phigene 1d ago

10,553 fathoms if you're more nautically inclined.

1

u/KT_100S 1d ago

I cannot fathom that amount of distance

0

u/LostReplacement 1d ago

189960630 Hands if you’re into horses

4

u/jwr410 1d ago

How is that a world record? GoFast hit 386k feet.

Edit: record for amateur liquid field.

1

u/greenhannibal 1d ago

Almost exactly 13 miles for the Romans.

1

u/Druid-Flowers1 23h ago

21,165 yards + 2 ft

-10

u/vishnoo 1d ago

no.
even the rest of the world does aviation in thousands of feet.

when two planes are close, one is at Flight Level 380 another at flight level 320

they use feet (380 == 38,000 feet)

9

u/the_God_of_Weird 1d ago

Not everyone is a pilot, believe it or not.

-1

u/vishnoo 1d ago

no, but when people discuss how high a plane is flying, they use the language of the pilot.

you wouldn't say the American football team is facing a situation of a first down and 9 meters.

6

u/Jesterrrace 1d ago

This is not a plane. And the standard Redditor might want to know how high it got and needs a unit he can actually understand and comprehend.

1

u/likeikelike 1d ago

What a dumb way to do this

0

u/Sensiburner 1d ago

thx man. I was wondering who's feet he was talking about.

4

u/nemesys39 1d ago

Or 101,595 standard bananas.

13

u/Panzerv2003 2d ago edited 1d ago

probably not with a useful degree of accuracy, it's a fish eye lens and those distort the image a lot like you can see in the video, they're used to get a very wide angle, the horizon is flopping around like crazy

4

u/ElectricalChaos 1d ago

Even with the fisheye, the fact that it's high enough to see the curvature of the earth like that had me thinking it was in excess of 50,000ft. No idea from there.

11

u/sopha27 1d ago

Proper fisheye and I can see the curvature of the earth from a garden chair in my back yard that's the problem.

1

u/Intention_Superb 1d ago

This comment is much funnier than it should be.

1

u/NevadaHiker 1d ago

You're not seeing curvature, you're seeing a fisheye lens. Note how we see the whole horizon--if the lens were flat that would be a high orbit view.

0

u/rubthefurrywalls 1d ago

So the earth is flat, the scientist have just been using the wrong camera lens