FE Meme
Branson Went 50 Miles Up: No Curve?
#22: Richard Branson's Unity22 flight reached about 50 miles up and showed no curvature, accidentally proving a flat, motionless Earth.
The Meme
Phone photo of a TV screen: CNN Unity22 live feed with curved limb visible; white caption bar "50 miles up, no curve, thanks Branson" across the top.
Why It Spreads
A billionaire suborbital hop on live TV feels like independent proof, especially when a bold caption declares "50 miles up, no curve" over a news broadcast. Viewers primed to distrust agency footage treat Unity22 as a gotcha without calculating how much horizon dip ~80 km altitude should show or how wide-angle windows distort the limb.
What It Gets Wrong
The phone photo of a CNN Unity22 TV feed carries a caption bar reading 50 miles up, no curve even though the curved limb is visible beneath the text, so the visual evidence contradicts its own claim. Virgin Galactic's apogee is roughly 80 to 90 km (~50 miles), where d_h ≈ √(2Rh) with R ≈ 6371 km gives a horizon near ~1000 km away and horizon dip on the order of several degrees. Cherry-picking framing or misreading a partial arc in a TV crop is inconsistent with spherical geometry at suborbital altitude and with many Unity22 frames that show curvature. TestTheGlobe's No Curvature Is Visible and TestTheGlobe's Curvature Calculator walk through the observations and predictions this image skips.
The Debunk
At ~80 km (~50 mi) altitude, spherical geometry predicts several degrees of horizon dip and a curved limb when the full field of view is visible; that fits many Unity22 frames. A TV screenshot with a curved limb captioned "no curve" is inconsistent with the altitude and optics the flight actually reached. Use TestTheGlobe's Curvature Calculator to compare the meme's claim with a measurable prediction.
- TestTheGlobe's No Curvature Is Visible: at ~80 km with R ≈ 6371 km, horizon dip scales as √(2h/R) and is on the order of several degrees; d_h ≈ √(2Rh) gives a horizon near ~1000 km away.
- TestTheGlobe's Curvature Calculator lets you enter altitude and distance to compare expected horizon dip with the meme's "no curve" caption.
- The image is a phone photo of a CNN TV feed where the Earth's limb appears curved beneath the "no curve" text bar, so the visual evidence contradicts its own caption.
- TestTheGlobe's Horizon Distance Calculator shows how far the geometric horizon sits at suborbital altitude, the baseline the meme never checks before declaring curvature absent.