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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Longest Straight Line Paths on Water or Land on the Earth
From: Robert H. van Gent
Date: 2018 Apr 23, 11:51 -0700
From: Robert H. van Gent
Date: 2018 Apr 23, 11:51 -0700
Perhaps of interest
https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.07389
Rohan Chabukswar & Kushal Mukherjee: Longest Straight Line Paths on Water or Land on the Earth
Summary:
There has been some interest recently in determining the longest distance one can sail for on the earth without hitting land, as well as in the converse problem of determining the longest distance one could drive for on the earth without encountering a major body of water. In its basic form, this is an optimisation problem, rendered chaotic by the presence of islands and lakes, and indeed the fractal nature of the coasts. In this paper we present a methodology for calculating the two paths using the branch-and-bound algorithm.
Rob van Gent