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I found a similiar question that also asks for the distance from a point to a line but works on a sphere.

Now I'm trying to figure out the length of the geodesic line d between the given geodesic AB and the point C.

Is this the same problem as in the given question? Am I overthinking this?

For illustration

Ellispoid

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    It's definitely not as simple as for a sphere. Just computing the distance between two points seems quite complicated: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincenty%27s_formulae2012-05-25
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    Vincenty is one of many ways to compute the distance of two points on an ellipsoid. And, yes it looks rather scary but is easily implemented in code.2012-05-25

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