[SamBam]

The original quote said "a laser shot toward the horizon will eventually hit the Earth’s curves."

No, on a sphere a laser shot towards the horizon will not hit the Earth's "curves."

Shooting towards the horizon is by definition shooting tangentially to the surface you are on. The horizon is the point where the sky meets the land or sea. If you make a straight line from your laser to the horizon, it will continue out into space.

Your explanation of what they meant makes sense: a laser shot towards a distant target, not towards the horizon. But that's not what they said. And, obviously, I did not actually think the fault was the engineers' but the journalist's explanation.