It does but in the same way it's true that Jupiter's gravity affects you, personally. For all practical purposes GR has no effect on our planet, fun observations of Mercury's perihelion and GPS signal-beaming satellites aside. GR matters a tiny little bit for certain specialized engineering problems like doing precise inter-planetary transits. It matters a bit more for long-term position prediction of highly eccentric bodies, and really only starts to really matter at the cosmological scale.
It's a matter of perspective. Our Solar System's mass is 98% in the Sun. Earth is tiny and small and, as a GR object, is moving very slowly, and that only according to how its particles were set in motion at the beginning of time.
As others have said, gravitational lensing is a real thing, but that is a cosmological effect, and we are completely at the whim of the Initial Conditions for these opportunities.
(If there are real engineering applications for GR, especially in optics, I would be delighted and grateful to learn more!)
And some detail on the GINGER project, "Sagnac Effect, Ring Lasers, and Terrestrial Tests of [post-Newtonian] Gravity" (clarification mine), https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4434/3/2/84/htm
I imagine there is some literature on higher order modes in dispersion compensating fibre spools placed over underground flows (magma, water) but don't really have time to think about what decade practical engineering problems might emerge.
Of possible interest to you, quoting preface of following: "These few words should make it clear that quantum optics, experimental gravitation and measurement theory are not nearly as far apart as one might first have thought. However, there has traditionally been little contact between physicists working in these various fields." (which is a little less true now because of e.g. LIGO) https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-1-4613-3712-6
Finally, it strikes me as unfair to to invoke Initial Conditions as a way to discount the relevance of gravitational observations. What, if not Intial Conditions, determines the frequency of your HeNe laser? Where did the neon in particular come from? (spoiler: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neon#Occurrence) And that helium is mostly a cosmological effect! ("The vast majority of helium was formed by Big Bang nucleosynthesis one to three minutes after the Big Bang. As such, measurements of its abundance contribute to cosmological models.")
"The vast majority of helium was formed by Big Bang nucleosynthesis one to three minutes after the Big Bang. As such, measurements of its abundance contribute to cosmological models."
Strong evidence that God loves helium, and considers it a good party trick to have some on hand! But I always thought He was generated from fusing two H into an He in a Sun somewhere.
It's a matter of perspective. Our Solar System's mass is 98% in the Sun. Earth is tiny and small and, as a GR object, is moving very slowly, and that only according to how its particles were set in motion at the beginning of time.
As others have said, gravitational lensing is a real thing, but that is a cosmological effect, and we are completely at the whim of the Initial Conditions for these opportunities.
(If there are real engineering applications for GR, especially in optics, I would be delighted and grateful to learn more!)