Quote:
Originally Posted by TheAwkwardGuy
If the plane normally needs a distance of say 200 to take off on a normal runway, it would still need to cover the same distance measured from a fixed location if it was on the treadmill. The treadmill would not prevent the plane from moving forward but the plane's forward motion would cause it's wheels to spin faster than the speed of the treadmill.
Conventional planes need forward motion, not considering wind, to take off and to have forward motion there will always be a difference in speed between whatever is holding the plane up and the ground.
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Not to nitpick here, but a plane
only needs airspeed, not distance, not motion relative to the ground, to fly. A plane in ordinary weather conditions may typically need x amount of runway under y amount of force from it's engines to reach airspeed based on average load, just as you say, but you are adding in variables on a hypothetical equation that were never asked for, and only complicate things needlessly. It is a fact that, relative to the ground, a plane can fly backwards if the wind is blowing fast enough, the plane is light enough relative to wingspan and all the other complex physics that make planes properly fly(it's probably catastrophically dangerous). We could continue to add in a million other real life crucial variables, turbulence, temperature, air density, weight distribution, even materials it is constructed from, all very important in real life, but last I checked, planes don't run on treadmills anyway.
Micheal Scott always tells Dwight: KISS- Keep it simple, stupid!