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Originally posted by ChefTyler:
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Originally posted by GrayHam:
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Originally posted by Mobycat:
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Originally posted by cadams7407:
OMG! does the navy know about this!? Why don't they have treadmills on all the air craft carriers!?!?!?!?!
Bad example there, Leroy.

An aircraft on an aircraft carrier uses a catapult.

The distance a plane takes to take off on land is the same as the distance to take off if there were a treadmill under it.

Put yourself on iceskates. Stand on ice next to a pole. Put flippers on your hands. Now flap like a bird trying to fly forward (not up). You WILL move relative to the pole. Same thing.[/b]
He's not getting that the plane's engines are providing thrust, I bet.

I think he's one of the people envisioning a static aircraft on a treadmill . . .[/b]
Willing to bet he's one of those people that are cornfused and think the engines drive the wheels.
Actually, no. I get how thrusters move the plane.

I'm from the "traditional role of a treadmill" crowd.

For those that say it will take off, then it will take a very long treadmill, about the length of a runway, perhaps? Where the wheels on the plane are spinning twice as fast as they would on a runway, right? That makes the treadmill a moot point. In fact .. that would be a conveyer belt .. not a treadmill, a subtle, but important difference.

A treadmill is supposed to simulate travel, but at the same time, confine actual movement to a space nearly the size of the object on it. SO going with that, if the plane ain't movin, it ain't gonna catch flight no matter how fast you get the wheels spinning with the treadmill.

The thrusters are superflous in the treadmill experiment. Cause as soon as you turn them on, it will drive off the treadmill onto pavment = fail.