Well... first of all on the balsa wood experiment it would require a lot of calculations to make it a valid experiment vs. a real world situation. You would have to calculate many things such as the torque required on the rubber band engine vs. the weight of the plane against the speed of the conveyor or treadmill, etc. ... and probably many other calculations to make it valid. You would also have to have trials of other similar experiments which would create a control group. Isn't that how scientific research is done? By doing things like that? You can't just spin up a rubber band plane and put it on any old treadmill and call it valid science.

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There is a stipulation in the carrier scenario that the plane remain in the same point in space. There is no such stipulation in the conveyor scenario. In the conveyor scenario, the aircraft can move, regardless of what the surface does.

Maybe the wording of the conveyor scenario is creating our little conundrum and the disagreements.

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Once again, in the Carrier scenario, ROck stipulated that the aircraft must stay in the same position relative to the earth and the air. Of course, if you remove this stipulation, and replace the conveyor with an "infinitely ling aircraft carrier", the answers are exactly the same. The problem with Rock's question is that there's no way the motion of the aircraft carrier could affect a plane that's trying to fly off it, other than steaming downwind.

I'll read the aircraft scenario again. I don't recall it the way you described, but you could be correct.