madmike2
Shtirrenuppenmeister
I was in the "Can't Take Off" camp until someone explained it to me.Looks like you can run that "experiment" in a variety of ways to get any answer you want..... The implecation is that the plane will take off on the treadmill but that must be a pretty long tread mill as the plane still needs a long ways to accelerate to a certain airspeed. If the treadmill doesn't keep it stationary then the treadmill needs to be as long as the runway to say the airplane would "take off on the treadmill"...otherwise it would run off the end of it getting up to the sufficient air speed.
The airplane is not dependent on "wheel speed" to take off. If the aircraft needs to travel (using round, theoretical numbers) 100' to achieve a 50 mph takeoff speed, then any thrust produced needs to move that aircraft the 100' to achieve the 50 mph.
The WHEEL speed might be 100 mph to account for (notice, not OVERCOME) the runway/treadmill reverse direction, but the aircraft isn't dependent upon wheel-speed to achieve takeoff.
Using your example, if one could build a constant-moving treadmill of gigantic proportions, and run it against the direction of the aircraft, the thrust of the engines would still accelerate the plane's airframe (though the wheels would be spinning at an ever greater speed) until the plane reached the needed takeoff velocity/distance.
Unlike a car, bus, truck or train that are dependent on wheels being driven to achieve distance/motion (or a boat in a flowing river). THEN, one could move the treadmill in the opposite direction at the indicated speed and the vehicle would remain stationary.
It seems that Mythbusters proved that point. This is not the same as an experiment where the plane was being drug backwards at 300 mph and then had to overcome that inertia, but rather an experiment to see if matching the ground speed with the needed airspeed would prevent the aircraft from achieving lift velocity. Nope! The airplane still moved ahead with the wheels spinning madly.
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And...enough with the name calling and pseudo *****-slapping. Its sophomoric at best and at least insulting and unnecessary. So you were right...you've likely been wrong somewhere and/or sometime. These are friends and riding pals, not targets. If they can't get their mind wrapped around a concept that YOU haven't been able to explain to the satisfaction of their inquisitive nature, whose fault is that?
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