quote:
The answer is yes. An airplane isn’t like a car. It doesn’t move by pushing against the ground. It therefore moves within the frame of reference of the air. The only thing that will happen here is the wheels would spin twice as fastt

I accept that this is the predominant thought on this, and I also accept that I'm a dumbass, but I've always questioned that if the treadmill perfectly matches the rotational speed of the wheels, how is there movement in the X-axis? At some point the wheels would have to spin faster than the treadmill to achieve any positive X-axis movement, which nullifies the scenario of the treadmill matching the wheel speed, right?

Like, if I take a free-spinning wheel and place it on a treadmill, to move the wheel forward I have to spin the wheel faster than the treadmill is going, but if the treadmill increases it's speed to match, how am I going forward?

This post was edited on 4/10/24 at 4:22 pm

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Posted by Volvagia

Fort Worth

Member since Mar 2006

51937 posts

Posted on 4/10/24 at 4:28 pm to BottomlandBrew

You still are thinking of terms of forward motion coming from energy sent to the wheels.

I don’t know how else to say it. The wheels don’t even play in the physics of it all really, outside of a very marginal increase of friction.

If you put a toy car on the string of a treadmill going at a moderate speed, you don’t feel a doubling of the pull if you double the speed. You feel almost the exact same force.

Similarly, the conveyor doesn’t impart enough force to negate the thrust of the engines no matter how fast it moves.

The conveyor can be running at 10x times takeoff speed and it won’t stop the aircraft.

This post was edited on 4/10/24 at 4:32 pm

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