Originally posted by: mrSHEiK124
Originally posted by: abaez
I think my problem is that if I'm perpendicular to the treadmill and I am looking at the plane, the way I understand it is that the plane would not move forward with me looking straight at it. It would not go forward because the treadmill is basically "taking" the ground from under it and the plane is not moving forward. That's just how I see it - everyone says it's wrong, but since people say the treadmill cannot counteract, I just can't visualize it correctly.
If you take it another way, say a plane is landing onto a conveyor belt and the conveyor belt is matching the planes forward speed - if it lands on the belt perfectly wouldn't it just stay in the exact place it touched the ground not going forward? My mind tells me it would, but I'm sure it's wrong.
Alright. I'll try and be civilized.
A treadmill can do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to stop an airplane from moving.
Now that that's out of the way, let's address both paragraphs of your post. Ignore the wheels on the airplane; it has no wheels. If you want wheels there, that's fine too; point is an airplane's wheels have absolutely nothing to do with how it takes off. The pilot turns on the engines, they spin up, and begin to suck air through them. The airplane moves forward, skidding across the treadmill if it's got no wheels, and rolling with the wheels at 2x the speed they regularly would if the wheels are still there.
Second paragraph. If an airplane lands on a treadmill matching it's forward speed, it'll keep going forwards just as it was. It amazes me how much the NUMBNUTS that believe it won't take off ignore THIS PICTURE:
http://www.math.hmc.edu/baldyconf/JetBlue292Landing.jpg
How the hell do you think it landed yet STILL MOVED with wheels that were jammed SIDEWAYS? *DING DING* THE WHEELS HAVE GOT SHIT TO DO WITH HOW AN AIRPLANE WORKS. The force moving the airplane comes completely from the jet engines, otherwise according to "it doesn't take off" logic, as soon as an airplane brought its landing gear up (I wonder why they call it landing gear, BECAUSE THAT'S THE ONLY REASON IT NEEDS TO EXIST) it would fall out of the sky because the wheels weren't putting power to the ground anymore....