Originally posted by: notfred
This thread's already about 3 million posts long, but I have to give my input. The plane WILL take off. The engines of an airplane move it relative to the air around it, not relative to the ground, like many people have said before.
Let's make an analogy. Pretend the plane is propelled forward by a giant winch. There's a rope attached to the front of the plane, and that rope is attached to a winch at the far end of the conveyor. Now, when the winch starts winding in and pulling the plane forward, do you think it matters how fast the conveyer under the plane moves? It doesn't the winch is going to keep pulling in rope at the same rate, and move the plane forward. The only thing that the conveyer will change is the rotation speed of the wheels, but the plane will keep moving forward at a constant rate because it's being pulled by a rope.
The engine on an airplane is like the rope, except the rope and the winch is air instead the engine pulls the plane through the air, independent of the movement of the ground.
You're right. I may have said differently earlier (dunno if I posted) but yeah, you're right.