• FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    The wheels are attached to the plane so they move at the same time as the plane. But, I get what you’re trying to say, that the wheels are effectively being dragged by the plane, they’re not powering the movement.

    no. I’m saying that by the time the wheel is rolling, the plane’s is already moving forward, the engines have already overcome the drag in the wheels. the treadmill is locked to the wheels, not the plane. The plane would continue accelerating even as the wheels reported weird rates of turning.

    As for the (very brief) time delay, that’s a function of the plane’s gear’s suspension that is quite well sprung.

    the rate of roll on the tire is, effectively, decoupled from the airspeed (and groundspeed) of the plane. which makes this:

    No, by definition it’s the same. The conveyor moves with however much speed is necessary to stop the forward motion of the plane.

    … entirely different. an affixed anchor does not allow the free motion that a wheel would.

    You don’t need to deflate the tires, you merely need to increase the speed at which the conveyor moves to match the speed of the wheels.

    And one of a few things happen. Either the plane has enough engine thrust to overcome the acceleration induced by the wheels, and therefore takes off, or it does not.

    In the case that it does not, the wheels would continue spinning in increasing RPM until the plane begins moving backwards. because, again, the airspeed of the airplane is not dependent on the wheel’s RPM. Assuming the airplane doesn’t crash from suddenly becoming incredibly difficult to control… eventually it would take off anyhow. because the airflow over the wings would still generate lift. (though they would become horribly inefficient.) and therefore take off.

    this is of course ignoring the whole “can a pilot actually control that and manage a take off like that” thing. If you don’t want to grant godlike piloting skills, we could then just make the treadmill irrelevant and leave the brakes on.