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Reply to "Airplane on a treadmill"

The deception in this question is the relationship of the wheels and the conveyor. As others have pointed out for an airplane to take off is dependent on the air speed across the wings. Most people tend to relate the ground speed with take off speed, but in reality it is dependent on air speed. The thrust of the aircraft pusses against the ambient air not the ground.
You might look at it in reverse and conciser landing on a convenor, how much roll out would it need.
There is a story of a P3 aircraft landing at Keflavik, Iceland where the wind was coming directly down the runway at near the landing speed of the aircraft. The result of which allowed the aircraft to have a very short roll-out (less than 100 yd, yes that is one hundred).

Now I'll give you a new one to ponder, If a rope was warped around the earth, in a perfect circle, at the equator, and you wanted to move it one foot further away from the earth all the way around. How much more rope would you have to add?

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