Can an airplane take off from a conveyor belt?

Member-only story

Space

Follow

--

1

Share

There’s a rather famous riddle about an airplane on a moving conveyor belt. We were recently asked about this problem and decided to address it.

The airplane is on a runway, a sufficiently sized conveyor belt moving in the opposite direction of the aircraft. Will it take off or not?

Who’s right? Those who believe that the airplane won’t move forward, thus the wings won’t generate lift, and the aircraft won’t take off, or those who think that despite everything, the airplane will be able to generate enough lift and take off? Let’s figure it out together.

An airplane moves in the sky and on the ground using the same engines. The mechanism for generating thrust on the ground is no different from the mechanism for generating thrust in the air. To create thrust, the airplane’s turbojet engine constantly takes air from the atmosphere, mixes it with fuel, and burns it. Thrust is generated by expelling the combustion products from the engine nozzle.

It’s important to understand that the airplane’s engines interact with the air surrounding it to create thrust, not with the runway.

Thus, in this problem, the conveyor runway is a merely distracting maneuver introduced to confuse the inexperienced reader. The airplane’s forward movement is not dependent on its interaction with the runway.

The airplane’s engines interact with the air; consequently, the aircraft will move relative to the air, create lift, and take off. What happens under its wheels, for the most part, is irrelevant.

The wheels in the airplane’s landing gear are not meant to accelerate the aircraft. They are primarily designed to reduce friction, and the wheels rotate freely during takeoff. The airplane’s engines don’t spin the wheels — the wheels rotate due to friction with the runway. In fact, the only difference between taking off from a regular runway and a conveyor runway is that the wheels will rotate twice as fast while the airplane moves on the conveyor runway compared to a regular one.

Read also: What will happen if a helicopter hovers in the air for 12 hours?

Indeed, a car wouldn’t be able to move on a conveyor belt, as a car generates traction through interaction with the surface it’s on.

Clape if you want to see more articles about space in your feed!

Subscribe to our channel and ask your questions, which I will answer in the following articles.

If you like my work, you can support me by becoming a member of the medium using this link. It will cost only $5 per month and will help us create even better content.