Sorry to revive a deadish thread but....

If the plane can take off, does it take off in a shorter distance or what? If it does, why doesn't the military use this to their advantage?

 

No. It should be similar or slightly longer distance.

 

Oh. Darn it...

I am suprised that the military doesn't use sling shots for planes. They only use them on aircraft carriors, I think.

 

Pretty much. It's not practical...the pneumatic driven system on a carrier requires a boiler to create the steam, and then you need the rails and stuff in the ground to actually make it work. Not to mention the amount of stress on airframes and landing gear that are launched off decks....

 

They do use sling shots on the aircraft carriers. h:

 

I see everyone finally agreed that the airplane will take off because it's not powered by its wheels...but they still seem to have missed the point. Fact is, even a car powered by its wheels would be able to make progress down the conveyor. The only difference is that its engine would have to work twice as hard becasue it has to compensate for the conveyor, where as the airplane doesn't.

 

you're dumb.

 

Since I'm dumb I probably wouldn't understand, but would you care to explain to everyone else how you arrived at this conclusion?

 

yes, it will take off. the engines will pull the jet along via suction. that's where you get the thrust, not on the tarmac.

the only difference between being on the conveyor vs. tarmac is that the wheels will be spinning faster.

edit > 5 pages? was this already resolved?

 

You lose... If the car is accelerating and the belt has a sensor to speed up at the same rate as the car, matching speed for speed no matter what, the car won't go anywhere.


If the belt had a set speed or was a little behind in the matching, then yes slowly the car would move off the belt, until the car hit its top speed, thus giving the belt a chance to match.