Mythbusters Plane on Conveyor Belt Ending

Of course it took off! I don’t know why there was ever any controversy because the wheels have nothing to do with the air moving over the wings, which still happens when the PROPELLER PULLS THE PLANE FORWARD, 😂🤪🙄
What next can a plane take off in a wind tunnel with the wind blowing equal speed from behind!? HAHAHAHAHAH

This proves you can shorten the runway but not take off with the proper speed of both belt and plane

They did NOT put the plane on a conveyor belt that matched the speed of the aircraft. I'm shocked at their sophomoric lack of understanding of the basic physics at work here.

What matters is air speed not ground (conveyer) speed.

Wasn’t the question about a 747 with its engines under the wingsz A propeller plane can generate its own lift

Can a plane take off from a conveyor belt? Only if the “conveyor belt”surface length is long enough to cover the plane’s takeoff distance that would be required anyway for the pressure/temperature conditions, rendering the conveyor superfluous. Not particularly exciting.

There is certainly a speed of the conveyor, much faster than takeoff speed, that the friction of the wheel bearings would be high enough such that it would exceed its ability to spin without impeding takeoff and actual forward speed would be cancelled thus no takeoff.

The planes engine created enough forward thrust to overcome the backward force of the belt moving underneath it. I’m sure the air craft throttle was open more than he would have needed for a normal take off.

It's all relative. If you throw a paper plane on a moving platform, it initially matches then exceeds that velocity, it down't care how fast the ground is moving.

this is stupid, you used a plane designed for slow speed short distance takeoff.

Ridiculous the plane was clearly moving faster than the treadmill.

dude how can anyone not understand this... it's the prop that pulls the air, not the wheels that make it go forward

Airspeed is completely seperate from groundspeed. Lift is created by having a positive airspeed over the wings whereas groundspeed only matters to the wheels.

I would have loved to have seen the control. Speed sensors and camera for conveyor, speed sensor and camera mounted on the landing gear for the wheel

Apparently Mark is a C science student.

Dear Skunkworks,
I was threatened by Lockheed Martin ten years ago for having a domain name that was "strikingly similar" to the registered trade name, Skunkworks. After assuring their attorneys the only flying aluminum in my shop was empty beer cans, I took down the name and re-branded. I guess with all the social media being what is, times have changed.
Best wishes,
Stinkkatze

That pilot should be embarrassed for not knowing that the plane would take off as normal.

Question: are bananas purple?
Answer: yes, grapes are purple?

So basically the truck goes 20 mph and you think that a guy putting full throttle down to take off an airplane is not going to accelerate past 20 mph? This is ridiculous. They proved nothing. The question is if the conveyor belt continuously accelerates to match the speed of the plane wheels.

The conveyor belt did not match the plane’s wheel speed.

Air must move over the wing from front to back to produce lift. That plane accelerated past the point to gain lift. This is why most airplanes must take off into the wind. not in the direction the wind is coming from.

this would never work using a plane without wheels, so... good luck with that one, this "experiment" was likely propaganda

the entire lack of discussion about coefficient of friction makes this a very unscientific video, these guys literally never calculated the actual speed the conveyer would need to move to counteract the planes wheels, it was entirely arbitrary

It’s really scaring, how dumb this is…

Your "experiment" is invalid from start to finish. The airplane in the meme is a Boeing 747 while your airplane is a propeller plane.Mythbusters - BUSTED.
The conveyor belt in the FACEBOOK MEME myth supports the entire weight of the plane. Your tarp did not support the weight of the plane allowing the weight of the plane to be transferred to the ground through the tarp by the wheels. Mythbusters - BUSTED !
Your tarp was not moving the same exact linear feet per second as the airplane wheels were moving in linear feet per second. You can clearly see that because the airplane wheels were visibly traveling at more linear feet per second. The airplane was gaining ground because of the difference in the speed of your tarp and the airplane wheels by the fact that the airplane was passing the cones on the ground. That enabled the airplane to achieve the ground speed required for liftoff.
Conclusion ? Mythbusters "Airplane on a conveyor belt" - BUSTED !

The plane sucks the air infront of it, its basically pulling itself along an invisible rope in the sky.

For it to not take off, it'd need to have no engine, in which case it'd be a glider.
It's why gliders get towed by other aircraft.

Yeh, the truck was not pulling ast enough. You could see the plane WAS advancing foward. That's why it took off. Next time pull faster sh the plane is not moving relative to the ground

This is stupid because without the engine driving the prop it would never keep flying so what is the point, just proves a plane will start to fly when it reaches rotation speed.

This is idiotic at best. The conveyor belt is clearly not moving as fast as the plane because the plane is moving forward on top of it. This “busts” absolutely nothing. A more accurate test would be to lock the wheels in place and open the engine up full throttle and see if the plane takes off. Anyone wanna wager what happens?

Cool beans, lithium for Adam..🤔

This test is flawed and does not represent the myth. This just makes the wheels spin twice as fast - the myth is could a plane take off from a conveyor if the conveyor matches the planes wheels exactly - in that case it wouldn't because it still needs forward airspeed - to put it a different way, imagine a plane on a dyno - the second those wheels start moving as the plane tries to pull it through the air, the wheels on the dyno spin at the same rate making the plane remain stationary. We know power is not being fed to the wheels

and just like that.. mythbusters discovers... that airplanes are not cars...

I'm a pilot and an engineer and I'm confident the plane will take off, but I don't agree that this test proves it. The planes wheels in this example are now going 50mph, not 25. The riddle doesn't say the conveyor is set to a fixed speed (the usual takeoff speed)... The conveyor will match the wheel speed, so eventually the conveyor will go 1 million mph in theory. This just proves that if the conveyor is set to 25, the planes wheels will go to 50mph. If the conveyor is set to 100mph, the planes wheels will to 125. What about infinity?

Is the belt matching the plane speed?

Dramatizing something that is utterly stupid. Airplanes do not accelerate by rotating the tires. Geeeze.

This makes no sense. One of the more useless tests they've ever done. If the plane speed came from wheels, yes. But since it's from the engine or prop, no. The only thing to change is the wheels are forced to spin faster. I said this BEFORE watching the video.

Mmmm, the plane WAS MOVING FORWARD enough for air to move over the wing to create lift, total fail mythbusters.

If the planes speed was equal to the conveyer belt, it would have appeared stationary. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Why would this be the least bit surprising? The wheels on an airplane have no drive train. The PROPELLER is moving it forward. All the conveyor belt is doing is making the wheels turn faster.

Pointles and waste of time

This time you failed and dont know it.

The speed of wheels is higher than speed of belt. Condition "exactly match the speed of wheels" is not met.

That’s a poorly done experiment does not re-create the hypothetical paradoxical question

It's weird to know that I have a better inherent understanding of archimedean physics than a guy who got famous for doing this type of stuff on TV.

It's obvious that the conveyor belt DIDN'T match the speed of the wheels of the plane, because if it did, the plane would not have moved forward, this didn't bust the myth, at all.

We're left knowing the same thing we knew before, if the plane moves forward it's about to generate the lift needed to come off the ground and fly, if the truck was able to go faster, the plane wouldn't have lifted off the ground, because it wouldn't have went forward.

Thing is though, the plane was still moving forward. The theory is the plane DOES NOT move as the belt matching the speed and the plane remains in place

The question itself is flawed. You cannot even create the experiment to begin with. It's not a simple problem because it just isn't possible to create a belt that does this.
The belt has to be able to move infinitely fast and accelerate as fast as the plane can.
Let's say the plane tries to take off at 25 mph. The plane starts to move, the belt starts to move, and the plane is still trying to accelerate faster than the belt.
If the belt moves 25 mph, the plane will still move forward at 25 mph. Then the belt will accelerate to 50 mph, and the plane will still move forward relative to the ground at 25 mph. The cycle repeats, with the plane trying to move 25mph relative to the ground and the belt moving ever faster. If the belt had a top speed, then the plane just moves 25 mph faster than the belt and flies.
However, the belt can instantly accelerate and move infinitely fast. So the belt is always accelerating, the plane's wheel turning is constantly accelerating, and the plane stays still.
Eventually the belt no longer has to accelerate because the incredible amount of friction in the wheels from the wheels moving so fast would contribute to resisting the plane's forward motion. The wheels would grind down to nothing and the plane would be fighting the friction of dragging its belly on the ground, but the belt is no longer moving, so the plane can take off, if it survives intact.
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Another way to look at this.
The wheels aren't allowed to move faster than the belt.
In your experiment the wheels are moving 2x the speed of the belt.

What if the plane and conveyer belt were the same speed? Not debating just curious.

But the fact is the treadmill MATCHES the wheel speed. In this case, the wheels moved faster than the tarp/treadmill. It’s wrong

😂 what was this shit, the belt was too slow for the plane so of course it took off

This is not busted at all. In this experiment the plane's wheels just rotated faster than they normally would to compensate for the truck pulling the ground underneath it and the truck would never be able to go fast enough to adjust its own speed to that of the plane's wheels. Now if it was on an actual conveyor belt that was tracking the speed of the wheels of the plane and constantly adjusting it's own speed to match the speed of the plane's wheels the plane would never move forward (or backwards) therefore never getting air flowing over the wings to give it lift. It's the same principle as if the plane was bolted to the ground. Now give me my money back.