Plane on a treadmill .. to be on Mythbusters

[omgwtfbbq]

Faxanadu said:
@omg:

Im not so certain about your EDIT point. Imagine the airplane standing still and being moved backwards by the threadmill. Now you would need energy in order to avoid that, meaning the engines would need to move the airplane forward.

But tough one.

yes but remember that when an airplane moves forwards on the runway, the movement is done exclusively by the jets. The wheels are just there so that as little friction as possible is slowing down the takeoff. The amount of stopping power applied by the treadmill will be negligable because of the immense power of the engines compared to the tiny wheels.

Of course, ths applies to a jet plane, which would have no trouble. A light propellor based aircraft may have some movement provided by engines on the wheels, I'm not sure, I don't know enough about light aircraft to answer.