Plane on a treadmill .. to be on Mythbusters

[kn]

drkohler said:

Sqrl said:

omgwtfbbq said:
..

..At that point the wheels would be rolling along the belt at 200 mph, but the plane relative to the earth would still be moving a 0mph and the same would be true of the airspeed over the wings. Thus no lift here.

Now since the plane's motive thrust is limited by the relative airspeed , which is currently at 0, it is capable of continuing to speed up and taking off on the treadmill if it should choose to do so.

Come to think of this while typing, I actually remember a mythbuster thing where they demonstrated that a propeller plane can start and land on a truck roof moving at take-off speed. This is the same problem, only in a different frame of reference...

 

 Whoah, there killer.  The truck example has nothing in common... The truck is MOVING and therefore there is air movement across the wings of the plance hence providing lift.

Also note that it isn't going to take but a small amount of thrust to overcome the rolling resistance of the plane on the conveyer belt and that level of throttle won't be anywhere near enough to actually get a plane airbore if it was on a concrete runway.  It might be enough to taxi, but not enough to actually generate any real lift...