Hacker News Reader

If only airplanes all landed and took off at the same speed. Actual take off and landing speeds will vary depending on the aircraft's characteristics, fuel/passenger load, wind conditions, and density altitude (which varies depending on temperature and humidity). So the idea that you could build a runway with a bank angle that produces 0 lateral force for all aircraft is just not possible. Sorry.

View on HN

Why couldn't the runway adapt to these conditions? Why not arrange gigantic superfast hydraulic jacks all along the track, to vary the runway's tilt, according to the needs of the current aircraft? Oh and very flexible and strong runway materials to handle the change in circumference. As long as there were no power failures, this would be a piece of cake.

Frankly, the circular design isn't ambitious enough, as initially proposed.

Yeah - make a huge rotating disc of a runway that rotates at a constant speed, so the pilot can stick the landing at whatever radius has an angular velocity equal to groundspeed.

Then slow down the disk enough to allow taxiing toward the center exit drain.

It's not going to be as big a deal as, say, clipping a wing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com