SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
When it comes to airport infrastructure, the design of terminals may have changed over the years, but the long, straight runway has stayed remarkably consistent. Dutch researcher Henk Hesselink thinks it's time for a change. His radical ideas about runway design would transform the modern airport's operations, layout, and efficiency—and even its architecture.
Since 2012, Hesselink and his team at the National Aerospace Laboratory (NLR) in the Netherlands have been working on a runway design that's circular instead of straight. Their so-called Endless Runway Project—funded by the European Commission's Seventh Framework Program, which supported research in breakthrough technology from 2007 through 2013, and in partnership with several other European scientific agencies—proposes a circular design that would enable planes to take off in the direction most advantageous for them. Namely, the direction without any crosswinds.
https://www.fastcodesign.com/90107235/why-airport-runways-should-actually-be-circular
[Related]: giant circles from the air
Do you think such a design would work in practice?
(Score: 4, Informative) by MadTinfoilHatter on Thursday March 30 2017, @03:54AM
A lot of people have already commented on the infeasibility of having planes take off and land on a curve, changing winds et.c. But that only the start of the problems. An issue just as big is that a system like this would completely f*** up air traffic control. Planes typically are assigned standard arrival and departure routes [skybrary.aero] which have to be meticulously made and certified for each runway - completely infeasible with a "circular runway". Oh, and let's talk about bad weather. How are you going to construct an ILS [wikipedia.org] for a runway like that? And this doesn't even address safety issues like runway clearance, or logistical issues like taxiing and ground control.
TL;DR This suggestion was made by someone who is clearly clueless about aviation, but latched on to the one thing he did understand - it's easier to land in a direct headwind. Nothing to see here, move along.