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posted by martyb on Wednesday March 29 2017, @10:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the we'll-get-around-to-it-someday dept.

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?


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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 30 2017, @03:45PM (1 child)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday March 30 2017, @03:45PM (#486530)

    It's big, damn big, largest airport in the continental US.

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  • (Score: 2) by subs on Thursday March 30 2017, @03:58PM

    by subs (4485) on Thursday March 30 2017, @03:58PM (#486542)

    Yeah well Colorado isn't exactly packed, so they could afford to just build it spread out like that. Nevertheless, even if you built a 12000-foot radius circular runway, it would have less capacity than Denver's six regular runways. Contrary to popular opinion, aircraft are perfectly capable taking off in even pretty brutal crosswinds (the kinds which would make standing upright difficult, so 30+ mph).