SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
BBC News has a follow-up article to the circular airport runway proposal:
Last month we published a video arguing the case for circular runways at airports, as part of a series called World Hacks. It took off and went viral. The video has had more than 36 million views on Facebook and generated heated debate on social media - including within the aviation community. Many people are sceptical about the concept.
So we decided to hand-pick some of the top concerns and put them straight to the man proposing the idea: Dutch engineer Henk Hesselink. This is what he had to say.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Circular Runways: Engineer Defends His Proposal
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 24 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
"In my opinion, Richard Stallman wouldn't recognize terrorism if it
came up and bit him on his Internet."
-- Ross M. Greenberg
(Score: 1) by Deeo Kain on Sunday April 23 2017, @05:55PM (1 child)
The only superior landing track design is the elliptic one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 23 2017, @06:05PM
> elliptic??
What sort of ellipse -- a long skinny one or a nearly round one?
Another option -- rather than configuring runways in an "X" arrangement (two long runways crossing near the terminal buildings), you could make them in a big square or rectangle. At the corners, use the same sort of banked turn as the circular proposal in tfa -- but do all the landing and taking off on the straight bits. Just means that instead of getting to the end of the runway, you roll out around the corner after the high speed part of the landing. When taking off, you start accelerating on one of the cross wind straights, make the corner at some middle speed then take off into the wind as usual.