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>I once saw a fascinating pamphlet advocating for graded runways: planes taking off head downhill, landing, uphill. The idea was that you would save a ton of fu
by magduf 7y ago
>I once saw a fascinating pamphlet advocating for graded runways: planes taking off head downhill, landing, uphill. The idea was that you would save a ton of fuel.
It doesn't work, unless you build double the number of runways, at huge expense, because you'd have to have runways going both uphill and downhill in the same direction.
Runways in real airports go both directions, not just one. They change direction depending on the prevailing wind direction. You never land with a tailwind, or take off with one. So a graded runway wouldn't be usable part of the time, unless you built two of them like I said, or made the runway much longer.
Honestly, this idea sounds like something dreamt up by someone who's never piloted an airplane. I've seen other proposals for airport/runway design like this which also were dreamt up by people who had never flown an airplane, and the reasons their ideas made no sense were easily pointed out by actual pilots.
- carapace 7y agoBuild a mound and put the airport on top with the runways radiating? I'm certainly not knowledgeable enough to argue the point.
- magduf 7y agoOk, but now you have an airport that takes 2-4 times as much space as normal ones. Airports already consume an incredible amount of space; most places don't have that much space to spare. This reminds me of someone's crazy proposal not too long ago (I think it showed up on this site) to make an airport with a big circular runway around it, with the idea that planes could be continuously taking off and landing. It didn't take long for some pilots to chime and and call the whole idea utterly insane and stupid because it's incredibly dangerous to take off or land while turning.
- carapace 7y agoFair enough. It was just a pamphlet I found on the ground in Boulder CO one day. Circular runway made me LOL. Cheers!