Good idea, already been done. My "Idea Graveyard.rtf" has an old link for that, if you're curious you can hunt down what happened to the content: http://www.e

Good idea, already been done. My "Idea Graveyard.rtf" has an old link for that, if you're curious you can hunt down what happened to the content: http://www.edwards.af.mil/archive/2002/2002-archive-new_invention.html http://www.edwards.af.mil/archive/2002/2002-archive-new_inve... I think the 747 actually has motors that spin the wheels up. The lateral slide is actually not a big issue, the landing gear on most larger aircraft are steerable to allow for that ("crab landing" I think it's called). Another idea in the file right after that one was to put vacuum flasks into car engines to keep the fluids hot after the engine is turned off. In theory this would reduce emissions & engine wear by reducing the number of cold starts. Turns out the Prius has that already. On the other hand a Boeing engineer came up with the idea of the little winglets you see on airliners now, Boeing passed on the idea so he took it outside and worked with a guy named Joe Clark. Their company (Aviation Partners) has done very well. I think the takeaway is that as an outsider to one of these mature industries you may come up with new ideas but you're also at a significant disadvantage compared to insiders.