The question that has plagued the interwebs….

If you have not heard or read about this question till now…well…be glad. Many of the Internets best “brains” (I use that term very loosely) have argued about it for a few years now….here is the gist of it….

“Imagine a plane is sat on the beginning of a massive conveyor belt/travelator type arrangement, as wide and as long as a runway, and intends to take off. The conveyer belt is designed to exactly match the speed of the wheels at any given time, moving in the opposite direction of rotation.
There is no wind.
Can the plane take off?”

I thought I had it at first but I was wrong…I think. Basically the question is worded very badly..anyway as I said many a douchebag has had their say about this subject…from mountain bikers to physics geeks to pilots, bloggers and everyone in between, some threads lasting years and over 500 pages, with tons of arguing and people getting quite upset about this question. While reading different forums trying to figure it all out I kept on thinking to myself…”You know what would be great…if Mythbusters did an episode about this…that would help clear up this whole thing”. So then I go back to google and search for more endless threads and I come across an article that says the following…

“The episode, which airs in December, finds Savage and Hyneman tackling a question baffling everyone from bloggers to pilots: If a plane is traveling at takeoff speed on a conveyor belt, and that conveyor belt is matching the speed in reverse, can the plane take off?

“We put the plane on a quarter-mile conveyor belt and tested it out,” says Savage about the experiment using a pilot and his Ultralight plane. “I won’t tell you what the outcome was, but the pilot and his entire flight club got it wrong.”"

Wow…they were reading my mind, I must have taken the tinfoil hat off…thats it…it stays on in the shower. My fear of mind reading aside…I go and try to find more info…god I love google…so I find that is was going to air December 12th….sweet, I can find it online and watch it from the comfort of my computer. Well…guess not, seems they did not air it when they said they would. But..the good news is they have released two video’s one with Adam explaining why it didn’t air and another is a teaser for the episode where it does air….lets just say that I can’t wait.

So I hope this clears this whole question up….but I will go out on a limb and say that it wont….lol….