| daveake |
27 Oct 2007 12:44 |
Actually, I'll have one more go. Imagine you're wearing roller skates. Imagine that you're at the start of a runway and you get one helluva kick up the backside. You're now doing 200mph down that runway. Do you stop immediately? Nope. You keep going. Eventually wind resistance slows you down and you might eventually come to a stop but probably not before you run out of runway.
Now imagine the same thing, but instead of you moving at 200mph, you're stationary on a conveyor that happens to be moving 200mph backwards. You'll start moving backwards, but only a little (unless you bought very cheap roller skates). If the belt is really really long you'll eventually get thrown off fairly quickly to an untimely death, but the point is that you don't suddenly get chucked backwards at 200mph. You get saved by the wheels on those skates, which spin away like bug-gery.
Having survived that experience, you metamorphosis into a big jet plane. The belt starts moving, and you feel a little tug on your wheels. But you've got some BFO jet engines which are much more powerful. So you turn those on and easily overcome the resistance of the wheels. You roll forwards, and then take off to that holiday in the Galapagos that you've been saving up for.
The actual scenario in the root message was easier to overcome - the belt only starts moving backward when the plane moves forward. The trick though is that it starts making people think that the plane can't take off because the belt matches the plane's speed, like a belt down at the gym. Fortunately planes have unpowered wheels and not legs.
Dave
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