5 mile runway at AREA 51

What do you think the 5 mile runway ant AREA 51 is for? I dont really know myself, supposedly its big enough to land the space shuttle at, i think its true too, what couldnt land on a 5 mile runway??? I also heard it was for a superbomber, and that its payload was so heavy, that it needed every last bit of that 5 miles, if you have any ideas, please post, thanks,

MAVERICK05

I agree. It would have to be a really huge aircraft to need a 5 mile long runway. Or mabey it was made for the launch of many aircraft all at once?

Its the largest runway in the world you could land two space shuttles one at each end of the runway without parachutes and when they came to a stop there would be about a mile between them.

The reason for such a big runway, I dont know perhaps its a smart thing to have when your flying test aircraft that are past cutting edge .

Originally posted by MAVERICK05
What do you think the 5 mile runway ant AREA 51 is for?
MAVERICK05

How about takeoffs and landings? That is what runways are for ya no.

It was built to accomodate the nuclear powered aircraft projects that 'never flew'. Not to mention the SR71, etc.

[edit on 17-12-2004 by Chakotay]

Wow never thought about nuclear powered aircraft before, what would be the chances it would blow up if it crashed?

Because the staff needed a good place to jog after lunch?

I thought the long runway at Groom Lake was more like 10 or 12 miles...

Anyway, a runway of that length would be needed when experimenting with a variety of hypersonic or near-hypersonic aircraft. There could be a few reasons for this...

* body shapes like the "waverider" would probably require a much longer runway to takeoff on
* body shapes like the "waverider" could require a faster than normal landing speed
* reverse thrust methods as used on common turbofan aircraft may not be feasible on more exotic propulsion methods

I'm sure given some time I could come up with other reasons for such a long runway.
But most likely as the above poster said... it certainly makes for a good jogging path...

[edit on 18-12-2004 by intelgurl]

to be used maybe by a fleet of fully loaded b2 bombers , but as far as I know it is one of the emergency landing sites of the space shuttle
that is what I know for sure.

Dose Nellis have the stuff to handle the Space Shuttle?

lets see its 1950 or so and your an enginer and the gov comes to you saying we have a HUGH empty lake bed and would like a runway built .
and well give you a billion $ to do it with . I personly would start thinking BIG at this point .Its an enginering ego thing .

There is a chance that the aircraft have a really really slow acceleration and need that long to gain enough velocity to Take off. I heard the runway was 8 miles long

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Perhaps they believed they'd need it in the future, perhaps they had hopes for bigger, and faster planes. With this assumption they probably just though that it would be needed in the future, well, thats what I believe. Why not have it big?

can you send me a link to the plane it shows up as an ad on my computer

The runway at area 51 is one of the biggest in the world. It is so big becouse when they make new planes and they are going to test them they take it easy and need a lot of runway for emergancy landing. And to thest the brakes and everything before it takes off. A new plane that has never been flew before can get trobule while taking off. They have this runway for things like this

Look i work there i havent been underground its just a bunch of hangers the mechanics are rednecks not scientists so there you go

so what are you doing at the base?

FallenFromTheTree, your image was hijacked about something like: work and live in the USA banner AD :|

bastards....

Yeah, I'd suspect it's for hyper-sonic aircraft that do not use a turbo-fan, such aircraft wouldn't be able to decellerate and parachutes probably wouldn't be effective enough to slow them down...like exotic designs like SCRAM jets, RAM jets and forementioned nuclear propulsion aircraft...

Aurora anyone?

I also would imagine that they were to accomodate several aircrafts at the same time, if it were to come to that.


...I'd hate to be the janitor that had to keep that tarmack clean.