This is a classic article from New Scientist's archive, republished as part of our 50th anniversary celebrations
A CIRCULAR runway for airports is being considered by the US navy, and the idea was recently tested in principle at General Motors' proving ground. It is thought to promise some advantages but to be more expensive than providing similar operational capacity in the normal way. One particular advantage is that it would save one-third of the space occupied by a conventional airport of equal capacity.
The idea is to match the circumference to the landing speeds of the aircraft that would use it, assuming that each aeroplane would need to be sure of one sixth of the circumference. This would mean that for big jet aircraft, a circular runway of rather more than 60,000 feet in circumference would be required.
Taking the usual first-class runway width of 300 feet, an aeroplane, touching ...
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