Flying a Jetliner into a Tunnel

[Tuckerfan]

@brossa

I’m saying that an autopilot/plane that is sophisticated enough to fly into a hole in the ground in all weather, compensating for sudden, massive differences in aircraft handling due to ground effect, cessation of headwind/crosswind, etc. etc. etc., is sophisticated enough to stall and drop gently onto a tiny landing platform without any fancy VTOL equipment.

You’re saying more than I would.

Build the perch at the top of a skyscraper and you could just shove the planes over the edge to launch them. If the skyscraper isn’t high enough you could just dig out a curved tunnel of the right shape so the plane could pull out of the dive while it was still underground!

Problem with that is passengers aren’t going to be fond of the freefall, combined with the gee forces created by pulling out of the dive. I can’t imagine that folks would enjoy taking every flight on a “vomit comet.” One could suppose a large enough building with a complete runway on top of it, Of course, if you do that, then you really have to build a structure that is massively reinforced to take the weight of jetliners landing and taking off from the top of the thing all the time.