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…
