In article ,
"xerj" wrote:

I was talking about Coriolis effect with someone and he asked me about
planes against or with the earth's spin of around 1000mph at the equator. He
asked why this didn't benefit east to west plane travel timewise and hurt
west to east. I couldn't give him a straight answer, and felt like an idiot
when I said "it just doesn't".

What IS the straight answer? The dropping something in a moving vehicle
analogy doesn't work, does it? A plane has a method of acceleration, whereas
a passively dropped object doesn't.

A dropped object is indeed accelerating (down).

It's just that the Coriolis effect isn't that significant. Note that rocket
launches are to the east (and why they try to launch them as close to the
equator as possible).

Maybe tonight I can pull out my old (VERY old) Physics references and
run some numbers...

--
Bob Noel
Looking for a sig the
lawyers will hate