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Thread: transcon....why westbound takes longer than eastbound?
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Old Dec 14, 2005 | 7:32 pm
  #14  
RedEyeDelight
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Join Date: Sep 2005
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Originally Posted by kevinsac
Take off from BOS, and you have the "chase" SFO as it tries to move away from you while Earth rotates towards the west.
Earth's circumreference is 25,000 miles (2P), so with 24 hrs in a day we got the earth's surface moving at approx 1000 miles (1K) pr hour. The airplane therefore needs to travel at One Prime speed (1P) to make it from BOS to SFO in 5 hrs as planned. The distance between BOS and SFO is approx 2500 miles or equal to 2P/10.

So,

1P = ((2P/10)/5 + 1K)

That comes out that the air velocity of the aircraft (1P) = about 1500 mph to make up for the chase, who would think that!?

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