>>>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNbtHxjOXe0
>>
>>This idea was floated (no pun intended) by the US Navy for a circular deck on an aircraft carrier during the 1970's.
>>It's esthetically elegant, but it never took off (the puns keep coming, I can't ground them)
>
>It seems like a neat idea though (at least on land). My instinct is to question how wise it is to have a plane turning as it's landing or taking off - especially if it's raining or the runway slick - but I assume they've figured all that out with banking it like a NASCAR superspeedway and making sure it's long enough.

The basic idea then, and now, is that a circle has infinite distance and since velocity depends on distance, an infinite distance trumps a finite distance.
Way back, I read about some experiments by the US Navy with circular decks on aircraft carriers, and they came to naught.
Major increases in the thrust created by a jet engine eventually made them irrelevant.

When talking about runway distance, I have to give a nod to the legendary Johnny "X", from Enid, Oklahoma, who singlehandedly stole over a mile of runway surface from the USAF in Korea.
I had the privilege to hoist some brews with Johnny before he disappeared suddenly.

PSP (perforated steel planking) was and is the preferred surface for runways needing to be put together in a hurry.
Every day Johnny drove a 6X6 and picked up a crew of Korean laborers who worked on the base and took them back home.
As things turned out, one section of PSP would fit comfortably in the bed of a 6X6, so each day before bringing them back home, Johnny had his buddies hoist a couple of PSP sections into the bed of the 6X6 and his buddies all squatted on top of them as Johnny drove past the guards at the check point.
After delivering his buddies, Johnny sold the PSP on the Korean black market, which at that time had a huge demand for that kind of steel.
Unfortunately for Johnny, someone noticed that the runway was shrinking and poor Johnny was unceremoniously whisked away to the federal pen at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

At poker games and dice games in enlisted barracks however, the legend of Johnny "X" lives on to this day:

"He stole the f****** runway!!!!"

gNbtHxjOXe0