Electric seagliders could enable short-haul emissions-free air travel | Hacker News Reader

Electric seagliders could enable short-haul emissions-free air travel

singularityhub.com

57 pointscheinyeanlim49 comments

"Perhaps the most important factor, though, is that because WIGs are not classed as aircraft the regulations that govern them are far less onerous. That means that they don’t need to carry the kind of backup power that an aircraft would need for emergency landings, and they don’t need to be flown by trained airline pilots."

Just what every passenger wants to hear haha

They say this is a solution for the fact electric airplanes are going to only be able to hop between cities and then says how this can only go 180 miles with 12 passengers, hardly a long distance, oh and it has to be across a body of water... and the water can't be too rough... sounds like a great solution!

Might be nice in Sweden?

Potentially between Great Lakes cities (Milwaukee-Chicago-Detroit, though probably not Detroit as its a long detour through the Straight of Mackinac) or as fast riverboats.

Yeah, that dumb Milwaukee to Chicago flight. The Hiawatha doesn’t go to Ohare (an existing right of way, would add time a little bit of time to the main downtown to downtown trip, but it’s so dumb it doesn’t have at least a glenview to ohare connection), just the Milwaukee airport, and anyway I suppose airlines would rather you be in their system as soon as possible. But such a dumb flight. Take off, then land, hope you don’t spend more time taxiing than in the air.

I've needed to go to Kalamazoo several times, connecting through O'hare. On the return trip, because of the timezone change and the extremely short flight (~15m IIRC), the arrival time printed on your ticket is earlier than your departure time.

Buffalo NY (via Lewiston NY) <=> Toronto had a fast hovercraft service for some years. This might work there with a speedy transfer between Lewiston and Buffalo. Toronto to Rochester NY too. Erie PA.

It's just an ekranoplan with a lower range, lower speed and less capacity than a traditional jet powered one. And even those didn't catch on because of the calm seas requirement and because it's easier and more practical to just fly.

It's also easier and more practical to just float. With hydrofoils. But someone already doing that commercially, bummer.

So what I'm hearing is we need to just invest in more trains.

Screw trains. Lets rip them out and build man-made rivers so we can use our water planes!

Investment in trains can go hand in hand with this.

Both have their own pros and cons.

But, when evaluating the setup of a public transport system, this could be one more option.

Single missed rogue wave and everyone is dead… Trialing with cargo might work tho.

You wouldn't be flying this over bodies of water which could have rogue waves. Those are generally open sea scenarios, and this is really only practical for hops between relatively close bodies of land, over water. There are a lot of such places around the world, even some where the water is technically connected to an ocean.

In terms of risk of life, it's probably less risk than taking a 180 mile bus ride... even if it were crossing water which could conceivably have a rogue wave appear.

Yeah Miami to Nassau seems like a decent candidate.

That's why the Soviet Union is the country that consistently invested in ground effect vehicles... because they have the Caspian Sea and Black Sea (which does have waves but usually <3 ft)

Somehow I feel that if this ekranoplanes (or sea gliders, changing the name doesn't change the substance[1]) start being employed massively, having these thingies zipping at >100 mph on water won't be particularly appreciated by maritime authorities, that will introduce any number of specific regulations.

Besides the electric powering, the general idea can be appreciated in the vidoes of this company in Singapore (that at least has built the actual vehicle):

https://www.wigetworks.com/

AFAICU the sea needs to be flat or almost flat, which I believe it's not very common in the ocean near the Hawai, no idea how it would behave with waves.

[1] they were once called GEV (Ground Effect Vehicles), now they seem to be called WIG (Wing in Ground Effect)

Given this is being marketed more for law enforcement and high-speed ferry applications (read: rich people who want transit to island resorts), I don't think the shipping industry will be in a position to complain - or nearby. It is certain these will have AIS + radar + GPS (and potentially ADS-B) which should be enough to resolve any issues. Reading the background, however, it seems this design was largely purchased from Germany and tested 20 years ago and it is unclear how much innovation they have actually made and whether they can bring something to market. I wonder if they would consider doing a desert hopping version for central Australia?

If you compare these to planes, planes have airways, and have different flight levels on a same airway (and all the technology you mention + 2 pilots capable of using that technology + air control) .

If you compare these to cars, cars have roads.

Imagine a very large square where cars are free to go up to 180 MpH with the "only" rule that the car coming from the right has precedence, which is more or less what boats/ships do now (but they do this at 0-40 MpH top).

Not that the possible issues cannot be solved, but surely there will be the need of a license that - if not directly comparable to a commercial airplane license - will be anyway much more complex than a plain boat license.

Boats/ships also have shipping channels: any somewhat busy waterway will have defined lanes. Ships of any size have to broadcast where they are, current speed and heading. Small boats generally move slowly. Visibility on water is typically much better than on roads. But yes, accidents are possible.

There are a lot of people who ride ferries (even over considerable distances) who aren't necessarily "rich people". Island nations like the Philippines come to mind immediately.

Yes, this tech won't be cheap enough for most of those use cases up front. The primary saving vs. prior tech is time, and only some can afford to pay. Law enforcement, military, and rich people come to mind. The vessels you mention tend to be car ferries, or at least large passenger numbers and simultaneously function as general goods ferries. Such vessels have far heavier tonnage, so the energy overhead for achieving lift-off would exceed reasonable storage capacities.

>> a phenomena called “ground effect” to significantly boost flight efficiency

I’ve been following rctestflight’s efforts to make an R/C ground effect vehicle https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x617U3s3lcc&t=670s

The interesting thing he’s experienced (there’s many videos, i don’t have a single succinct link to share) is that staying in ground effect is hard. If an r/c plane has enough power to take off, then it has enough to break out of ground effect, and almost certainly it will break out.

The suggestion then is that something like the ekranoplan might have been able to fly normally to some extent. I don’t know how much the aerodynamics of rc planes scales up though, e.g. i don’t think KF airfoils are a thing in full size aircraft but they’re super effective and popular in rc scale.

I have no idea how any of this works, but I recall reading that the ground effect threshold is some proportion of the aircraft's wingspan (half, I think?) so it could be that it's more difficult for a model just because it's smaller. (Maybe that was the wisdom behind making the spruce goose so big?)

I imagine that it is easier to keep a big plane in ground effect than a small one because the relative size of the boundary layer to the size of the airplane is a lot larger with increasing wing area. The Soviets had several working prototypes that managed just fine while carrying heavy loads, and there's plenty of videos of glider pilots effortlessly gliding along for hundreds of metres in ground effect over runways and the like.

Also no offense to rctestflight's impressive skills, but his aerotech skills seem to be mostly self-taught (he studied "applied film at business knowledge according to linkedin). There would be a huge different between what a talented amateur can achieve and what a team full of trained professionals could build. Staying in ground effect seems like an ideal job for a flight computer to manage btw, autopilots never tire and always stay focused.

He actually uses a flight computer for his most successful published effort.

Really getting tired of seeing the "emissions-free" weasel phrase in everything electric. Until the electricity is 100% renewable, it's not "emissions-free".

I read "emissions-free" as "theoretically emissions-free".

Except they literally are emissions free. Nothing is emitted from the vehicle over its operable lifetime.

Carbon footprint and emissions are not the same. Even if fueling via electricity had as large a carbon footprint as gasoline (it doesn't), it would still be better because it moves all that pollution out of urban environments.

Its not a silly concept, but that render is a bit off.

If you want a ground effect plane, then you need your wings much closer to the floor. that plane looks like you'd need to be operating in really calm weather or not at all.

Also, I suspect that tail is nowhere near big enough, as its operating outside of ground effect.

Yeah, logically thinking placing the wing at top of fuselage for ground effect vehicle is waste as the ground effect is from bottom of the wing. With aeroplanes it matters lot less. And higher clearance from ground for engines is even preferred.

I agree; high wing ekranoplans aren't a thing, and for excellent reason. But if we're being charitable, we might surmise that they have calculated that their "blown wing" design increases the margin for ground effect to work, and the high wing is necessary to avoid prop strikes. In traditional low-wing ekranoplan designs, a separate high-wing pylon is usually needed for the propulsion, which their design eliminates.

The people that will make this did make a tiny prototype (or a huge r/c model, it depends on how you see it) and released a video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2XW4n0nn2c

where the model seemingly completely fails to reach ground effect and simply travels on its hydrofoils.

I thought seagliders meant the ones that are underwater/use bouyancy/gravity to move.

I got into an argument with someone about emissions-free since the electricity/production probably produces emissions somewhere. Until the entire process is clean.

Every one of these "new electric plane" companies never have an actual product. It's always "we're working on the design and hopefully test our prototype next year." The possibilities?.. "12 passengers a total of 180 miles"... haha so economically to have 10 planes do what 1 can do in half the time. And really more than 10 planes if you factor in charging time to get that 180 mile range.

The nice thing about traditional flight is that once you are high enough above the earth, you can recover from failures, taking advantage of the time before you hit the ground.

Travelling at 180mph slightly above the ground sounds like a recipe for disaster.

If you have a critical failure (such as losing a wing or major control surface), you may have more time starting from high altitude, but you're still probably doomed.

At least in this case your trajectory is already about parallel to the surface. Unless you suddenly nose straight in, you have a decent chance of survival - especially if you can glide it in like some of the successful emergency water landings of traditional planes.

On the other hand, if it's foggy and there's a ship in your path with a broken beacon then being parallel to the sea surface would not matter much.

You're still worse off as an airplane at an airport. Runway incursions are a big problem. One of the worst air disasters ever was when two large passenger jets collided on a runway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster

Losing a wing is disastrous regardless of altitude, there is no gliding with just one wing. Even at a few feet losing a wing would roll the plane instantly and you'd crash in the water inverted at 180mph.

Well let's put it this way - if you lose a wing at any altitude, you are screwed. But if you "only" have forward velocity as a problem, then you might just get lucky based on orientation or some other thing which absorbs some energy. If you're high altitude and lose that wing, there are probably fewer freak lucky things which can prevent you from pancaking into the earth.

One example of the latter is the many crashes of speedboats. They certainly can be fatal crashes, but sometimes things go unexpectedly well for the driver.

Who is the target market for this? People that can afford a private plane ride for short distances but also care about reducing their emissions? It seems like there isn't much of an overlap there.

Think island short haul. E.g. Tahiti to Bora Bora.

I wonder if it would work in remote parts of Alaska? There are many communities that are only accessible via seaplane or boat, and Juno is one of them. Being able to quickly travel 180 miles would open up that territory quite a bit.

Nope, cannot do waves, only calm water.

I find this much more practical and likely to result in something benefiting the population compared to the repeated efforts at making flying cars.

Adding a hydrofoil is a cool idea but I'm not sure that plus electric propulsion qualifies it as that novel compared to the Ekranoplan which, two paragraphs later, it describes as a 'proposed design' (also interesting wording for a vehicle with fully functional full scale prototypes). Ultimately the problem with ocean-going ground effect vehicles is that they combine the worst of both worlds; all the expense, fuel usage, load limitations and risk of a plane perpetually two seconds after takeoff, but still at the mercy of rough seas and weather like a boat.

Looking at their page, it looks like 'seaglider' is more like a model name than a vehicle classification. It's also interesting that they quote "over 325 sold with a $6bn order backlog" when they haven't even built a full sized working prototype yet. I guess they must cost $18 million each?

>all the expense, fuel usage, load limitations and risk of a plane perpetually two seconds after takeoff

Well not quite; the appeal of the ekranoplan is that it uses considerably less fuel and/or can carry considerably more weight than an aircraft of similar size. The risk profile is also different if catastrophic failure simply means you unexpectedly become a boat.

It's not perfectly analogous, I'll grant you... but at flight speed, even ground-effect flight speed, I think the consequences of hitting a larger than expected wave, or dipping a wing in the water after a gust of wind, are worse than just becoming a boat. (Maybe becoming what a boat would become if you dropped it from 2-3m at 100+mph...)

Sounds extremely dangerous.

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