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Regent – Electric coastal travel

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454 pointsbeefman319 comments

I was initially skeptical, but seeing Mokulele Airlines (an airline serving Hawaii) flash by on the carousel made me consider that this might have at least some real-world uses.

It's insane to me that the vast majority of inter-island travel in Hawaii (an archipelago where generally each island is visible from the next) is via jet aircraft. You have to spend hours (especially if you're checking bags) getting to the airport early, going through security, waiting at the gate, taxiing, etc ... for a 20 minute flight.

There used to be a ferry between Oahu and Maui but it got killed due to real and perceived environmental impact: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii_Superferry

A light electric ferry service like this, directly between say, Ala Wai and Lahaina harbors, skipping airport/TSA nonsense, could be a very successful premium product. I just hope from there it could be scaled up so that it wouldn't remain just a niche offering for the rich.

Crazy. Suspended due to "the potential to bring drugs and homeless people to Kauaʻi".

Not at all. It seems they suspended it because of neverending lawsuits regarding environmental impact. Chopping up whales was apparently a big concern, so I suppose a ground effect service might alleviate some of those concerns(just kidding, I'm sure the environmental lawsuits were really just about control and not a genuine care for the environment)

That’s a great point, and also kind of insane to think about.

The area around Maui has TONS of whales part of the year… many of them breaching.

I wonder how high these things fly vs how high a humpback can jump out of the water. I think the rule is 1/2 of your wingspan to be in ground effect, but it has been a long time since I’ve studied the exact numbers.

This is a perennial favorite of transportation NIMBYs.

Where I live extending the light rail the last little bit over the river to Washington state is a no brainer, but it's been paralyzed by decades of opposition from suburbanites in Vancouver Wa. My friend's dad is/was one of the key activists. He'd stand in planning meetings and no joke scream about how "criminals" were gonna ride the train up, break into someone's house, steal their tv, then ride the train back. Lots of saying "crime train" over and over again.

We have solid data that building transit lines actually decreases crime. This man is a credentialed civil engineer. He rejected that evidence without consideration every time we put it in front of him.

I have zero respect for these people. If you talk to them for just a few seconds it becomes readily apparent the root is just straight up racism, but they don't wanna own it overtly.

If he can show any occurrence of that ever happening, then you come off as dishonest and disinterested in the needs of the community. Is it really so difficult to cater to his needs as well? There’s surely a better compromise than “Everyone who disagrees with me is a racist”.

> Is it really so difficult to cater to his needs as well?

The man wants no transit because "crime train" while the region needs transit. What middle ground do you propose?

Not every criticism and loud individual is worth listening to.

This man is factually a racist. I am not simply labeling him that because we disagree as you insinuate, having no actual information on the situation.

And no, I see zero reason to tolerate what is clearly bad faith behavior.

In the text you shared, you imply that other readers should come to the conclusion that he's a racist because he's against public transit due to fear of crime being imported. But you made no connections as to how his claims of crime import were related to a race component. So it's understandable that readers might not find your "racist" labeling justified based on the facts that you shared.

He might be a racist but based on what you said, it's not clear what may make him so.

No, that is explicitly not what I said. I said if you talk to this person even briefly, you will quickly realize the actual basis of his objection is racism. It is not subtle.

What is your expectation of me here, to pull out some sort of video proof to convince you, the skeptical hnews reader?

Sometimes this place is extremely tiresome.

Just go do some googling and you'll realize how common this sentiment is. And it's nothing new. Read about Robert Moses and why he made bridges too low for buses.

What did he say that convinced you he’s racist?

> Read about Robert Moses and why he made bridges too low for buses.

On that suggestion, I just went and read the wikipedia article on Robert Moses. It mentions that buses and commercial vehicles do in fact go under those bridges today, and that the accusations of racism are disputed.

"I only learned about this today and just read a wiki article and that convinces me you're lying" is pretty much the problem with this place in one shot.

You complain this place is tiresome, and then invite us to go read about Robert Moses and his racist bridge policy. So we go read a bit about it, and note that a somewhat more authoritative source than rando-on-HN suggests that the accusations are in dispute and lack good supporting evidence. And now -this- is in fact the problem with HN?

Look in the mirror, dude.

Seriously? Has the bar changed from "Google it" to "Read through several research papers and books" for someone to comment on how true something is generally accepted to be? And you're saying that the person who looked something up on Wikipedia is the problem?

> you imply that other readers should come to the conclusion that he's a racist

I see no such implication.

This comment and your other one above don't really add anything to the discussion here. They comprise an attack on an individual and, as you say, we can't have an informed opinion because we don't know the individual. So it just boils down to you calling someone you know a racist based on a one-sided anecdote.

That about sums it up. Doesnt seem like a particularly balanced source either

I don’t completely follow, this is people living in a Portland suburb lobbying against getting a public transport connection? How is less infrastructure better?

This isn’t uncommon in suburbs. Some people care more about preventing easy access to their community than they do about having easy access to other communities.

So it would make their community more accessible to everyone, including criminals?

In Chicago there are neighborhoods that actively blocked subway access so they could be car suburbs and not get the change that comes with mass transit access. Same for the famous Robert Moses parkways on Long Island.

There is some validity to the idea that preventing mass transit insulates a community from a certain type of change but it comes with major costs.

Every time when I think I kinda sorta figured out American culture, I read a comment like this. To me this is batshit insane. I’m so happy my suburb has regular bus and train service!

Because the people who live there all have cars, so they don't see any positives only the (false) negatives.

A lot of the time it's a race issue. I live near Atlanta, where white suburbanites have spent 40 years voting to cripple public transportation, because they're afraid black people will use it to come to their neighborhood.

That is not an exaggeration. One of my coworkers did a historical study and read town hall transcripts from the last couple decades. People were extremely clear why they were voting down mass transit.

The racist joke I was told as a kid was that MARTA stood for "Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta." I was so young and naive, I said, "Really? Why would they name it that?" Ugh. The racism of anti-transit people is really inescapable.

In Dublin, there was some lobbying at the time against building a light rail line (the green Luas line) through some affluent areas on the basis that it would somehow reduce property values (a perennial Irish obsession). In fact, in practice, it increased property values (as you'd expect, really; the already existing heavy rail rapid transport had done the same), and 20 years later the same residents' groups and so on had a fit at the idea that service might be temporarily curtailed as part on an expansion plan...

(However, everything old is new again; there's widespread annoyance at plans to make the bus system actually work properly now...)

People are weird about this stuff.

> I have zero respect for these people. If you talk to them for just a few seconds it becomes readily apparent the root is just straight up racism, but they don't wanna own it overtly.

It also becomes readily apparent that they also want to be patted on the back and told that they're good and noble people for "protecting the community" from the scourge of undesirables potentially riding public transit near them.

this is so blatantly wrong that i loose every respect for these people. It really makes me angry. It's just so selfish. I really don't understand how you can make things worse for everyone, just because you don't want things to change, "city-people" invade you precious suburb or something. In the end gas-guzzling cars pester the environment and use up the precious few emissions we have left in order not to get wrecked by climate change.

In my city you can definitely tell a difference in the demographics that frequent places that have train access vs those without. The malls for example:

Malls with train access tend to bring a lot of kids strutting around flexing (as kids are expected to do). This has side effects of petty larceny and shootings. All of the mall shootings are groups of these kids that have beef with each other. It's mostly harmless to shoppers but there's always a chance you could get caught in crossfire or become the target of a malicious youth prank.

It's just your typical youth angst but you can avoid it simply by going to a mall without train access.

The question comes down to whether train access brings more benefits than drawbacks. When talking to anti-trainers you have to address this issue. You can't just hand wave it away as they're perfectly fine with the car status quo.

However, I'm sure most people will ignore everything in this comment and just shout "gun control".

> This has side effects of petty larceny and shootings. All of the mall shootings are groups of these kids that have beef with each other. It's mostly harmless to shoppers but there's always a chance you could get caught in crossfire or become the target of a malicious youth prank.

As an outsider (from an European country): I don't think train access is the cause here :O

It's like saying "We should seed rain clouds because nice sunny weather correlates with mall shootings as nobody wants to go out in a storm". I mean, yes, the facts check out (sunny weather = more shootings than during a storm. I guess?) but the "solution" (don't provide public transportation / seed rain clouds) is.. ugh..

I agree that correlation is not causation but it's tough to ignore when you see the packs of kids walking to/from the train

You are not wrong and we are in agreement! :)

Trains bring more "these kinds of kids" to the mall vs private cars.

Nice weather brings more "these kinds of kids" to the mall as well (compared to stormy weather).

Now, where we do seem to disagree is the question of where the actual problem is. In my opinion, the problem is _not_ that kids are at the mall. The problem is that, apparently, these kids start to shoot each other while they're at the mall (!?! what the fuck)

Looking at _all_ the other countries that have nicer weather and / or better public transportation, we don't see kids shooting each other at malls. So I'd say that's a good indicator that the _actual problem_ can't be solved by restricting public transportation (or sunshine) but there has to be a different issue that needs to be tackled here..

There's a bridge in stockholm that isn't getting opened because people in the rich neighboorhood on one side don't want people from the poor neighboorhood on the other side to come there.

https://www.euronews.com/2023/01/26/stockholm-bridge-row-exp...

They don't want the poor people to come over, or are they merely against "criminality and delinquency" coming over? Surely it's possible to to separate the people and the behavior (of the few, mind you).

It's interesting to me that you've figured out that people bring up gun control whenever you talk about this, but you haven't made the next logical leap.

Which is to say, there may be a _reason_ people bring up gun control. As you say "You can't just hand wave it away".

I just think that practically speaking, a community will probably be able to decide on a train project before the nation decides on gun control.

Not building something because it will allow poorer people to move around our cities more easily is just wrong no matter what the consequences. There are also criminals and kids who strut around and flex from rough areas of town that have cars. Should we get rid of roads that connect those neighborhoods to the rest of the city?

These issues just reveal deep problems we have as a society and the solution we have had so far of trying to avoid it at all costs only making it worse.

Yeah, there was an article in Baltimore about stupid people worrying about crime on the light rail in the suburbs. Racism rots the brain. Just put a cop at the train station if you're worried. A better solution to crime would be to ban cars, which any competent criminal is going to use to haul off their goods.

> We have solid data that building transit lines actually decreases crime.

Do we? A cursory Google search revealed a couple of papers, one of which showed a slight increase in crime after the addition of a bus line[0] in Cleveland, and another which showed a decrease in homicides but an increase in property crime[1] in São Paolo. I'm not cherry-picking; these were the first two PDFs in the search results. I would love to see the evidence that you presented to your friend's dad.

> If you talk to them for just a few seconds it becomes readily apparent the root is just straight up racism, but they don't wanna own it overtly.

This may very well be the case as you exhort downthread, but I just want to point out that besides the obvious (that we are all internet randos who don't know your friend's dad), racism means different things to different people. I know people who think that if a white author writes nonwhite characters, it's racism. I also know people who were disowned for marrying "outside the race". My personal definition of racism is a lot closer to the latter.

Sometimes a concern for crime is just that; other times it can be a code for a race-related pretext. Here's a thought: if you're concerned about female genital mutilation, which is virtually only practiced in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and the Muslim countries of South Asia, are you concerned about the women being mutilated, or are you just a racist?

[0]: https://collected.jcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&c...

[1]: https://sistemas.colmex.mx/Reportes/LACEALAMES/LACEA-LAMES20...

Reminds me of how Bob Moses built the bridges of Long Island too low for buses to pass through [0]. Talk about structural racism.

[0] https://archive.ph/OTnMP

The wikipedia article on Moses claims buses (and commercial vehicles, which were another alleged target of his architectural decisions) do pass through those bridges to this day.

> The protesters' concerns were that a ferry of this size could strike and kill whales during its voyages despite this never occurring during the years the faster Seaflite interisland ferries operated.

NIMBYs ruin everything, I doubt they were really concerned about the whales.

Read on - what they were really afraid of was the dirty/smelly poors coming onto their precious island.

You see the same BS with bike paths through residential neighborhoods. Despite studies showing that bike paths increase property values, residents bitch and moan about safety/crime. They basically figure that poor/non-white people will bike into their neighborhood and rape/pillage/burn everything.

So you get a bunch of environmental concern-trolls funded by wealthy people who don't want to admit that, really, it's about race/class.

> Despite studies showing that bike paths increase property values

Except that these studies are rather suspect and/or very narrow.

The situation for actual residential neighborhoods is at most unclear.

Crime does seem to center around heavily developed public transit corridors, but it is difficult to tell if economic or transit accessibility are the primary drivers of increased crime (probably a bit of both).

I'm not saying _anything_ about crime. I'm disputing the assertion that bike lanes inevitably increase property value.

One case where they don't would be commercial roads with small shops that rely on street parking. But the comment you're responding to was talking about residential, and I haven't seen enough dispositive data on that one way or another. Like anything, it's probably a mixed bag.

Nope. There too. It turns out that foot traffic and bike traffic do a lot more for small shops than cars do (because drivers go fast enough that they don't pay attention to 90% of the small shops).

This would really be relative to what kinds of shops, and the layout of the street parking (if any) after the bike lane is put in place. You're assuming that bike traffic is sufficient to make up for car traffic. But if it's a market, a bicyclist or pedestrian might only buy one bag worth of goods, while someone driving up with a car might be there to buy three. Similarly, you're assuming there's increased foot traffic; but the foot traffic doesn't increase just because parking is replaced with a bike lane, so that's basically static.

> Nope. There too.

Yep, there too not.

Evidence for bike lanes in the US comes from very methodologically suspicious studies (e.g. the Portland State one) that were heavily influenced by hyper-local effects and neglected to look at nearby businesses.

Some of the more honest studies found the opposite effect. E.g. the LA study has shown that the non-sabotaged section had more revenue growth than the road-sabotaged section.

There are also clear cases of bike lanes destroying businesses: https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2022/dec/26/stringers-46...

I'm an anti-bike activist. Bike lanes work only in _very_ narrow cases:

1. In densified hellscape cities, like Manhattan, where normal traffic is simply impossible.

2. In small tourist destination towns.

3. On university campuses and around them.

And that's pretty much it.

Not bike lanes, bike paths

Really? My street was recently turned into a greenway / bike street, and it's brought me nothing but an endless bike parade of smug white people in silly clothing. Just a couple hours ago, I was having to get my car towed and the tow driver was 3/4 into turning slowly back into the street when two women on bikes zoomed right in front of him, causing him to slam the brakes. One of them then shouted "Thank you!" over her shoulder. I can barely open my car door without some sanctimonious guy in spandex flying by and screaming at me.

What's wrong with being white or wearing silly clothing?

Nothing. At least half the people I know fit that category. I was just bringing it up as a counterpoint to the "poor/non-white" statement by the parent comment.

Hmmm. I think the point was that NIMBYs fight bike lanes because they’re concerned about what they could bring.

Which, as the comment stated is not at all what bike lanes actually deliver (higher property values, white folks in silly clothes).

>endless bike parade

This would be the first time im hearing about something like this. It sounds like the bike path was very successful.

Do you have more information?

Portland, Oregon. Home of the timid and the passive-aggressive.

Lmao, that's the worst of it? A guy had to brake sharply once? And people were polite to him afterwards? The utter tragedy.

I'll trade you streets and you can deal with the 3 dead kids from traffic incidents over the last 5 years

Sadly, whingeing narcissists and traffic accidents aren't mutually exclusive where I live. I guess we all have to live with idiots wherever we are.

Lots of folks on your street are getting around town with zero emissions and you're moaning about that while talking about the troubles of fixing your polluting vehicle? Have you ever paused to think how inconsiderate it is to pollute the air people have to breath? I'll take smug white people in silly clothing over polluters any day.

> I can barely open my car door without some sanctimonious guy in spandex flying by and screaming at me.

You are supposed to yield to traffic when opening your car door into a lane. The "sanctimonious" cyclist is justifiably mad because you violated his right of way and placed him at risk of severe injury.

Heh, I was just trying to picture Some Puerto Rican Guy on a bike, cycling into rich white neighbourhoods.

https://southpark.fandom.com/wiki/Some_Puerto_Rican_Guy

The only criminals on a bike that I'm aware of are bicycle thieves.

> The only criminals on a bike that I'm aware of are bicycle thieves.

And, to be fair, it's only easy to identify them after it's too late.

How does that work? You steal a bike and ride both home? Wouldn't a van or being on foot be the better approach to stealing bikes?

Who said anything about them being on a bike before they'd stolen it?

> Despite studies showing that bike paths increase property values,

Citation needed. This is an extraordinary claim; you are going to need more than one single study done on a tiny sample with no control variables.

Is it really extraordinary or unbelievable? Easier access to infrastructure which is quiet and environmentally friendly should reasonably not decrease property values?

I would definitely be more interested in a property with bike infrastructure, although that is just one tiny sample with no control variables:)

> Is it really extraordinary or unbelievable? Easier access to infrastructure which is quiet and environmentally friendly should reasonably not decrease property values?

Well, yes, when you're talking about residential areas. Home owners don't want a wall of strangers around their home all the time - it makes it difficult to spot the ones with ill-intent.

I mean, if that wasn't true, homes in gated communities wouldn't be more expensive than standalone houses.

> I would definitely be more interested in a property with bike infrastructure, although that is just one tiny sample with no control variables:)

You'd think that (I certainly did), but the price for homes in gated communities are far far higher than the equivalent in non-gated.

Which is why I want to see this hypothetical study that shows that residential areas closed to non-residents are cheaper than residential areas open to the public.

Because, a simple look at home prices shows this to be wildly untrue.

I'm not sure how we've got from the claim the poster actually made about designated bike lanes improving property values [over regular street/sidewalk access to the property, and possibly highway-only access to town] to the almost entirely unrelated claim you've invented about the relative value of residential areas closed to non residents.

The majority of people do not live in gated communities and even gated communities have access routes outside the gates.

> I'm not sure how we've got from the claim the poster actually made about designated bike lanes improving property values [over regular street/sidewalk access to the property, and possibly highway-only access to town]

That wasn't the claim the poster made. The specific claim was that bike traffic through residential areas by non-residents increase the value of properties in that residential area.

>> Read on - what they were really afraid of was the dirty/smelly poors coming onto their precious island.

>> You see the same BS with bike paths through residential neighborhoods.

GP could not have been clearer in his implication that having public traffic pass through the residential area increases the value of that property in that area.

Which is complete nonsense when you look at residential property prices in area which has a through-flow for non-residents/the public and compare to areas which are effectively gated off for residents only.

Buying a house in an area that is limited to residents traffic only is damned expensive.

GP could not have been clearer that residents in somewhere that Maui, which is an island with a population of about 200k, were daft to object to the idea that easy connectivity to other islands because they were more worried about visitors from the neighbouring island than interested of the greater employment and commercial opportunities that connectivity brings. I'm not sure how you got "gated community" from that.

I'm not sure that your own implication that property prices are inversely proportional to the ease of commute to where all the people and jobs are is well evidenced by representative studies either. Even if the GP was talking about gated communities, which he wasn't, they're still usually nowhere near as expensive as being cycling distance from central San Francisco or London.

Also brings more foot traffic and possibility for crimes of opportunity and lowers the barrier to trespassing

That's a very very american way of thinking

> You see the same BS with bike paths through residential neighborhoods.

I'd invite you to take a look at the Springwater Corridor in Portland. It is plausible that ubiquitous bike paths would not have the same problem, but it is difficult to fault someone for taking one look at that disaster and wanting it to come to their own quiet neighborhood.

Superferry was a huge case study for us. We went to Hawaii, interviewed everyone involved, and learned the lessons.

We're taking a different approach that focuses on community and environmental considerations first. Look for more exciting news in Hawaii soon!

That's great to hear. Good luck!

Are you working here? I would like to be involved in work like this when I get done with my masters… I was a pilot for many years and we need more sustainable air travel to rural and coastal communities.

How to follow along for news?

This is going to be an uphill battle in Hawaii.

Hawaii is notoriously difficult to do business in, Hawaiian Airlines has become entrenched in protecting these routes, Southwest has been moderately effective but it's at a significant cost, and mokulele has had some serious negative press over the safety of their aircraft.

Part of the super ferry demise wasn't just NIMBYs' but entrenched politics and money.. glad you folks are brining some innovation and wish you luck on some much needed disruption.

I recently flew between Oahu and Molokai. My return flight was delayed seven hours. I literally could have paddled a canoe home faster. Mokulele deserves all the negative press it gets.

To skip TSA nonsense you just need to skip TSA nonsense. Outside of the US airtravel is still relatively similar to rail. You have to be on time, you have to handle the baggage, but you can walk through xray and security within minutes and only need to show the ticket on your phone.

An electric wing-in-ground-effect aircraft still looks like an airplane and might still fall under the same regulations as any other airplane.

In any case TSA objectively does not add much security[1] and does cause issues e.g. for people who have names with similar spellings to those on a no-fly-list [2].

But that aside, the technology is great for short distance travel. Climbing to 2-5 thousand foot to travel some 50 miles is clearly insane.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Security_Admini...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List#False_positives

> Outside of the US airtravel is still relatively similar to rail. Not China, I usually try to get to the airport 1 hour before take off. But for the train, 10 minutes is enough.

> Outside of the US airtravel is still relatively similar to rail. You have to be on time, you have to handle the baggage, but you can walk through xray and security within minutes and only need to show the ticket on your phone.

Same if you have Pre and Clear. I usually get to the airport 30-40m early.

That said I'm usually at the train station 10m before departure with bags.

Why don't all the bad actors just apply for the same programme?

Clear doesn't let you skip security. It basically just allows you to cut to the front of the line for a fee. You still have to go through the x-ray machines, etc.

TSA Pre actually does reduce security requirements (e.g. you can keep your shoes on...) in exchange for, I've always assumed, a mini-background check when you apply for the program.

> mini-background check when you apply for the program.

You'll get fingerprinted, etc., and while it's nothing like a serious security clearance, they do look you up rather thoroughly.

Note: my only direct knowledge comes from applying to Global Entry, which is a pickier program, but Precheck does collect biometrics (at least facial and fingerprints). Global Entry was around 15 minutes for the interview process (both formal and informal; I knew the two guys outside the interview and fingerprint room didn't really just want to talk to me to pass the time), but that was a decade ago.

One interesting anecdote from my interview is that I was told that the #1 reason Global Entry applications failed at the time was that one of the questions was whether or not you had ever been arrested - not convicted - and people would say no. Not an auto-disqualifier to have been arrested, but lying about it was.

> Outside of the US airtravel is still relatively similar to rail.

I live outside the US and this is laughably wrong.

How can you collapse the entire world down to "outside the US".

Israeli airports are exactly the same as Zimbabwean airports in your worldview?

I live in SE Asia and no country around here has air travel "like rail". I cannot get through xray and security in minutes. I cannot just show a ticket on my phone.

I assumed your parent commenter was referring to domestic air travel.

In Australia domestically,you can show your QR code on your phone or print the ticket at home (or even use the kiosks at the airport to print it out). You still need to pass through one set of security screening, but expect the queue (away from holidays and peaks ) to be around 15 minutes.

While I agree it's nonsense, I'm curious what would change without harming the personal security of everyone involved? I mean this system has many flaws but no one can steal a plane again and crash it into innocent people right?

Even if that’s true, which I’m very skeptical of, the TSA has little to do with that. The armored and locked cockpit doors? Sure. Air marshals? Possibly.

But the TSA has absolutely no bearing on whether or not a plane gets hijacked. It is far too easy to circumvent.

Modern airport security is beyond useless. It's hugely wasteful and ineffective. https://www.vox.com/2016/5/17/11687014/tsa-against-airport-s...

In the past quarter, TSA intercepted an average of 16.8 firearms per day, 93% of which were loaded. I'm quite happy with that many less guns on my flights (imagine what it would be like if there was no check - this is just from people who forgot that carrying onboard is not allowed).

People forgetting they are carrying a loaded firearm into an airport feels like a pretty US specific problem, and there are ways to screen for guns without the massive inconvenience that is TSA. Other parts of the world still have security checks at airports, just a lot more efficient.

As someone who carries a 20 cm metal rod through airport security every time and has not seen a single warning light ever popping up because of that, it is quite difficult for me to understand how the airport security is supposed to add safety against anyone who is willing to spend any time working around it - and who is motivated.

(For the curious, there is a titanium plate in my body due to an accident)

Why would a plate in your body set off a warning light? It's not a security risk.

They can rip off their leg and beat people with it. They should have to check that appendage.

I don't think a typical metal detector can distinguish between metal in my arm and metal taped to my arm.

That's why they use the full body scanner at most airport security now. One of those detected a small piece of scrap paper in my back pocket that I had to pull out and show to security. They showed me the image and even the shape of the paper was clear. For sure those scanners can distinguish between metal in your arm and taped to your arm.

Okay, haven't been flying that much in tje last few years, I thought they were still not universal - at least in europe.

Not universal even in the US, but you encounter them fairly frequently in Europe depending on the country.

I'm quite sure that if you carried the same in luggage or on your body (as opposed to _in_ your body), it would get confiscated.

Most roller bags have 20cm rods built into the handles.

The TSA explicitly allows hand tools up to 17cm (7 in.)

I think that at this point the TSA is more interested in explosives since hardened cockpit doors, and passenger willingness to intervene have pretty much killed takeover style hijackings.

If it was found, that is. If the metal detector does not see it, how do you think it was supposed to be found?

TSA gates at most large airports that I've been at use backscatter and can detect objects that you carry. A rod anywhere on you would be seen.

That risk is effectively zero now due to locking cabin doors, to the point where actual pilots are the only ones who deliberately crash planes.

The irony being that it's exactly those locking doors that allow suicidal pilots to deliberately crash planes.

> Outside of the US airtravel is still relatively similar to rail.

I live in the EU. There is nothing similar. Two hours at the airport being put in several different queues, often in a high stress atmosphere.

Train travel: Five-ten minutes at the station, all done.

Yes, I’m partial to trains.

TSA is not required for intra-state travel in the USA. Many rural airports that don't have out of state connections (e.g. most of Alaska) lack TSA.

This is factually wrong. Being stuck in a long security line for a flight in Europe or S. America is not unusual.

> It's insane to me that the vast majority of inter-island travel in Hawaii (an archipelago where generally each island is visible from the next) is via jet aircraft.

Why jets? In the Caribbean, where distances are longer, turboprop aircraft are standard for island hopping and I thought these made more economic sense for short distances.

Passenger load. They do use prop planes on routes with less passengers.

Pretty much, I've done the Seattle-Vancouver hop in a 737 and that's only 130 or so miles.

Throughput. There’s enough people going from one island to another, that is cheaper on pilots to have one bigger plane than several smaller ones, and it’s easier to fit into the limited number of slots for take off and landing.

The wiki page doesn’t have a section on perceived environmental impact, do you have more info on that?

From the description of the ship they tried to use environmentally-friendly tech (despite it being a bit of a behemoth), but I know nothing about the local ecosystem. I imagined the area would already have heavy boat traffic from cruises and the military.

Why not make an electric Superferry? Presumably addresses the environmental issues, more forgiving on battery weight and volume than a plane and won't ever need to make an emergency landing.

Ferries in littoral waters and whales don't mix. There is a ferry that goes from NS to Maine and it's been known to bash a whale or two.

Fun fact: The current ferry vessel between Bar Harbor, Maine and Yarmouth, Nova Scotia is literally the Hawaii Superferry vessel repurposed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HST-2

We've sold over 467 seagliders with a $7.9B order backlog spanning global aviation and ferry customers.

I would think this is pre-launch sales. It's probably hedged with "subject to certification" risk, but it's still pretty solid, and if it came with sufficient deposit fundings to bootstrap the assembly line, all to the good. But, my understanding is that both boats and aircraft (and this is a join over the two) incur pretty high compliance costs for insurance and regulatory certification. Its a long slow process, it is not as simple as "do it in the USA and it's done" by any stretch.

(their FAQ says: "REGENT’s seagliders are regulated as maritime vessels, not airplanes.")

Many transport manufacturing startups come unstuck with actually making product. Real-world consequences to advanced materials, the massive cost-suck of making the goods repeatably buildable without a huge tail-cost of remediation, digging out from development cost, it's a nightmare.

I'd love this to work, Having flown as a passenger on small aircraft island hoppers in New Caledonia to get to Isle des Pins and like places in other countries, There definitely is a niche for "get from A to B, with sea between" which this suits.

It's also possible there's a set of marine/air conditions this is better than aircraft for: it stays below 100m would make it much easier to "fly" in some conditions. Equally, if its really only coastal/lake waters and not when its more than 2m swell (arbitrary figure for example purposes) then its launch conditions could be highly variable.

Could this to Vancouver to the Island? The Island to The Olympic peninsula? Seattle into the sound? Could it make the Catalinas from California coastline? Or Baja Cali to the "mainland" of Mexico?

> Could it make the Catalinas from California coastline?

Yes -- but there is probably no business case where that makes sense. Presumably your launch points are San Pedro/Long Beach, Dana Point, or maybe Redondo. In all three cases, if you want to get to Avalon within 15 minutes, you're paying for the helicopter service. If you're okay with taking an hour, you're paying for the existing boat shuttles, which take a whole lot more than 12 people at a pop and you're able to experience the environment -- it is not uncommon to run into pods of dolphins, whales, etc, on the trip over to Avalon.

In theory, you could open up a shuttle service to Avalon from San Diego, or Santa Barbara. Maybe there's enough demand there, but again the 12 person limit makes it probably a money loser. You'd have to charge so much that people would just make the 90-minute drive to Long Beach and shuttle over from there.

west LA (maybe SF?) to SB and central coast would make sense if this thing can deal with choppy waters.

I think you'd get people wanting to do that for the novelty, maybe once. Your departure "port" would wind up being Marina del Rey. Even if you lived down the street in Santa Monica, the time to get to the "port", board, etc, it's just a diminishing return of time investment. If you're okay with getting to Santa Barbara in 2 hours, you just make the drive. If you want to go faster, you're taking a helicopter. If you want the relaxing scenery for a longer duration without driving, you take the Surfliner.

The holy grail for this thing is SF-to-Marina del Rey, at a decent passenger load, without stopping. If it can pull that off, some enterprising company will buy 50 of these things and run a shuttle that competes with the San Jose to LAX commuter routes.

>If you want to go faster, you're taking a helicopter. If you want the relaxing scenery for a longer duration without driving, you take the Surfliner.

The cost difference between a helicopter and a shuttle is huge though. I can easily see this being closer to the shuttle cost, while also closer to the helicopter speed. Seems like a sensible middle ground to me.

Depends on the price. All electric means we operate for about half the cost of an aircraft (and about 1/10th of a helicopter). Combine that with similar speeds to aircraft, convenience of not having to use an airport, and zero emissions - and the use case becomes very attractive.

We have some prospective customers eyeing Catalina, but that's actually on the short end of our range at ~25 miles vs our 180 mile max.

Shuttle service to SD and SB is very much in the cards - and we can do it with existing battery tech!

If that became popular enough, would you eventually need something akin to air traffic control for those waterways? I'm not sure existing water navigation rules and protocols would be a good match for these gliders, because they might not be operated by experienced sailors, because their altitude is also a potential collision-avoidance factor, but most of all because of their speed.

I imagine other waterway users being frightened, but also having enough demand for coastal transportation in Southern California, specifically because of the speed, that you end up potentially operating dozens of these at a time in the same region.

(It looks like you answered part of that in a different part of the comments, but I'm still curious about the big picture.)

This is not much faster than existing high speed cats and way more visible to us sailors. It won't be a problem: they'll dodge us, and use 16 if they have to.

Seaglider entry to service is slated for mid-decade so you're spot on, all these are pre-launch sales.

We're one of the few companies in the space with firm, nonrefundable deposits and contractually obligated pre-delivery payments (that scale with milestones as you mentioned) on the full first year of these orders.

We take off at the periphery of harbors and fly over the open water in-between. Seagliders have 5ft wave tolerance on takeoff and landing, and 5 ft waves in a harbor is basically a hurricane. Flyover wave tolerance is more like 8-13ft, since any higher than that is likely the result of conditions where commercial aircraft arent flying anyways. We definitely designed the vehicle with wave tolerance in mind.

And all your routes are spot on! It's super exciting. 180 mile range with existing battery tech - and as batteries advance through the decade, we forecast that range growing to 500 miles. 40% of the world's population lives in coastal communities... this is a massive market!

Sold any for the San Francisco Bay Area yet? Half Moon Bay would definitely benefit from hosting some of these.

Where would you go from HMB on one of these? It's not like they would let it rip at 180mph under the Golden Gate Bridge.

Santa Cruz maybe? Monterey?

HMB has some tricky shoals/rocks near its entrance.

Wave heights in the 8-13ft range are common along the US west coast (Northeast Pacific Ocean) and that doesn't shut down commercial aviation at coastal airports.

https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=46042

But still there are many more protected waters where a WIG vehicle could be viable.

The specific tolerance within that 8-13ft range is driven by wave period. Long period waves lets us operate more towards that 13ft end because you can contour the waves.

Sure, that makes sense. The large swells in that region tend to be long period. Contouring the swells up and down is going to make some passengers motion sick, but probably not as bad as a regular ferry in the same conditions.

Ah I see the confusion - that overflight wave tolerance is defined by an emergency landing condition. In the extremely low probability chance that the seaglider needs to perform an emergency landing, the passengers need to be safe. That defines the 8-13ft window.

In no cases are we contouring waves in flight. We fly straight and level. Typical flight altitudes are 10-30ft above the wave peaks. The waves are well below us.

Having recently spent time watching many whales breaching well into your airspace, I wonder if you have any thoughts on avoiding right-of-way disputes with charismatic megafauna?

Do you have plans for a larger next gen model? It would have even more clearance if it had a corresponding increase in wingspan, right?

I believe that max demonstrated wave height will have more to do with the height of the hydrofoil than the wingspan / ground effect distance.

Having said that, I'm pretty sure the much larger Monarch (their further future 50-100pax model) will probably have longer vertical supports on the foils.

> Seagliders have 5ft wave tolerance on takeoff and landing

But do sea glider passengers have a 5ft wave tolerance? That sounds like a wild ride.

But this is exciting... as someone who remembers taking the Hoverspeed SR.N4 from Dover to Calais, I know fast coastal transport innovation can be a game changer.

Depends on the period. 5 ft waves in the middle of the pacific ocean is different than an east wind off Milwaukee.

If you look at the distance between the hydrofoil and the hull midsection, it looks to be about 5ft or so. I would suspect that up to 5ft of wave has very little affect on the ride smoothness.

This is the answer.

I also did the SRN 4 as a passenger and subsequently "cabbed" the flight deck when it wound up in a museum. Grandad of an offspring's schoolchum took us round the collection out of hours.

He used to fly them (and emphatically said they were flown and he was captain and captain-pilot. There was a turf war between the civil aviation authority and the maritime regulator over who had primacy, depending on if the skirt was lifting or it was floating on the sea) and wound up both volunteering at the museum, and driving end of life (normal) boats up onto cox's harbour mudflats for manual wrecking: a heartbreaking job for a seafaring man.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/gx6a7UPQX4CLfz7Q9 (scans from photos)

From memory, the hover was fast but very very bumpy. Sometimes they suggested timid people use a boat. It was aircraft style seating, not like a ship at all. And very noisy.

Taking the Hoverspeed is the only time I remember being sea-sick, and it wasn't even a particularly rough day.

It seems intuitively like there would be potential for inland use along navigable waterways as well as coastal use-

Inland waterways often have very low speed limits (e.g. 5 knots). Typically to reduce the impact/erosion of the wash/wake of a vessel.

I could see potential in large inland such as the Great Lakes though.

It really should work for inner sound service. The waves in the sound aren’t that bad, it’s definitely not like going from Koh Phi Phi to Phuket (I get a stomach ache just thinking about plying the Andaman Sea).

I wonder if this is a better way to get from Seattle to Victoria, for example. We could really use an aerodrome for our water front.

Hey guys - Billy Thalheimer, Co-founder and CEO of REGENT here. A friend reached out to say this is blowing up - so cool! (Thank you beefman lol) Here to answer any questions

How do foils deal with kelp or a casual whale?

We're exploring foil-mounted sensors (e.g. sonar) for whale (and manatee, turtle, etc) detection.

So far in our 1/4 scale experiments, the foils have shed kelp pretty well. Kelp is something the America's Cup boats and even hydrofoil ferries (like in Japan and Hong Kong) have dealt with and solved.

What exactly is coastal travel?

Travel near the coast where waves are limited in size. That means this thing won't be going from SF or LA to Hawaii any time soon.

> That means this thing won't be going to Hawaii any time soon.

They claim Mokulele as one of their customers so presumably they can travel between some of the islands.

Oh ya we have open water covered. Coastal travel = coastal destinations. The trips themselves can be coastally proximal or over open water.

You might want to clarify that on the website because "coastal waters only" is also the impression I've got from the wording.

They said from California to Hawaii specifically as something it won't do.

That's because it's thousands of miles. The sea is big.

And Hawaii is really remote.

Yes, I was trying to clarify.

Probably travel that can be completed before the batteries run out.

Lots of examples! To pick a few: - Manhattan to the Hamptons - Los Angeles to San Diego or Santa Barbara - Interisland in Hawaii, New Zealand, Japan, Caribbean, Pacific Northwest - The global ferry market, huge in places like the Mediterranean, North Sea, Baltic Sea, English Channel, Southeast Asia. Actually, there are as many ferry passengers every year as there are airline passengers! ~4.5B on both... its a key mode of global travel

As battery tech evolves to enable ranges of up to 500 miles, we can add routes like Los Angeles <> San Francisco and Boston <> New York. I'm excited about those.

Bring on San Diego to Santa Barbara! Hopefully it's cheaper than SurfAir was.

Keep in mind that in some cases ferry travel only makes sense because the ferry can also carry passenger vehicles/trucks with freight. But like an airplane this new vehicle is passenger only.

Setup Boston to Nantucket…and just print money.

I was thinking this was impractical (the Cape is in the way) but Nantucket is pretty far East so it's not that bad to go around. ~115mi each way, so within range.

Milwaukee to Chicago please!

That would be an awesome route! Especially considering the lake waves are probably never higher than the cited maximums.

Detroit to Cleveland, Toronto to Hamilton, …

Andrew Levin is a former coworker of mine and it looks like he's still doing good work with y'all.

Sharp dude, nice guy. Hope y'all win big.

Andrew is a genius. He's the man!

how much is one of these going for?

This is one of those "let me connect you with our sales team" questions ;)

Operating cost is about half that of an aircraft though. 100% battery electric propulsion system!

How does operating cost compare to a high-speed cat ferry?

It's not even close to the same market. This thing seats 12. A cat ferry can seat more than a thousand people and a couple of hundred cars on top of that.

You probably want the comparison to a helicopter - because that's the same market: Can take off directly from the city, skips TSA security, seats 12.

But why?

Does the price vary and you don't want customers to know they got different deals? Or you don't want competitors to know?

It's the norm in commercial aviation for prices to vary according to order size and timing, delivery slots and whether the buyer is an airline or a leasing company (i.e. Boeing publishes a "sticker price" but its customers don't actually pay it)

In this case, you've got the added complication the aircraft is still a work in progress, and so what's actually negotiated is likely to depend heavily on timing of payments and cancellation clauses.

I am curious about whether the pricing ballpark is in the "new turboprop" or the "operating economics make it cost-effective to replace ancient piston operated aircraft in a relatively short timescale" range though. That could be a big deal for some low-use routes and in markets like Indonesia and the Philippines.

How did you start this venture? Very impressive work

Applied to YC! :)

Thanks for inviting questions. This is a very fun idea that basically turns the Spruce Goose’s single flight in ground effect into a scaled reality. Amazing.

With what is likely 1500+ pounds of battery, what is the operational charging/swapping strategy for carriers? Put another way, after one hour of operation (to exhaustion), how long is the vehicle expected to be idle?

We're using lithium-ion batteries (for now), so charging is like any electric car. As long as you have the power to fast charge it, you can do a full batter in ~45 mins.

That's max range (=180 miles) at 45 min charge. So let's say we're doing 90 mile missions between the islands of Hawaii, you only drain half the battery, so charge time is only ~20-25 mins - which is how long it takes passenger to unboard and board anyways!

Have you considered having swappable batteries, so you can skip the recharging time entirely?

Definitely considered. Swapping means specialized training, specialized equipment (these batteries are thousands of lbs), and mass storages of batteries to be on-hand at your docks. All drive the cost higher. So far our customers have not indicated that the charge times cause them problems, and the cost savings are significant in charge vs swap.

Plus, this way seagliders can potentially utilize the same charging infrastructure as electric aircraft, boats, and busses.

Additionally, swapping adds overhead mass to provide that sort of modularity and invites wear and tear on connectors and seals. All things we remove or reduce by integrating the system and utilizing onboard charging.

Swapping batteries probably isn’t a good idea but swapping planes might be. A lot of desirable routes like SF <-> LA become possible with two flights, if an operator sets up a halfway point with charging stations you could disembark one plane and embark the next. The plane they just flew in on starts charging and becomes the second leg plane for the next flight through there. With even just one plane sitting there you can support a trip every 45m-1h.

> turns the Spruce Goose’s single flight in ground effect into a scaled reality. Amazing.

I mean, it's been a reality for over a decade. This isn't new at all.

https://www.wigetworks.com/

No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...

What kind of sea states can you fly in? Any regions in particular that are more cost effective regarding weather?

I believe it has a max demonstrated wave height of 5'.

The underside of the plane, and especially the part that 'drags' underwater - have you had any trouble with the sealife or other underwater objects? I would think bumping into large sea lion, shark, whale or even a large school of blue rockfishes might be unpleasant (to sealife, the plane, or both)?

How does it fare with windy conditions with say higher waves? Isn't the ground effect lost then or do I recall my ekrano documentaries poorly?

Will you target Philippines market ? With more than 7000 islands, they could definitely benefit from it.

Hey Billy, very small nitpick on your site: The "Mission Sets" nav button is broken on the Viceroy page, and it looks like it's just down to the href missing the correct target (# instead of #mission-sets).

Tiny bug aside, I hope you find success in this venture. I'm sure there'll be a lot of naysayers, but I find it inspiring that someone is actually trying to do something in the sustainable air travel space with technology we have today rather than putting all of their eggs in the basket of yet to be seen technology.

Very nice project, congrats! How does it perform on rough seas? How tolerant is it to the state of the surface? I expect you have big restrictions on the size of the swell.

I've often thought a smaller, faster form of transport like this would be lovely for summer day trips across to the Isle of Man. There's a currently a car ferry and scheduled flights from Liverpool airport but the faff involved in driving to Liverpool only to queue up for hours just for a 70 mile flight puts me off!

If you haven't encountered wing-in-ground-effect vehicles before I have a treat in store for you... go and read about the Soviet Lun-class ekranoplan:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lun-class_ekranoplan

Then check out this Livejournal post where someone snuck into a dry dock and took photos of a rusty old one... including photos taken inside!

https://igor113.livejournal.com/51213.html

The greatest intro to an investor email interested in REGENT that I have ever received:

"I would love to tell you that my first job was working under my Uncle Ros (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rostislav_Alexeyev) as we meticulously broke down and redesigned his life's work from the ground up, but unfortunately that's not true" - Coby Fleener

I've been fascinated by erkanoplans for a while! I bet we could even use them to travel over ice sheets in the Arctic and antarctic

rctestflight on youtube has a great series on ground effect vehicles: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXvxJNOIXBsMyYPykdtoWRj1m...

Reading this thread, and seeing the Regent was mildly cool...but per your links i dug deeper, and wow amazing! It made me appreciate what the Regent (and others) are doing around this mode of travel; so cool! Thanks for sharing!

It would be pretty fantastic if this could go San Francisco to Los Angeles. A traditional plane flight takes so long at the airport, it ends up barely worth it.

High speed rail in California would also be great, but they've been working on it for 15 years already, and at this rate, it doesn't look like the project will finish in the next 50 years.

Even San Francisco to some of the smaller CA/OR coastal towns would open up a lot of vacation potential. I really hope this seaplane works out!

Or crossing the Long Island Sound.

Yeah a high speed ferry of Fisherman’s Wharf > Monterey > SLO > SB > LA > SD would be incredible. I’d pay a nice premium for that.

It seems like if they didn't have to deal with San Francisco Bay, these speeds could get them to Monterey in a bit over half an hour (!!).

But I bet navigating safely across the Bay and under the Golden Gate Bridge (probably in "hull" mode) could end up being a comparable amount of time in its own right. Having all that other marine traffic around in all directions (and maybe stricter noise restriction) is a big limitation.

Unfortunately, at their stated range of 160nm, you're looking at only getting as far as Big Sur before the entire craft needs a recharge - it's much more aimed at island and port hopping, I suspect, than long distance travel.

Still, I am excited to see ground-effect vehicles/ekranoplans back in vogue!

With today's tech you're spot on. As batteries advance though, we expect ranges closer to 500 miles by the end of the decade, which would indeed enable SF<>LA!

Assuming battery tech advances, how long would you expect SF<>LA trip to take?

3x increase in battery capacity in the next 7 years seems rather optimistic to me. Are there any specific battery advancements in the development pipeline that you know of?

How are you managing battery degradation, especially given that you're planning for high charge rates with quick turnaround? Do you have an idea of how many pack replacements you'll need over the lifetime of the rest of the aircraft?

IIRC, a lot of the energy use in a plane flight is due to the initial acceleration. So double the capacity is more than double the distance. You can also just use a bigger battery when the weight efficiency is better.

Amprius is planning to offer a silicon nanowire anode sometime in the next decade it seems, which probably won't double the capacity, but it would be a significant improvement.

> It would be pretty fantastic if this could go San Francisco to Los Angeles

It can't, at least not nonstop: 160 nautical mile range, and SF to LA is about twice that straight line, and even longer following an overwater route.

The planned 400nm range nexg gen battery tech upgrade is probably in the neighborhood, though.

I wonder if it might be worth having a little change-plane station at the half-way point - Cambria is nice!

Or do that thing Tesla tried to do: Land the plane, swap out the battery for a fully charged one, take off again.

EDIT: Here's why swapping batteries isn't likely worthwhile: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36053417

Even if it took similar transit time, it would be half the cost, and you don't have to go SFO first :)

What's the legal authority permitting "seagliders" to carry passengers but escape aviation regulations? Or to use navigable waterways at high speed when other maritime users are severely restricted in speed? I doubt any historical exceptions would stand up to significant use.

What's the real benefit? Actual ground effect is strong but very, very limited - to about the width of the wing. The (wallowing) demo flight is well above ground effect. Also, the demo's downswept wingtips provide a lot of the "ground effect" benefit.

Most importantly, all of this could be done more cheaply and reliably with internal combustion engines. Why hasn't it already been done, if the demand is so strong?

Sorry, but the technical and legal loopholes seem way too small to thread.

No loophole nor exceptions - we're following guidance from the International Maritime Organization on the maritime regulation of Type A WIGs (https://wwwcdn.imo.org/localresources/en/OurWork/Safety/Docu...), which have been upheld by flag states all around the world.

The benefit of ground effects are: - 10-20% range extension (agreed, between 50% and 100% wingspan, which is where seagliders fly, the aerodynamic benefit of ground effect is reduced compared to near surface flight) - Drastic reduction in reserve fuel. This is a key limitation of electric aircraft because they need to sustain powered flight to another airport in the event of an emergency. We can always land on the water, therefore, we can count all of our batteries towards "mission useable"

These two effects combine to give seagliders double the range of any electric aircraft - 180 miles with existing battery technology.

We use hydrofoils to solve for the wave tolerance and maneuverability problems that plagued past WIGs and made them commercially unviable. To take-off directly from hydrofoils before they cavitate, we had to slow take-off speed to ~50 mph, which drove us to a "blown wing" design that distributes propulsion over the wing, "blowing" the wing with high speed air and therefore creating high lift even at low speeds.

Very difficult to distribute propulsion with IC engines or mechanical linkages. Electric propulsion technology unlocks the blown wing, which unlocks the use of hydrofoils, which unlocks wave tolerance and therefore operations of WIGs, which unlocks longer range of electric flight. It all works together.

And electrification is generally good: both for the planet and for ticket prices

Doesn't the landing make a huge impact/force on the foils? I would think that they are designed to make the craft go up, thus more susceptible to it going down at higher speed?

Both landing and take off should be akin in terms of force encountered by the foil unless you're landing over speed or with the craft at an angle respective to your trajectory or the water current. The foils look motorized which is likely the biggest concern compared to static foil designs.

In addition to the other points mentioned, an electric propulsion system has many fewer moving parts than an IC system, less vibe as well and less harsh thermal considerations. There are no fluids to replace or maintain or plumb through the vehicle (no leaks to chase either), so reliability is arguably increased and its also an easier system to maintain.

What are the operating limits in terms of weather? At only 10m above the surface, I assume bad things could happen in stormy conditions! I'm guessing these will be best suited to sheltered areas and fair-weather tourist operations?

That was certainly the case for the older ground effect craft like the ekranoplan[0] (which is a very interesting read), but perhaps there are important differences/improvements with this far, far more modern model?

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lun-class_ekranoplan

It has three modes of operation: hull, hydrofoil and flight in ground effect. So it can operate as a slow boat, a fast boat or a ground effect plane. I imagine in bad weather it would switch to a slower mode.

Bad weather usually means big waves as well, so that complicates "just go slower" particularly when it comes to the foil mode. This is what's killed the practicality of previous ground effect aircraft but perhaps they've found the right niches for this one.

Previous ground effect craft absolutely were killed by their poor wave tolerance. That's where our hydrofoils come in. 5ft of wave tolerance through the harbors and in takeoff and landing. Means we can operate with very high confidence and high utilization in most markets.

You mentioned not needing reserve energy because you're able to land anywhere along the flight path. Does that mean you can safely land and float in waves higher than 5ft, even if it isn't necessarily pleasant for passengers or good for the vehicle?

With regard to waves you'll have a much harder time in slow modes as compared to WIG. Soviet (large) ekranoplanes could take off with 1.5 and continue flight in 5 meter waves. Gale force winds is another story.

High winds and weather systems occasionally effect air travel, but once flying above the water at 10m, you can fly over normal ocean swell conditions. The introduction of the foils is a key for making the seaglider comfortable from the inner harbors to the outer harbor in realistic operation conditions (wind/wave combinations).

As a sailor I hope these dont take off. It'll put a lot of the water off limits to boaters. Which would really suck.

The COLREGs are clear, WIG (wing-in-ground-effect) vehicles needs to keep clear of everyone when not in displacement mode.

Rule 18 (f)

(i): A WIG craft shall, when taking off, landing and in flight near the surface, keep well clear of all other vessels and avoid impeding their navigation;

(ii): A WIG craft operating on the water surface shall comply with the Rules of this Part as a power-driven vessel.

It's true, but I'm sure changes could be made ...

How about a boring ass electric train

Nobody wants to talk about the real solutions that are boring apparently

Is it a real solution when for some strange reason it's impossible to build them?

Also I love trains. I moved back to Miami and there is a train called Brightline that goes from Miami to Orlando. It's extremely nice and my preferred mode of travel. Imagine if we had a bullet train that just spanned the entire east coast...

Eminent domain isn't that popular anymore unfortunately. Florida being one large empty red state, it's a lot easier to muscle 500 miles of new track into what's already there. To go up the whole east coast you'd have to wrestle with a half dozen different political machines. Even just limited to Florida, the line hasn't gotten past West Palm (yet), and was stalled for years due to lawsuits from just 2 counties.

Not the most popular opinion, but I believe it could be a net win for all: https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/railroad-national...

The analogy that comes to mind is airports.

Acela tried... $150B pricetag :(

https://www.railway-technology.com/features/featuregrand-pla...

That $150B estimate seems wildly optimistic to me as well.

It took 22 years and almost $7B to build 22 miles of MRT (not high-speed rail) just outside of the DC beltway, and much of the route had an existing right-of-way. It's a populous area, but the DC to Boston route is quite heavily developed.

NIMBY

A lot of their customers operate ferries and flights to islands.

The US isn't very good at building large infrastructure projects. Boats and planes have the unique advantage that you don't need a lot of infrastructure along their path of travel, unlike a high speed train.

Also this can be used as a replacement for a ferry. Note how two of their launch customers operate in the Caribbean, where travel between islands is a big deal.

> The US isn't very good at building large infrastructure projects

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/finalmap.cfm

But, yes, that was a long time ago. Still, we could find the will again.

The US can't find the will to build housing, how is it going to find the will to build another continent-spanning railway?

We were the best once. The railroad was impressive as were many of the dams, power plants, etc. at some point things went horribly wrong though

> The railroad was impressive

The utter boondoggle of corruption that went into that is pretty amazing, though.

That was almost three-quarters of a century ago, the US is a very different, chaotic, and dysfunctional country (see: California High-Speed Train Fiasco).

We can't build anything anymore.

Because there's not enough of a crisis to justify it, yet.

Take the train to a port then take a seaglider to an island!

Sounds too boring. Could we complicate things heaps by putting it into a vacuum tube at least?

what are you, European?

We can do both lol. Aerospace engineers building a ground effect vehicle are not the same people as the people doing regulatory work to run train lines

The use case for this vs a train could not be more different.

Servicing routes of low passenger demand, across water, with low environmental impact. Impossible for a train.

We looked into this! If you want to go regional range, you really need high speed rail (who's trying to sit on a train that goes slower than cars on the highway...)

High speed rail is prohibitively expensive. Besides the rail itself, you need to do grade separation from the ground so the rail can be flat, environmental impact studies, and in the US where private property rights are very strong, you might need to pay the land owners.

Look at the proposed price tags of the past 4 high speed rail projects in the US (none came to fruition): - California High Speed Rail: $77B - Acela High Speed Rail (NE Corridor): $150B - Texas Central: $20B - Virgin Trains Florida High Speed Rail: $4B (just Orlando to West Palm!)

I wish it was as simple as electric trains! Would save us a lot of engineering...

Acela in the NE Corridor exists as does Virgin Trains (post COVID it's operated under the name Brightline) from Miami to Orlando.

Only 2 of the 4 you listed haven't come to fruition.

Acela and Virgin Trains are not high speed rail…

To complement this, the Acela has a top speed of 150 mph; it can only travel that fast for ~10% of the distance between Boston and DC though [1]. It fastest leg from NYC to DC averages 82mph (about as fast as driving on 95 at night ;) )

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acela#:~:text=Acela%20trains%2...

Going to Catalina on a train sounds like a lot of fun.

Trains really tend to struggle over open water. Very difficult for them to stay afloat.

Have you looked at the Seattle area / PNW as a use case at all? I imagine the geography would be perfect for a solution like this.

Seattle has a pretty extensive ferry system that they are in the process of electrifying [1]. It's great for what ferries are, but I would love more options between islands. Some of the less popular options are limited seasonally, I imagine this is a matter of economics.

Also I can tell you that the ferries to / from Victoria Island fill up fast and require reserving slots in advance if you have a car. It's also a 3-ish hour ride that can be very unpleasant if you hit bad weather. I've often driven the long way around rather than do that trip.

[1] https://wsdot.wa.gov/construction-planning/major-projects/fe...

Other than Lake Washington, the sound is stereotypically windy. Ground effect vehicles don’t work real well in windy / choppy conditions

Though it seems like they have some special sauce which makes their aircraft behave better in these conditions

How safe are these? I feel like a big wave could destabilize, then hitting the water at 180mph would be bad news.

What if a slow moving sailboat came across this plane’s path? If it is using ground effect it couldn’t climb much.

I imagine you'd just go around it.

Realistically you'll see that sailboat in advance.

At 100+mph?

My sailboat uses radar, I can see things from a good distance away. Let's say 30NM. Surely the plane will do better. But let's say it's going 180mph, or ~160kts. That's 11min from first radar contact to collision. With all that forewarning, avoiding a yacht isn't a big deal. If they can't avoid it, they can stop with 11min warning.

Let's say visual only. There will be restrictions on visibility for visual flight rules. So say that they can only fly with more than 10NM of visibility. That's still 3m45s to take action. Surely enough.

Just for others here, this is very misleading:

1) Sailboats (even moderately sized ones) often do not show on radar at all.

2) 30nm is probably way too optimistic, at a height of 50ft your line of sight is only about 8-9nm. Radar is LOS.

3) 11m is a terrifyingly short time, even if this was all correct

4) you can't identify things based on radar alone, and there's no way you can make out what something is even at 5nm.

5) there's no way you can see a boat at 10nm lol

> 11m is a terrifyingly short time, even if this was all correct

Is it? How much warning do you get when a car brakes in front of you on the highway?

In 11m you could write a report on how to avoid the collision prior to actually performing the maneuver

Cars have lanes etc.. it's very different on the water. Hard to tell often if someone is going to hit you or not. Distances are nearly impossible to judge.

Yes we'll have several sensor systems onboard that augments the captains visual perception, including radar, AIS, and we're looking into computer vision systems as well.

We've been testing these sensor suites in helicopters today. Flying <50 ft off the water at speeds in excess of 100 mph, simulating the seaglider operating conditions. We have plenty of time to detect and avoid traffic even in crowded waterways at speed.

It cannot sustain flight above the GE altitude. Presumably it can bounce a bit.

There are rules of the road for seafaring which apply even to these types of craft. A sailboat usually wins over a powered craft.

so if a sailboat suddenly veers into the path of this thing, what is it going to do? Collide or ditch

"GEVs may be unable to climb over or turn sharply enough to avoid collisions, while drastic, low-level maneuvers risk contact with solid or water hazards beneath. Aircraft can climb over most obstacles, but GEVs are more limited. "

Realistically these things aren't going to be operated in-flight anywhere close to the proximity of other craft. They'll motor from dock out to a predefined and clear[able] "runway". Once you're clear of a port most stretches of open water are mostly empty (even those within sight of shore) -- it should definitely be possible to plot "cruising-altitude" courses that never place you within (N) of a hazard. And if there is ever any uncertainty or doubt about incoming situations you can always drop down to a safer mode to chart a new course.

No. All of the major ferry routes they are proposing to serve already have a significant amount of vessel traffic. Seaglider operators will have to obey the rules of the road to avoid collisions just like any other boat.

Kind of a mix of both really.

Anywhere near significant boat traffic (e.g. in harbors), we'll be on our hydrofoils at speeds of 20-50 mph. So in these environments, we're just another boat (albeit a very comfortable, wave tolerant one)

We dont leave the foil to takeoff onto our wings until we leave the harbor. This doesnt need to happen on "runways" though. We'll already be at takeoff speed (~50mph) as we're leaving the harbor, so we really just jump out of the water whenever we choose to. This way we dont need to clear long stretches of water for a "runway", which has limited seaplane operations.

Absolutely agree: Seaglider operators will have to obey the rules of the road to avoid collisions just like any other boat. WIGs are actually already in the COLREGS (we're last in line for right of way, but on the list!), and our sensor systems will ensure that seaglider captains have excellent situational awareness.

I try to be positive about everything, but this entire idea is terrifying as someone who spends time on the water.

I highly doubt your pilot can spot a small fishing vessel or a kayak going over 100 mph.

Bro no. Lol. There will be boats there.

In your theoretical, why is this thing flying so close to a sailboat that the sailboat can "suddenly veer" into its path in first place? The average non-racing sailboat has a top speed of only about 8 mph.

a 45-foot pleasure catamaran can do 80-90% of the true wind speed. 15-20 knots is not impossible.

anyway, if it is possible that a GEV can collide with a sailboat, it will happen eventually

Very very unlikely

Same thing as when a "sailboat" suddenly veers into the path of a heavy cargo ship. The rules of the sea are that steam gives way to sail, but physics puts obvious limits on that.

The law of gross tonnage is in fact derived from classical Newtonian physics.

Can't remember if they're considered "working vessels" over a sailboat, which would make them the stand-on vessel based on maneuverability anyway, but it's just silly to get in their way in the same way that it's silly to dawdle across train tracks.

Boats can't fly over things either. You crash or follow the rules and avoid.

Hang out on Lake Union sometime in the summer. Boats everywhere, and seaplanes everywhere dodging them while they land and take off.

Near as I can tell as a boat driver your job is to stay very, very predictable while the planes weave around everything. Those pilots are good. ;)

It's pretty fun for people to see a float plane zipping by at 80mph, 20 feet away, while it's taking off.

It's nearly impossible to create a ground effect vehicle that can't fly out of ground effect for a limited time.

They need a significant amount of extra power to get out of the water in the first place, so there will always be more power available to climb out of ground effect.

The maximum altitude would be limited, you wouldn't be able to climb over a mountain, or over clouds. Depends on the exact specs, but should be more than enough to clear large ships, or at least get the altitude to make it safe to do a steep turn.

good point - a collision with an obstacle would probably be as fatal as plane taking off colliding with something.

This is bound to happen and can't really be controlled.

The ground effect vehicle goes around the sailboat in most circumstances.

There are rules of the sea that dictate who has right of way when passing in given directions. And there are rules they apply to vehicles of differing maneuverability.

A sailboat wins over most boats (except extremely large ships or ships doing work - fishing, tending buoys, etc).

It’s not a big deal. If the sailboat is crossing paths with this, it just tweaks direction to the stern of the sailing vessel. If they’re heading straight at each other, they pass port-to-port (left to left).

The vehicle is limited to ground effect due to regulatory limitations and because it provides efficiency benefits but not physically. There are different classifications of WIGs, class B allows for hops over things so this could be a future option. In reality a sailboat is a pretty easy thing to avoid. Since its basically flat on the water, there aren't many large obstructions to line of sight and something like a sailboat is moving much slower relative to seagliders. It will be a simple “see and avoid” maneuver with ample time to react!

To be clear, seagliders are limited to ground effect in that it is physically impossible for the captain to remove the vehicle from ground effect. The flight control system locks the vehicle to within a wingspan of the surface.

What would happen aerodynamically if your vehicles got out of ground effect? Would they stall pretty much immediately?

Either recreational boating has to be eliminated or your thing will never work.

180mph is insanely fast on the water. A sailboat even as big as it is will be hard to spot.

Also, related to sailing or boating near this craft, the noise level must be quite substantial. At least not comparable to passing other boats

In the video, it looks like it is fly above the typical ground effect height (1 wingspan or less).

It flies within 0.5-1 wingspan. The subscale has been flying within half a wingspan.

Yeah that one of the first things I noticed.

Some comments from founder:

> Typical flight altitudes are 10-30ft above the wave peaks. The waves are well below us. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36053497

And discussing how they are not getting as much WIG effect for that, but still significant savings (Vs what, an airplane? How does that compare versus other marine transport?)

> The benefit of ground effects are: - 10-20% range extension (agreed, between 50% and 100% wingspan, which is where seagliders fly, the aerodynamic benefit of ground effect is reduced compared to near surface flight) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36053471

How do you avoid bird strikes? At least near me, seabirds +180mph ground effect seems problematic

TIL about Ground Effect

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_effect_(aerodynamics)

Could you not have a solar drone barge for a fast charge mid-trip, extending the operating range by double? Seems like a simple way to bridge the gap until higher battery density is available.

For a 360 mile trip, adding 45 minutes for a fast charge (in certain this could be reduced to <25 minutes with modern battery architecture) would still net you out much faster than an train or short haul flight inclusive of airport time on both ends.

This brings LA->SF journey well within reach.

Don’t ground effect planes have issues with big waves? I’m trying to figure out what coastal routes would look for this, open ocean is pretty rough in general.

I can tell by all the comments that not many people here are pilots or work with the FAA on type certification lol

I was a professional pilot for years until I got sick and also did all sorts of work with getting FAA stuff approved, and I even have a float rating as well. The FAA certification is going to be a bastard here, for sure.

I think it can be done, but I am pretty sure the feds still classify WIG aircraft as aircraft, which means it will be a major challenge to get all the new technologies certified. All it takes is money…

Still, I would absolutely have loved stuff like this when k was working in SE Ak. This could dominate those markets. And you don’t really need for it to be instrument flying if it can never get that high…

Good to see a pilot here! I personally never see this aircraft ever getting certified. The SR22 was over $100 million total when getting their type certificate, and nothing was "ground breaking." It has a continental motor, Garmin avionics, NACA defined wing, etc. Sure, it's a composite and has a parachute, but I wouldn't call the design anything "revolutionary."

It's going to take hundreds of millions and an act of god to get this through the FAA. I don't see it taking the twin otter's place anytime soon.

edit: WIG out of FAA jurisdiction. Hope the Coast Guard is better to deal with!

Like I said, all it takes is money! Lol.

Good though that it’s a “boat” for legal purposes that will make things much easier.

I'd love to see this in Lake Michigan doing a route from Milwaukee through Chicago and all the way up to Traverse City, with stops at all the cool little towns on the Michigan lakefront along the way. Probably not viable as a year-round thing around here but it could be great fun in the summer.

I'm reminded of the Boeing 314 "Clipper" flying boat,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_314_Clipper

Apparently it did have range enough for, say, between LA and SF, non-stop.

One famous specimen flew SF to NY, but the long-way around[1] (and obviously not non-stop)

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Clipper

I'm hoping this takes off (unintended pun, but I'll leave it in). Nibble away at use cases for hydrocarbon-powered jet flights with alternatives like these until there's nothing left and/or we have a sustainable alternative for what remains.

It says it will go up to 180 mph... am wondering how the ride feels at that speed. Open water areas can be a pretty turbulent place in terms of wind, and I imagine that flying so fast and so low would feel a bit scary when the wind swings you around

Finland would like to hear from you. IMO the use case is not so different from Hawai'i.

Does this require a pilots license? (Couldn’t find the answer after skimming the website)

It falls under the supervision of the coastguard apparently as a boat "that happens to fly". Not sure how they were able to swing that one, but it's pretty impressive.

Depending on the number of trips per day, this has the potential to greatly reduce summertime traffic from tristate region to Cape Cod / Nantucket / Martha's Vineyard / LI North Shore / Montauk.

"In high winds, take-off must be into the wind, which takes the craft across successive lines of waves, causing heavy pounding, stressing the craft and creating an uncomfortable ride. In light winds, waves may be in any direction, which can make control difficult as each wave causes the vehicle to both pitch and roll. The lighter construction of GEVs makes their ability to operate in higher sea states less than that of conventional ships, but greater than the ability of hovercraft or hydrofoils, which are closer to the water surface. The demise of the conventional seaplane was a result of its inability to operate in rough sea conditions even while flying conditions were good, and its use lasted only until runways were more commonly available. GEVs are similarly limited."

That's what distinguishes seagliders from a GEV! We read the wikipedia article before setting off on this path too ;)

Seagliders are different from all GEVs (aka WIGs) and seaplanes of the past because of our hydrofoils. They lift us out of the water on stilts giving us 5ft of wave tolerance. We accelerate to takeoff speed on the foils (which lets us point into the wind even through waves) and then takeoff onto the wing and settle into ground effect.

Float -> Foil -> Fly

Could these provide connectivity across SF Bay using mostly existing infrastructure? Enabling a 15 minute SF-San Jose connection would be pretty impressive.

Somewhat similar idea to Candela P12, electrical hydrofoil ferry

https://candela.com/p-12-shuttle/

Can this be used for traveling between SF and Palo Alto over the bay?

Rare to see an actually cool startup these days - congrats!

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