DARPA's ground-effect X-plane will haul 100 tons of cargo

newatlas.com

5 points·alex_young··3 comments

I recall a few articles about similar designs back in the (?) 1970's. The big issue was that, flying over the ocean, the lift/drag benefits of the ground effect were offset by the dangers of being surprised by a modest-sized rogue wave...which could easily cause fatal damage. Both this article and the linked page at Aurora are too short & fluffy to meaningfully address that problem.

Perhaps this new design will have LIDAR continuously scanning the surface, and keep a "never less than X seconds ahead" computer forecast of wave heights running, so that they could climb out of danger in time?

I was coming here to comment very much the same thing, the article didn't seem to address the ways in which this plane would avoid those issues. Even without rogue waves destroying the craft, rough enough seas would either necessitate suspending flights (costly) or flying higher (costly) to avoid sea conditions. I'm wondering why DARPA feels like they've beaten those issues, even if they're using computer vision, a ground effect plane that has to keep climbing is not getting the fuel savings it needs.

Iirc the Soviets also discovered that a low-flying seaplane gets absolutely scoured by salt spray, which adds a non-trivial expense to maintenance, or a risk of catastrophe.

> ...salt spray...

I didn't recall that angle. And on top of the physical scouring - that'd also add grim corrosion, plus salt buildup, plus (in cold-enough weather) ice buildup.

Yeah - easy to see why the cold war conclusion on this was probably "best if we let the Soviets have a monopoly on this great idea".

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