Commercial wing in ground effect plane (2018)
nextbigfuture.com
nextbigfuture.com
The Mud Skipper is a home garage build that's not CG: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ILbQHnHPnY
That said, no one seems to have found a practical use for the technology.
Which is:
- much higher than a car
- much lower than a power-boat
- about 25% lower than a Cessna Caravan (which is faster tho).
Then I remember that it was kerosene but it seems that kerosene has a close energy density to gasoline... I am lost. Can someone help ?
That's for medium and long distance travel, short distance fuel consumption per passenger mile goes up dramatically.
OT: this is actually a point where I see a big, unserved gap in the market of climate-aware air travel. A feeder plane (from regional to intercontinental airport) dedicated to the market segment of "going by road or train might be roughly as fast, but I need to go to the airport and I can't risk missing my connection due to the unpredictable nature of ground travel". So you'd want a something the size of a CRJ or even just a dash-8, but ruthlessly optimized for fuel consumption. That would imply going slower (no issue at all when the time for bording etc greatly outweighs the time spent in the air!) which would imply moving the deep point in that induced vs parasitic drag diagram as far left as possible, which would imply going wild with wingspan, something sleek, carbon, like a performance glider, as wide as a 737 or beyond. One reason I've heard suggested for why this doesn't yet exist is that on those short hops (little time spent in the air), fuel cost is actually outweighed by crew cost so much that all the cost saving from lower fuel consumption would be eaten by getting less trips per crew-day. So it's an automaton problem in disguise? Or a regulatory problem?
I’m tired of cramming into a narrowbody with no service. Let me fly on an engineering marvel like the A380 or 747 and then relax or work in a comfortable train seat.
And no, I won't accept "but it works in Japan!" as a counter, because Japan does not really have anything resembling a train network. They have a number of lines going up and down one corridor, plus two appendices branching off to the west coast. Compared to that, even the French star of lines separated by metro rides appears complex.
There was a great concept video of a train/bus station that did something similar, divorcing the loading of people into the tube from the attaching the tube to the train.
It allowed the train to keep going nearly 100% full speed, "magically" grabbing the tube loaded with passengers, and letting them pass into the moving portion (below) without stopping the train.
The passenger pickup capsule was then dropped off at the next station for the process to repeat.
See dead links here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/this-high-speed-tr...
Saves kinetic energy (no stopping and starting), and time because you're not incurring +5min per each stop/station.
Today you'd do it with electric buses(/trucks) that run on dedicated highways, or at least on dedicated lanes that are not only electrified (bus operates from a pair of pantigraphs except for that "last mile" part of the trip in regular roads or when there is some maintenance situation), but also exclusively run computer controlled in paceline formations. No physical connection (or perhaps physical connection for power crossfeed, to share pantograph wear, but no physical connection for push/pull), just a low latency, ack-heavy data link so that they would all accelerate and brake perfectly synchronized. Those buses (or trucks) would benefit from slipstream just like train cars do, but still be able to independently branch away or join at any exit. Of course the power bill would have to be shared by the whole formation, no need to rotate the lead (like a bicycle paceline would do) except perhaps in an unelectrified segment or during a power outage.
This would offer point to point connections, have all the efficiency benefits of trains except for the energy cost of rubber-on-tarmac relative to steel-on-steel, and would also offer greatly increased throughout compared to trains because a formation like that would retain almost all of the emergency breaking capability of trucks (and realistically speaking, have better capability than a queue of human-operated trucks that keep almost but not quite enough safety distance for human reaction). The only reason I see why this is not the obvious future is that it requires enormous critical mass to pick up. It probably needs electric trucks first, then electric trucks with pantograph on some main lines, and only then pantograph electric trucks joining into robotic pacelines at some even later point.
(the absolute end game state of course would be dedicated rights of way with a rail option useable to dual mode vehicles that could quickly drop on their road wheels not only for exiting formation but also for braking - note that breaking should not even exist in a formation like that, outside emergencies.
of course it is quite unclear how is this applicable for harsh conditions in open seas where waves can be scary high (or deep if u prefer).
Maybe it works for large lakes and hot seas at all.
This seems like an optimal solution for takeoff, but I don't know how it lands in rough seas.
Range : ~ 300 nautical miles
Maybe we should build a monorail, instead.