Seagliders' 35-minute trips to Auckland closer with $145m deal
Seagliders' 35-minute trips to Auckland closer with $145m deal
Seagliders and 35-minute trips between Whangārei and Auckland are a step closer.
I'm pretty sceptical about ground effect planes, there's a very good reason why they've never really taken off, despite so many countries and organisations giving them a try over the years, but I'd love to know what everyone else thinks.
I agree there appear to be very good reasons not to use these.
Foling at 500kmph (edit: more like 250kmph by the looks of it) 10 metres above the water seems to just be inherently bonkers as a means of mass transportation given the very limited room for error/failure that results in everyone on board being instantly killed. Planes and helicopters can glide/autorotate, ships move slower.
The 3d mock ups and carefully shot video of the first flight (that obscures the fact it's a very small scale model prototype) suggest vapour ware scam startup.
Honestly for the love of god, can we just have trains?
A sea plane or float plane would be a much simpler, safer option, in my view.
I honestly don't know who is dumb enough to believe they are going to be moving crowds over the water at 250km/h. That's just bonkers. We can't move cars and trains that fast FFS.
A typical turbo prop will cruise at around 400 km/h
Well maybe the investors are dumb enough.
I want these to become a thing, because they're awesome. But I doubt it actually will.
Plus, there are much more efficient ways to move large numbers of people. Still, ground affect craft are neat.
This is basically a plane, right? And would be priced similar to a flight on a 12 seater plane, or perhaps even higher if they are taking you to central Auckland and saving you a taxi.
Although this brings Whangārei within commuting distance, I don't imagine it will be priced appropriately for people do daily commuting?
I'm also curious how far their batteries take them. So they can do Whangārei to Auckland in 35 mins, can they turn around and go back or do they need to spend 6 hours charging?
Should be a lot more efficient than a plane, and able to carry more with a smaller wingspan and less power required.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXvxJNOIXBsMyYPykdtoWRj1m5DRn4CNx
That's awesome, thanks for sharing! For your first link about the Soviet programme, they talk about all the issues, and hypothesize that getting these working properly probably requires larger aircraft than has ever been built, because these can fly higher under ground effect, up to 10 or 20 metres.
Given the original article here states these tiny planes will fly 10 metres above the sea, I am skeptical that they will properly operate under ground effect. Wikipedia states that the effect is about half of the craft's wingspan, putting it at a lot less than the 10 metres claimed.
And as mentioned in this comment chain, the nice videos in the article are actually all little models and it seems they haven't actually built any of these craft at full size, so the chances are pretty low that anything will actually come of it.
Kinda, although an aircraft that operates exclusively in ground effect is explicitly not an aircraft as far as CAA is concerned, so they're outside their rules.
As far as recharge time is concerned, I assume they would be able to fast charge in half an hour or so, like any other electric vehicle.
Kinda, although an aircraft that operates exclusively in ground effect is explicitly not an aircraft as far as CAA is concerned, so they’re outside their rules.
Interesting!
As far as recharge time is concerned, I assume they would be able to fast charge in half an hour or so, like any other electric vehicle.
For EVs to charge in 30 mins, you need some pretty beefy power infrastructure, it's not something available at residential houses. So if the battery capacity is a lot higher, you might not be able to get charged in that short amount of time. I'd expect power usage to be much higher for this plane than an EV, given it's a lot larger.
But now I think about it, it might not be that much larger. Having just read up on the concept of ground-effect I guess it may be more efficient than an EV, so perhaps you'd get away with batteries about twice as large as a long-range EV? Given the right setup you could probably still do an 80% charge in under an hour, so flying each way on a 2 hour schedule would be pretty doable. Run a second one to double the frequency.
I think that anything with such narrow operating parameter is always limited. Just the way things work. Take rockets - ones to put humans in orbit are very different than say sounding rockets, or other sub-orbitals, or even ones for satellites (and those vary based on LEO or GeoSynch).
Soviet Union used ground effects planes as naval vessels with missiles (Ekranoplan), which I guess the tradeoffs made sense.
The Soviets also crashed one of their ground effect planes, killing all the crew. I understand they were also very costly to operate.
despite so many countries and organisations giving them a try over the years
Who other than the Soviet Union ever did any sort of serious attempt?
There's been a handful of small passenger ones built in a number of countries, including some aircraft converted into ground effect planes. Germany has built a few, and Iran apparently uses them to some degree.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Lifter
And then there's this monster.
Pretty apt comparison actually.
Better not use these if there’s any significant waves around… 10 metres above sea level is not as safe as you might think.