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The hovercraft's time might have arrived
- waste_monk 3y agoMy hovercraft is full of eels.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- fghorow 3y agoBouncy, bouncy.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sillywalk 3y agoI was waiting for this comment, I had it on a t-shirt.
- acheron 3y agoVenenya vilyanirwanen ná quanta as angolingwi https://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/hovercraft.htm https://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/hovercraft.htm
- kaz-inc 3y agoReminds me of Red Alert 2's amphibious transport. The Kirov is also a zeppelin, huh. I have a new appreciation for the alternate history in RA2, of technology that was hyped but fizzled out. Tesla coils as well.
- trynumber9 3y agoAs I recall it looked a little something like these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landing_Craft_Air_Cushion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landing_Craft_Air_Cushion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebed-class_LCAC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebed-class_LCAC
- IshKebab 3y ago...but hasn't. Interesting article though.
- cjrp 3y agoI went on a SRN.4 across the channel; I’ve never felt so sea-sick! Maintenance costs must have been huge, since it was powered by turboprop engines. All the cost of an aeroplane, none of the speed or comfort.
- michaelt 3y agoWhen I've travelled by air, "comfort" has never been the first thing to come to mind as I've shuffled through security, sans belt and shoes, hours before my flight's scheduled departure time. I agree that there's a lot that's impractical about hovercraft - especially when for crossing the channel there's so much competition: ferries, the tunnel, and (as you mention) flying. For people who want to take their car across, as I understand it the hovercraft took about as long as the eurotunnel does now to cross the channel - but the tunnel has much more capacity.
- mrcartmeneses 3y agoI’ve been on the cross channel hovercraft in bad weather. It was just as bumpy as being in a small speedboat in bad weather. But it was huge and insanely noisy and the experience seemed to last forever even though in all of that sensory overload I had no real concept of time. If it had operated closer to Cuba the Americans would surely have used it as a form of torture.
- closewith 3y agoUnless you've experienced a hovercraft in chop, it's probably hard to imagine. It's similar to extreme turbulence but more jarring and for the entire flight.
- xavriley 3y agoHydrofoil from Sorrento to Capri in choppy seas, on our honeymoon. Was the stuff of nightmares. My wife said we’d have to live on Capri because she was never setting foot on a boat again
- jgrahamc 3y ago
- marbs 3y agoAs a young child, one day at school we had to fill in a "travel to school" questionnaire. I remember finding it funny that one option was "hovercraft", when the only one applicable to me was "walk". Years later, I lived on the edge of Southsea Common in Portsmouth, and would regularly walk past these hovercraft terminals. The hovercraft do make quite a roar, as the article says, but were always fun to watch. I especially enjoyed "take-off" (if that's the right term?) when they would slide back off the beach into the sea and do a 180 simultaneously. They do like to advertise the Portsmouth hovercraft service as being "unique", and say that no where else has such a service. So it's interesting to read that hovercraft are being used for regular services elsewhere in the world, such as in Japan, "to deliver passengers straight to the doors of the airport terminal across the Oita Bay without the need for a quay or even a connecting bus." Clever! Several times I got the hovercraft in Portsmouth across to the Isle of Wight. One time I recall seeing a group of school children, presumably on their way back home to the Isle of Wight after a day of school on the mainland, and it brought back memories of my childhood questionnaire. I guess that option wasn't quite so ridiculous after all.
- ben_w 3y ago> One time I recall seeing a group of school children, presumably on their way back home to the Isle of Wight after a day of school on the mainland Depending on when this was, I might have been one of those kids. Back in… 1995?[0] My school in Havant sent us there for a week to some activity centre whose name I forget, where I was knocked unconscious by a trampoline. [0] Such a nerd that I am, the week containing Wednesday 29 March 1995, which I remember because of which episode of TNG my dad recorded for me to watch later.
- rob74 3y agoSee also: Why the airship's time might have arrived Why the maglev's time might have arrived Why the supersonic passenger aircraft's time might have arrived Why the hydrofoil ship's time might have arrived Why the ground effect vehicle's time might have arrived (Ok, that's a bit far-fetched) ... I read a lot of these articles along the years, but it always turned out that the time hadn't actually arrived after all - one notable exception being electric cars...
- prmoustache 3y agoWell in the case of the hovercraft, it had already. Just not enough to be ubiquitous. I had the chance to live in Calais in the early 90's and seeing the Princess Anne and Margaret in operation. They were one of the coolest form of transportation. https://youtu.be/FePd0XHIq6U https://youtu.be/FePd0XHIq6U
- GuB-42 3y agoAll of them exist or have existed. - Airships were the original form of air travel before airplanes obsoleted them, still have some use for publicity (Goodyear blimps) or recreative flying. - There are a few maglev lines in regular service in China. There were others in other places before. - Concorde. Not anymore though. - There are quite a few hydrofoil ships in operation today. - Ground effect vehicles are just planes that fly low. They exist, but I am not aware of passenger service with these.
- rob74 3y agoYup, these are all niche technologies - some of them (airships) had their time, but today they are all much less common than the alternatives ("regular" airplanes, regular trains, regular ships). Interestingly there is also a parallel between hovercraft and supersonic passenger airplanes: their best-known applications (Concorde and the hoverferry across the English channel) both started in the 1960s, were never really profitable and were discontinued once the original vehicles were getting obsolete in the early 2000s.
- CobaltFire 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Jleagle 3y agoLiving in Portsmouth UK, I see a huge hovercraft all the time, maybe the largest in the world for passengers, taking people to the Isle of Wight. I sometimes forgot that they are pretty rare. They are great for kids as they really feel like an experience.
- flir 3y agoMy cousin used to commute on the IoW hovercraft - great way to start the day. It's one of the things I suggest to friends if they're in town.
- petre 3y agoThe US Navy has been operating LCAC for a while now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landing_Craft_Air_Cushion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landing_Craft_Air_Cushion
- NooneAtAll3 3y agopretty much every major military has these russia, china, india - you name it
- CobaltFire 3y agoNext generation is in development and should be rolling out to service soon. Running costs on LCACs are, frankly, insane. They offer a capability that’s unique, but they cost a fortune to do it. Source: Previously an LCAC Navigator.
- Geisterde 3y agoSo is everything, youd be surprised how much time nuclear powered aircraft carriers spend running diesel generators, well, maybe "you" wouldnt. Just saying what you already know, everything the military touches costs too much, im sure hovercrafts are difficult with the skirt and fans, I would just say we dont know whether people would be willing to cough up for it. Crossing the straight headed into Seattle I could see navy guys from bremerton spending the extra money, for instance.
- CobaltFire 3y agoStarted my career as a Reactor Operator (injury sidelined that a couple years in), then moved to expeditionary aviation, which led to LCACs. Seen quite a bit, and you aren’t wrong. Honestly, a choice I made any given day running my section had more impact than my lifetime of private choices for emissions. Just another thing to fight with as far as ethics after retirement.
- Geisterde 3y agoBeing an ETN isnt all its cracked up to be. The best part about it was the schooling.
- youngtaff 3y agoA good few years back got to drive a hovercraft on a corporate day out… it was brilliant fun (up there with as one of the most fun things I've done) Should do it again sometime
- M95D 3y agoThe 3 major disadvantages severely limits its use: expensive to run, almost no steering or breaks, and it can't climb slopes.
- jillesvangurp 3y agoI remember seeing hovercrafts arrive at a terminal in Normandy back in the eighties as a child. We just went there to watch them come and go. I never traveled on one. Apparently not the most comfortable ride in rough weather. But impressive machines and very cool to see these huge machines slide from the sea onto the land. These days we have other options for traveling fast across water. There are some interesting companies that build electrical boats with foils for example. But, I could see hovercraft making a comeback. Electric hovercraft should be a lot less noisy and a lot cleaner to operate. They are in any case optimal for short distances. So, they wouldn't need an insane amount of battery even. The main challenges relate to charging them up quickly and cheaply with minimal hassle. Any inefficiencies could be offset by the power being relatively cheap.
- mcv 3y agoFor hovercraft to really take off, they'd have to be a lot more efficient and quieter. I don't know if there's anything that can be optimised about the enormous amounts of air blowing throw that thing; lots of other things are rapidly becoming quieter and more efficient, including PC cooling fans, so maybe there's room for improvement. Maybe electrification will help. But I suspect hovercraft are doomed to remain a niche.
- mhandley 3y agoMaybe they could use the fans primarily when in very shallow water or on the beach, and lower a water-jet propulsion pod on a fin for when they're in deeper water. Likely this would be significantly more efficient overall, even taking into account the small amount of drag from the fin.
- yakshaving_jgt 3y agoI was thinking recently that hovercrafts might come in handy to cross minefields in Ukraine, assuming that hovercrafts don't trigger detonation. I'm sure there are plenty of reasons though (perhaps noise?) for why this would be a stupid idea.
- lupusreal 3y agoThey'd set off at least some kinds of mines, and also they don't do well on very uneven terrain. Beaches are fine but not so much fields pockmarked with artillery craters and crisscrossed by hedges and ditches.
- t43562 3y agoI wondered about supplying troops across the Dnieper river in Kherson. The vehicle wouldn't have to stop at any point and wouldn't need a bridge or a road. They would probably be rather more expensive and yet another thing to maintain and not carry that much. Ontop of that where would you hide them so that the opponent wouldn't concentrate effort to remove them? The more effective they were the more they would get targeted and be difficult to protect. I really just think that nobody has tried - there probably aren't such a lot of hovercraft "on the second hand market" that can be bought and fixed up to go and the only ones in large supply are very small recreational vehicles.
- dredmorbius 3y agoHovercraft troop transports are already A Thing, and a fairly significant modern use of the technology. They're mostly appropriate where there's a need to transport significant numbers of troops across flat-but-variable terrain (snow, ice, water, marsh/swamp), and where there's limited potential for enemy fire (artillery, missile, aircraft attacks). See: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landing_Craft_Air_Cushion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landing_Craft_Air_Cushion> The US have around 100 LCAC and similar vehicles, with a cargo capacity of ~60 tonnes, or 120--180 troops, each. Hovercraft might prove useful in some cases for traversing minefields, but would be hampered by terrain (hovercraft have poor hill-climbing and slope-traversal characteristics), and might best be utilised after major combat risks are reduced, as part of de-mining operations.
- xoxxala 3y agoMustard has a good video on the birth and death of commercial hovercraft, focusing on the Channel ferries. TLDW: the economics didn't work, hovercraft were too expensive to operate, were not reliable in bad weather and could not compete against much cheaper/barely slower services (like the Chunnel). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnJLT8wFyhY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnJLT8wFyhY
- t43562 3y agoI've been following Griffon for a while. I don't think there's a huge renaissance in the offing but their business seems to be surviving. I think it has quite important military, rescue and scientific research uses quite apart from transport. The technology is developing greatly in areas such as the shafts, engines and so on I believe. I think that if they do manage to go electric or hybrid electric it might make a big difference to the economics which could increase the potential market a bit. I remember going across the channel in a hovercraft - I think I was 6 years old because the only other possible time was when I was 3 and I don't think I'd remember well. The weather was terrible and I remember feeling seasick. I'm going to Portsmouth this summer to give it another go.
- painted-now 3y agoI recently digitized some old family videos, including 20 minutes of watching hovercrafts "starting" and "landing" between Dover and Calais. Crazy machines. https://youtu.be/NFy0_JzzbrI https://youtu.be/NFy0_JzzbrI
- betamaxthetape 3y agoFantastic footage, many many thanks for uploading it. Have you considered openly licensing it under creative commons of some sort?
- qingcharles 3y agoHaving had to suffer weekly trips back and forth from my home in Dover to Calais on those monstrosities I can tell you they are the least comfortable form of transport I have ever encountered. Every trip for me was 45 mins of non-stop vomit, regardless of the weather. I much preferred the boat even though it took several times as long. Plus, the boat had arcade machines. Loved Calais, though. Don't know how it is now, but in the 80s it was a very quaint little French tourist town.
- dctoedt 3y ago> Every trip for me was 45 mins of non-stop vomit, regardless of the weather. March 1976, I did the Calais-Dover hovercraft crossing on a night of bad weather in the Channel. I was fine and actually enjoyed the motion — until the hovercraft got to Dover and had to cross maybe 50 yards of beach to get to the terminal, and then I got queasy from the vibration off the sand.
- bvm 3y agoi'm more intrigued by the image of the rescue in the article where someone appears to have been riding a quadbike on a frozen lake (?!) and fallen in. https://www.firetruckmall.com/AvailableTruck/10923/2018-Neoteric-Hovertrek-Deluxe-Rescue-Hovercraft https://www.firetruckmall.com/AvailableTruck/10923/2018-Neot... this would seem to be the source, is it a test? but why would you use a real quadbike in freezing water for a test? Looks terrifying.
- NoxiousPluK 3y agoOddly relevant. A man and his daughter drove a quad over ice and went through it in the Netherlands last weekend, and the girl passed away earlier today. :(
- tristenharr 3y agoIn middle school one of my science teachers was really great and thorough, the kind of teacher that you remember the things you learned years later because they made the classes memorable. We would drop things off the roof of the building and record with slow-mo cameras to calculate the formula for gravity, he lit hydrogen balloons on fire and you could feel the heat. The coolest day of the year was when we got to play with his “hovercraft”. He had repurposed a Vacuum cleaner to create a baby hovercraft. It was basically a small platform, with a plastic tarp on the bottom that had little holes and when you turned the vacuum on it would expel the air and the little platform would ever so slightly lift up and glide across the ground. The reason I remember it so vividly was because each of us students got a chance to sit on the chair atop the hovercraft platform and the teacher would push us down the hall and we’d “hover” from one side of the building to the other. I am forever grateful for the teachers who go above and beyond to make learning fun for students with no reward to themselves.
- throwitaway222 3y agoThat sounds basically like the thing they sold instructions for in Boy's Life magazine forever ago
- mrandish 3y agoYou had the middle school science teacher I wish I had but never did. This was one reason I decided to send my kid to private school. When choosing schools my wife had a bunch of criteria but the only thing I really cared about was interviewing the middle school science teacher and we picked one with a great science teacher. My kid had a had a terrific time in that class and I got to experience middle school science done right through homework projects and dinner time stories. The incidental lesson learned is that a private school board, principal and administrators who do the hard work to build a system and culture able to attract, hire and nurture one really great teacher tend to attract more than one. About half my kid's middle school teachers were extraordinary. When selecting schools just remember culture starts at the top and administrative regimes can change by eras so look at the recent history of board, principal and key staff turnover. I found out later the great principal who hired the teachers we loved had left the year before we started. Fortunately, it usually takes a few years for things to change much and our kid graduated middle school last year. I feel kinda bad for students starting there now though because some of the best teachers are starting to leave.
- hnbear 3y agoWe went to France on these (Dover-Calais) about 30 years ago, I was roughly 10. They were incredibly exciting, loud, bouncy machines. Huge spaces to drive into, they floated around like toys when maneuvering, made my mother very sea sick. I loved it. My parents suffered them as it was before the tunnel and much faster than ferries. As a child I wished we could do it all the time. As an adult it’s obvious why they didn’t take off. In even calm seas they were bouncy and we suffered delays that never stopped the ferries. The ferries offered more ports, nice restaurants, and cabins on the longer trips in western France or down to Spain. A far nicer way to travel. The hovercraft were like doing an NYC to NY trip on a WW2 DC3. But, they were so much fun I’m glad to see them back. I wonder how they’ll do against the tunnel now.
- justincormack 3y agoThey didn't run if the sea was too rough which was a lot of the time.
- hnbear 3y agoYes. They felt rough in calm seas and then never ran in anything slightly rough, which in the channel is all the time.
- stcredzero 3y agoWhat can a hovercraft do, which couldn't be satisfied as well or better by: - Hydroplane ferry (Competitive speeds) - Multirotor ground effect vehicle A hovercraft could come up on land, which might simplify loading and unloading. But I don't think this is enough of an advantage. The weakness of hovercrafts in their earlier heyday was reliability, maintenance, and overall cost. Hydroplane ferries also have higher costs, but there are still some running to this day, so these must not be as high. As air taxis and other electric aircraft start to benefit from economies of scale in the future, multirotor ground effect aircraft (think Ekranoplans) could also benefit. But the other electric aircraft would likely outcompete them, except on a few very high traffic routes. A big advantage air taxis have, is greater flexibility in loading and unloading.
- Wildgoose 3y agoI really enjoyed travelling between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight by hovercraft and heartily recommend the experience to anyone who hasn't tried it.