Word: hovercraft
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Proposals for Chicago's badly needed third jetport include a floating airport constructed of aluminum modules and reached by helibus and Hovercraft. Architect Stanley Tigerman estimates it would cost a relatively modest $500 million. Closer to approval, however, is a $1 billion dike-protected jetport 35 ft. to 55 ft. below the water level of Lake Michigan and connected to the Loop by six miles of causeway, tunnel and bridge. Says Chicago's Aviation Commissioner William Downes Jr.: "The main objection comes from the save-our-lakefront fraternity who don't realize that an airport six miles...
Last week the so-called air-cushion vehicle (ACV) got its biggest commercial test when a 165-ton SR.N4, the world's largest Hovercraft, was introduced on regularly scheduled passenger runs across the English Channel between Dover and the French coastal city of Boulogne. The thrice daily round-trip crossings, which will be expanded to six starting this week, are of crucial importance to the British Hovercraft Corp., which builds the SR.N4. "Our necks are on the chopping block," admits Richard Stanton-Jones, managing director. "Potential buyers will be here watching and riding...
Among those watching the cross-channel undertaking most closely are Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and Buffalo-based Bell Aerosystems Co. Both companies manufacture their own ACV versions, also serve as British Hovercraft licensees. The fledgling industry's leader, British Hovercraft, was formed in 1966 by Westland Aircraft Ltd., Vickers-Armstrongs Ltd., and the government-run National Research and Development Corp., which together have pumped $48 million into the craft's development...
Profits are still a long way off, but British Hovercraft is thinking big. Applying the hover principle to industry, the company is currently producing, mostly on an experimental basis, an air-cushion pallet called "Float-a-Load," which can be used to move industrial equipment weighing up to five tons. Its hopes are highest for the $4,000,000 SR.N4, whose potential market over the next ten years could exceed 100 orders if all goes well on its showcase channel crossings...
...Hovercraft, after all, made the 26-mile crossing in just 35 minutes, nearly an hour less than the ferry's timetable...