Word: hovercraft
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Dates: during 1959-1959
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...keep a payload in the air. Surface ships carry a lot of cargo, but water resistance keeps them slow. Last week Britain's Saunders-Roe, Ltd. (aircraft) demonstrated a hybrid craft that is neither ship nor airplane, but has some of the advantages of both. Called the Hovercraft, it moves a little way above the surface of land or water, supported on a nearly frictionless cushion...
Saunders-Roe's Hovercraft has a 30-ft. oval hull like an inverted platter. Sticking up from the center is a cylindrical housing for a 435-h.p. engine and a four-bladed fan. Air from the fan is blown down through two ring-shaped ducts under the rim of the hull, and emerges in jets that point inward, forming a kind of wall. Inside this wall a cushion of air builds up and lifts the Hovercraft off the surface. Forward propulsion is obtained by diverting part of the air flow through horizontal ducts (see diagram...
...first test flight at Saunders-Roe's plant at Cowes, the Hovercraft rose 15 in. above the concrete runway. Test Pilot Peter Lamb maneuvered it easily, using a standard aircraft control stick. To dramatize the low friction of its air cushion, Inventor Christopher Cockrell pushed the four-ton craft around the apron by hand. Later the Hovercraft was towed out into the Solent for its first water trial. It rose in a cloud of spray and skimmed easily above the water among yachts and harbor traffic...
...next Hovercraft to be built, said Chief Designer Richard Stanton-Jones, will weigh 40 tons and carry 80 passengers at 100 m.p.h. Large Hovercraft should need only one-quarter the horsepower required by airplanes of comparable weight, and be able to carry twice the payload. They can start their voyages on land, require only a reasonably level shore...
Since even big Hovercraft will rise only a few feet above the water, they are bound to have trouble with waves. But the designers are not much worried. Most steep waves are low enough, they say, to be passed over easily. High waves are usually long and gradual; they can be surmounted like a series of hills. Hovercraft can be designed with a seaworthy hull. In the worst storms they could drop down into the water and ride out the storm like any other vessel...