The Next Spruce Goose

Milt Thanatos writes "For those of us who have been patiently waiting for WIGE (wing-in-ground-effect) ever since the first stories leaked out of the Soviet Union, this may be it. Check out: this site. Note that, unlike the Soviet WIGE, this version can take to altitude above rough seas or dry land."

Comments

Russia already built this

[austad]

Back in 1960, the Russians developed the Ekranoplan. We saw it in satellite photos because the thing was too damn big to fit inside a building. It was over 2 football fields long, weighed over 540 tons, and could reach speeds of more than 500 knots. It could also fly up to 20 meters above the surface. Back in the early 1990's, we finally found out what that thing in the pictures actually was. Around 20 of them were built, but for some reason they cancelled the program.

There's a good picture and some info here. The History channel had a show on this thing a few weeks ago too, and it made me wonder why we didn't have anything like that. It's an unbelievably fast and efficient way to carry large amounts of people and cargo.