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What Happened To Passenger Hovercraft? (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Although much has been written about hoverboards lately, hovercraft have largely faded from public imagination, BBC News reports. The Bond-esque 1960s sensation proved too noisy to roam inland rivers regularly, while too small to compete at sea with a new generation of conventional mega-ferries and high-speed car-carrying catamarans. Military aside, only a 10-minute English route and a Sino-Russian river border crossing keep hopes air-cushioned nowadays, while civilian operators wait for electric propulsion to become practical, aiming to reduce airplane-like noise levels and excessive fuel costs with new technology.
I'm a Florida tourist, you insensitive clod!
I blame SeaSpray.
I have fond memories as a teenager riding the hovercraft from Southampton to the Isle of Wight and back for summer holiday fun. Fun, fun, fun. If one was stood aft upon take off, the spray generated by the fans was enormous and you received a good soaking, which was pleasant on a warm summer day. It would douse your fags, though...
Never a good start...
and relatively cheaper per transported cargo.
What happened to passenger hovercraft? That's obvious; the flexibility they provide (amphibious, require little infrastructure) obviously doesn't offset their inherent disadvantages (lack of carrying capacity, poor fuel efficiency, etc) except for military applications. What I want to know is what happened to the hydrofoil? I got to ride on one from H.K. to Macao at a very young age; I remember being mildly disturbed at the speeds we were traveling at... I've never heard a peep about them, however.
Great video describing the downturn of the hovercraft and concorde etc - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYH1lPm41-0
I rode on a hovercraft once - over the English channel from France to England. It was an interesting experience. Not worth repeating. It was extremely noisy. I would rather take a slower route.
...while civilian operators wait for electric propulsion to become practical
I expect they'll have a long, long wait.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
have you seen the price of eel? I'm all in favor of a hovercraft full of 'em.
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Do not touch the trim.
https://youtu.be/uByeEObHaBA
You are welcome on my lawn.
In the early 1990s one could travel between Hong Kong and Kowloon by hovercraft. It was an interesting change of pace, but I could see how it couldn't compete against the Star Ferry.
As long as this world has Lamborghinis and Jackie Chan, it is not a safe world for hovercraft.
God spoke to me
The U.S. Marines are making great use of them.
There are a number of military advantages to hovercraft that don't apply to civilian applications:
1. They can move up onto the beach
2. They can move over coral reefs and submerged obstacles
3. They can move over minefields (the pressure is too dispersed to detonate them)
But there are also drawbacks:
1. They are expensive
2. They require a lot of maintenance
3. They have a lot of downtime
4. They are difficult to operate
5. They are dangerous: they can drift sideways in a turn, and they don't stop quickly.
Semper Fi
They sink when the power fails.
That isn't stopping the incredible growth in the marketplace for drones.
I'd expect a personal drone (i.e. one that can carry you as a payload) to be available way way before a personal hovercraft. Just watch out for the rotating knives.
What kind of world has it become that "Bond-esque" gets a capital letter, but English and Sino-Russian don't?
Personal hovercraft have been available for decades now. They're mostly used as toys because they have lousy directional control: only a rudder in the propwash, unlike large hovercraft which usually have vectored thrust at several points.
Hovercraft have to LIFT their cargo. It's a stupendous waste of energy compared to other methods (floating their cargo, etc.). Only aircraft, hovercraft and things like cranes actually are required to lift their cargo and all take huge amounts of engineering and energy to do so.
For a quick sojourn across some water, it's a pointless waste of time and effort to lift the load up and then move it around, by blowing air at the floor - no matter how you skirt it. Helicopters are the only equivalent but they have low weight limits in comparison to everything else for the same reasons - they have to push air down with more energy than their load takes to lift directly.
As such, I'm not surprised that boats (where you just have to design to have enough bouyancy to counter-balance the load, and then enough energy to slide forward a little) are surpassing hovercraft.
Hovercraft's only advantage is to be able to seamlessly switch between sea and (relatively flat and open) land. Going beach-to-beach, that's an advantage, but that's quite a rare circumstance - you can't drop off tourist cars to a beach, for example, even between England and France (hell, the English side is mostly sheer cliff-face). And, let's face it, a duck-bus (amphibious vehicle) can do that too and they're dead in the water (sorry) as well.
Hovercraft are for niche transport, not anything common, heavy, en-masse, or sustained. I'm not surprised they're dying out.
Electric motors aren't going to save them either. That requires huge weights of batteries which are going to weigh more than their current fuel + engine to provide equivalent power. And, as such, play against their biggest weakness of having to lift their load up before they can move about.
What you just made is called a boat. So why piss about floating that boat on a cushion of air when you could have just pointed that fan behind you and got a faster boat.
This is exactly the problem with hovercraft. Especially cargo-carrying. If you have to be bouyant enough to cope if the power fails, it's cheaper to let the power fail and be a boat instead.
The ex-Top Gear hosts showed their excitement for the craft by attempting to Revive it with better technology (portable Van for commuters) - and in a later episode a race though a city.
Although - they may have crushed any hopes that the technology would catch on by mocking the noise & mess they create in front of a "high-class" restaurant.
While driving in the race Clarkson indirectly showed how dangerous the craft can be - tight turns and short stops were impossible. Of course his buffoonery amplified the problems.