Saturday, May 14, 2011

Ground Effect Train

[An experimental ground-effect 'rail' vehicle; Picture sourced from the IEEE article linked to in the post.]

I stumbled across this story about a Japanese research team investigating the use of ground-effect flyers to build completely new concepts in ‘rail’ transportation. It’s still early days, but it’s amazing stuff. You know, with ground effect based vehicles a hybrid rail / water transport is a possibility – maybe something along the lines of some sort of Alexander Lippisch Aerofoil Boat ‘rail’ / water vehicle. The ‘rail’, or I guess land-based channel if you follow this Japanese line of thought, could lead the vehicle right to the water’s edge where it then flies out over the water towards another ‘rail’ on a distant shore. Wild stuff.

No comments:

Post a Comment