Re:Electric seagliders could enable short-haul emissions-fre...
by taneq on Thursday July 21, 2022 @12:39AM
(#32175843)
It's not perfectly analogous, I'll grant you... but at flight speed, even ground-effect flight speed, I think the consequences of hitting a larger than expected wave, or dipping a wing in the water after a gust of wind, are worse than just becoming a boat. (Maybe becoming what a boat would become if you dropped it from 2-3m at 100+mph...)
Well not quite; the appeal of the ekranoplan is that it uses considerably less fuel and/or can carry considerably more weight than an aircraft of similar size. The risk profile is also different if catastrophic failure simply means you unexpectedly become a boat.