Ground-Effect Robot Could Be Key To Future High-Speed Trains

They do not say where the power is coming from, in those pics there is no pickups for power so that leaves batteries, very heavy, or internal combustion, heavy and polluting, its all right to play around with models that are carrying 3 people and made out of thin fiberglass to get government grants, but lets be realistic, I don't know how much ground effect improves lift but it takes a lot to get a Jumbo into the air, so say half the weight of a jumbo, half of the speed (required to compete with jumbo's) and a quarter of the fuel, and that is only for the 500 or so people a Jumbo carries, how many props to provide the same thrust as one Jumbo engine, and remember if they use an engine using fossil fuels they will require (just like a car, but not an airplane) anti-pollution equipment and heavy noise suppression, that would rob them of a lot of the power.
Have a look at the tiny wings on the artists impression of the proposed "train" are they really trying to tell us thats all that is required for a full sized unit when the tiny things in the photo's have a wingspan about eight times the size of the body.
Thats only the future for a lot of money in grants.

Cheers David
 
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The link is not dead ... it was only sleeping ... it's only stunned.

That would take alot of ground space for that super wide gauge track ... maybe on the Salt Flats ... but never in the inner city.

In China maybe ... but nowhere else is there enough open space for ground based airplanes.
 
This is fifty year old technology with a robot thorwn in, put in a concrete channel.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7638659.stm
The original Caspian Sea Monster spied by the Americans was a colossal 540-tonne research craft. At 100m long, it was bigger than a Jumbo Jet and twice as heavy as any contemporary aircraft, but much more efficient and capable of flying at up to 400km/h.
 
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