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Special high speed towboat pulls tethered aircraft (carrying
enough fuel to take off and land. I'm presuming that a thin
streamlined ship can pull much more weight with much less
energy than pushing the air with turbine motors.
You pay less airport taxes on fuel, and perhaps even get there
faster.
[link]
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You mean a 'glider', rather than an aeroplane. Still more efficient would be a glider pulled across the Atlantic by a wire being reeled in onto a fixed spool somewhere near New York. |
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Perhaps if you already had a "high speed towboat" running around anyways. |
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Airplane not glider. The motor is needed for
takeoff
and landing and short flight over land to and from
airport. |
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If its a seaplane It could be a glider, but the
downside is people get seasick. (Perhaps worth it
for
cargo) |
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Use ground effect. But rather than having the
motor in the air, have the motor in the water. (Of
course run by RC. |
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An RC ground vehicle could be used for towing
during landing and take off, so that no on board
motor is needed at all, and then hippo is correct,
it would be a glider. |
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Anybody know's how to make a nice 3d animation
or
realistic vid of this and put on youtube? It could
be done by replacing a small glider image with a
large passenger (or better yet - cargo) plane. |
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Is this functionally different from a hydrofoil in normal operation? |
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A hydrofoil has the weight of the cargo supported by foils in the water. This idea has the weight of the cargo supported by foils in the air. |
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But speeking of hydrofoils, your tow boat will probably need some to keep itself in the water. I assume this aircraft will probably be designed to fly fairly slowly, lets say between 50-100 knots, but that's really fast for a boat. I think it will want to jump out of the water as it goes over the waves. You could use hydrofoils too keep it in the water, and since you have them, you might as well use them to reduce drag and run as a hydrofoil full time. |
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Can a lightweight hydrofoil not reach the high speeds
of aircraft?! If not, this idea is void. |
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The aircraft will periodically lower itself so that the
towboat is in the water when giving power. |
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I think your assumptions as to the power demand are pretty backwards. Take a look at the size of an engine on any speedboat going 50 knots, and now take a look at the size of one on a Piper Supercub. This idea is mismatched in a number of ways. |
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The answer you're looking for is the Russian ground-effect plane that flew over the Caspian. Look up the 'Caspian Sea Monster' sometime. |
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I read it a long time ago, and re-read it before
posting. Perhaps some of the energy in speedboats
goes on raising the speedboat above water. In this
case perhaps the wings help and ground effect can
assist. |
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I do not know. so perhaps I'm totally wrong. How is it
that pushing air is more effective than pushing
water? Or is it LESS effective but much slower
because of the density? |
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[RS], it's called an 'ekranoplan'. Wiki will redirect you to
the GEV page if you search for it. |
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Pushing water is more effective at gaining speed,
however the friction and viscosity is much much
larger as well. |
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Most of the energy in any powerboat is simply
taken up by pushing the water out of the way.
Boats are simply gashogs. |
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A good experiment would be to take a ski-plane,
adapt a water-prop to it, and compare the speed
vs. the fuel used. I'd be interested in the result of
that. I suspect it might do better than the air
prop while the plane was in the water. But I
would be hesitant to pick a winner between the
water-prop-equipped seaplane taxiing in the
water and a conventional air-prop plane while
flying. |
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A boat that can travel at 40+ knots is uncommon to say the least. |
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An aircraft that can fly safely at less then 40 knots is uncommon to say the least. |
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Large civil aircraft fly "above" the weather; FL350 is typical. That's (very roughly) 1.4 * 7 = 10nm slant range. |
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Any estimates of what 10 nautical miles of high tensile cable weighs in at ? Eh ? Eh ? |
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Oh, and at that altitude, you need to be traveling at Mach 0.8 or so, or your wings have a tendency to stop producing lift. |
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So your towed airfoil is, at best, going to struggle to reach 5000' AMSL, at 40 knots. 3500 nautical miles across the Atlantic; five or six days of being bounced around in the clag in a cabin not much bigger than the average backwoods privy (and no actual privy, per se; if you're lucky, a draughty hole in the fuselage). |
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Suggested category change - Public:Punishment. |
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ok. 8th you convinced me. <drooping> |
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