Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Hawai’i Seaglider Initiative: A new approach to travel between the islands

hawaiiseaglider.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 122 posts

Re: The Hawai’i Seaglider Initiative: A new approach to travel between the islands

#61

Post by pelagic_sky »

tlb wrote: post #58

The aerodynamic benefit of flying in ground effect is fairly small, and the disadvantage is that rogue waves can just randomly splash that high. The current plane's wingspan is 65 feet, which probably means it flies about 32 feet (half a wingspan) off the water. Rogue waves can easily be that high in mild weather, and hitting even a small amount of water at 200 mph (claimed cruise speed) is bad. Lots of sea birds too…

Watching that demo video was terrifying to me. The water is unpredictable and this thing wants to be close to it at full speed. It would have to be perfect conditions to get me into one of those.

Re: The Hawai’i Seaglider Initiative: A new approach to travel between the islands

#63

Post by duxup »

These ground effect craft are super cool but I fear that these will also fail for the same reasons they have historically, reliability, unpredictable downtime due to being very sensitive to weather / ocean conditions.

I suspect efficiency in what looks more like traditional air travel will be the way to go.

Re: The Hawai’i Seaglider Initiative: A new approach to travel between the islands

#64

Post by wkat4242 »

Animats wrote: post #24

It's an ekranoplan. The USSR made several. The actual vehicle is from a company called Regent.[1] They do have a quarter-scale prototype, and a video. This web site is from some group trying to get funding for a service. The current Regent ekranoplan, not yet shipping, is a 12 passenger model. That seems small for an inter-island ferry. It would be faster than a ferry, but since the existing inter-island ferry routes…

The USSR one in your link isn't even the craziest ekranoplan :) This one was huge and used 8 jet engines: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lun-class_ekranoplan . It looks to me like a failed Kerbal Space Program experiment (moah engines!) but curiously enough it was in actual operational service.

The one in the link actually looks fairly sane, it's smaller and powered by only 1 turboprop by the looks of it (edit: nope it has 2 turbofans in the nose too). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-90_Orlyonok

Edit: oops I see it was already mentioned sorry. I was reading on mobile.

Re: The Hawai’i Seaglider Initiative: A new approach to travel between the islands

#65

Post by jongjong »

gilbertbw wrote: post #51
jongjong wrote: post #44

What happens if the hydrofoil hits a large dolphin, shark, whale or other large sea creature? Sea animals collide with motor boats occasionally but this Seaglider would be even more likely to do so because: - It doesn't produce as much underwater noise as a motor which would normally serve to alarm sea animals. - It goes a lot faster, giving sea animals less time to react. Then there is the concern about what a colli…

It's only hydro-foiling on take-off and landing, in flight it's a plane in ground effect flying just above the sea.

Tell that to the dolphins which swim along the shore line where the take offs and landings will be occurring.

Re: The Hawai’i Seaglider Initiative: A new approach to travel between the islands

#66

Post by phire »

mkl wrote: post #27
freitasm wrote: post #15

Something also planned for New Zealand too: https://www.oceanflyer.co.nz/

Neat! I couldn't see where they intend to run it (though it may be hidden in an article). They give a 300km range, which is almost exactly Christchurch–Wellington, so I wonder if that's possible.

Christchurch to Wellington is a bit of a stretch for the range.

It's too far to use the Harbour infrastructure at either end. You would have to build a pier on the southern side of Wellington (say Island Bay) and then use New Brighton pier. That works out to about 295 km.

With only 300km range, it's hard to find good routes in NZ.

Re: The Hawai’i Seaglider Initiative: A new approach to travel between the islands

#67

Post by dghughes »

The Seaglider would be great for my region of South-east Canada. There are four islands and two other areas each with at least three sides facing water. It wouldn't be open ocean so wave height shouldn't be too bad.

The big thing here now is Right Whales ships bash their heads in since they seem to always be in the way of ships. Cruise ships, cargo ships, fishing all have to slow down to a crawl if whales are spotted.

Flying would be far faster than ferry some take 8 hours others 1 hour. Although flights here are ridiculously expensive $800 to $1,000 one-way to go 150km.

Re: The Hawai’i Seaglider Initiative: A new approach to travel between the islands

#69

Post by happyopossum »

Animats wrote: post #24

It's an ekranoplan. The USSR made several. The actual vehicle is from a company called Regent.[1] They do have a quarter-scale prototype, and a video. This web site is from some group trying to get funding for a service. The current Regent ekranoplan, not yet shipping, is a 12 passenger model. That seems small for an inter-island ferry. It would be faster than a ferry, but since the existing inter-island ferry routes…

> but since the existing inter-island ferry routes only run about an hour, more speed may not be worth the trouble

What inter-island ferry routes? There aren’t any, and when there were many of the routes were muuuuuch longer than an hour. The I harbored portion of the island chain is almost 300 miles long - a trip from Hilo to Honolulu would be ~240 miles.

Re: The Hawai’i Seaglider Initiative: A new approach to travel between the islands

#70

Post by fallingknife »

henrikschroder wrote: post #28
rtpg wrote: post #9

Wasn't there a ferry transportation service that got canned due to environmental concerns? Seems hard to imagine planes doing better on that front.

The superferry was canned because of lobbying by airlines and car rental companies. Currently, the only way to travel between the islands is by actual airplanes, through airports, with all the annoyances that comes with that, TSA, security, bag checks, prohibited items, and a gazillion other rules. That's what this thing will compete against, and it's pretty much a slam dunk. Unless it will be lobbied to death like t…

Why would the rental car companies care?
Post reply on HN