If there is any value at all left in what I do, then it is this... to replace speed records on water in particular with records pertaining to the efficiency of travel represented by knots per kilowatt. The term kt/kW does not yet exist, and as of now you need to give me a £1 royalty any time you use it.
Look however at how little energy is required for a surface-effect vehicle to pace a powerboat, and how little a footprint it leaves in doing so (although there is a small Chinese guy in the one up front and at least two at the rear).
Innovation stems from young people who have yet to realise that getting out of bed is not really worth it, which is why it's in vertiginous decline in places like the UK or US, paradoxically. Though China's population is also ageing, with so many of them in the first place there is still a surfeit of young entrepreneurs.
A tragedy of surface-effect is that most of its pioneers, invariably from Italy, Russia or Germany, passed on or gave up when the cash ran out. This is because prior electrification of transport combined with ubiquitous computing power and modern materials, prototyping was exorbitant.
Even now, experimenting and designing the craft in the picture involved 240 days and lots of polystyrene prior to a successful manned test-flight... it's usually men, specifically those without better things to do.
You can view the effort at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV-VmuJpGsU
The technology dates back to Gunther Jorg and his 'Flairboats' in the 1970s, which were so much more fun in this and every other way than the 2020s. The notion is being revived at scale at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8einbiG1d0Q where they claim that you are watching the world's first ground-effect drone.
Technically that may be true, it traveling on land and sea in ways Regent's aircraft does not.
We'll look at theirs next, should I be bothered to get out of bed.
