Word: airfloat
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...Channel Hops. In Britain, another group of engineers has formed Air-float Transport Ltd. to promote the "Airfloat HL" (for heavy-lift), designed by Surrey University Mechanical Engineer Edwin Mowforth. A VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) model, it could carry a load of up to 400 tons and move it more than 1,000 miles at about 90 m.p.h. Airfloat's hull shape is conventional, and its propulsion depends upon old-fashioned propellers turned by ten turbines. Eight of them are amidships for forward drive and are also capable of exerting a vertical thrust of 40 tons. There...
Because the Airfloat ship has been designed to take advantage of available techniques, materials and components, Mowforth estimates that six of them, with ground facilities, could be built for a total of $144 million. He believes that with each vessel carrying 250 cars and 1,000 passengers at a time, airship travel across the English Channel would be more economical than by the channel tunnel that will cost more than $20 billion...
...around TV studios, and several manufacturers are already using them to move heavy equipment and products across factory floors. Air bearings placed under a one-ton machine, for example, enable a workman to move it across a smooth surface with a push of less than 15 Ibs. Another manufacturer, Airfloat Corp. of Decatur, Ill., has designed air bearings for an eleven-ton concrete radiation shielding door at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, and for easily maneuverable dental chairs...
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