Word: hovercrafts
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...other nondefense Government projects, but the most obvious solution is to turn defense skills to producing civilian products. Lockheed has in the works such diverse products as fuel oil registers, highway bridges, ferryboats, saltwater anticorrosion systems and new metal alloys. Republic Aviation has signed up to build the British Hovercraft air-cushion vessel in the Western Hemisphere, and Boeing and Grumman are both experimenting with hydrofoil boats. Sperry Rand's defense engineers have produced a machine tool that is run by a computer, and Glendale's Electronic Specialty Co. is diversifying into heating and ventilating equipment. Ampex Corp...
...products that were developed well before World War II, such as TV and plastics, processed foods and synthetic textiles. But people can easily postpone their purchases of older products that are merely improved. Were there more genuinely new products on the market-for example, an economical family hovercraft or truly wrinkle-free and spot-resistant clothes-the public might well start spending more for goods and less for services and thus rev up the whole economy...
...called in the engineers who developed the Hovercraft (TIME, June 22, 1959), an amphibian that floats above land or water on a cushion of air. Eventually, they devised a "bed" with twelve 6-in. jets arranged four to a side, with two at each end, and through them they pumped 2,000 cu. ft. of air a minute. The inward-facing jets created their own curtained cushion from which the air escaped at a smooth, continuous rate, equal to the input rate...
...next Hovercraft to be built, said Chief Designer Richard Stanton-Jones, will weigh 40 tons and carry 80 passengers at 100 m.p.h. Large Hovercraft should need only one-quarter the horsepower required by airplanes of comparable weight, and be able to carry twice the payload. They can start their voyages on land, require only a reasonably level shore...
Since even big Hovercraft will rise only a few feet above the water, they are bound to have trouble with waves. But the designers are not much worried. Most steep waves are low enough, they say, to be passed over easily. High waves are usually long and gradual; they can be surmounted like a series of hills. Hovercraft can be designed with a seaworthy hull. In the worst storms they could drop down into the water and ride out the storm like any other vessel...