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US Marines to get high-speed, radar-evading electric seagliders for rescue ops

(interestingengineering.com)
134 points jdmark | 3 comments | 28 Mar 25 21:56 UTC | HN request time: 0.632s | source
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fidotron ◴[01 Apr 25 13:46 UTC] No.43546733[source]▶
Ground effect vehicles could be the thing that's needed to make drone based delivery a reasonable thing to do, especially around lakes. It's one of life's perennial disappointments that such things only get done in military terms and under the ludicrous notion they are rescue vessels.
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1. nradov ◴[01 Apr 25 14:30 UTC] No.43547220[source]▶
That's never going to happen. Only a tiny fraction of the population live directly on lakeshores, and basically no warehouses. If drone based delivery is going to work then they'll have to fly out of ground effect to avoid structures and trees.

The main advantage of ground effect vehicles is lower fuel consumption over long distances. That's not a priority for the short range battery powered drones used by delivery services.

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2. lawlessone ◴[01 Apr 25 15:32 UTC] No.43548015[source]▶
>Only a tiny fraction of the population live directly on lakeshores,

I think you are mistaken sir.

I live by a lake myself and i've just talked to my neighbors, and they all live by a lake too.

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3. throwway120385 ◴[01 Apr 25 17:58 UTC] No.43549703[source]▶
My startup is working on playing soothing music on drones using differential timing of rotor speeds. We've made some impressive inroads in the past few years. We're planning on adding a model that also plays birdsong for exactly this use case in the next couple of years!