by R.I.’s North Kingstown (AP) The flying passenger ferry that glides across Narragansett Bay might be a new type of warship or a new way to travel around the coast.
Regent Craft, the company that makes it, is wagering on both.
Paladin is a sleek spacecraft with an airplane-like nose, with twelve gently buzzing propellers lining its wingspan of 65 feet (20 meters). As it travels across the greatest estuary in New England, it doesn’t resemble the yachts and fishing trawlers.
After an hours-long test run of the new vessel, CEO Billy Thalheimer exclaimed, “We had this vision five years ago for a seaglider, something that is as fast as an aircraft and as easy to drive as a boat.”
Sitting in the cockpit of the Paladin on an overcast August morning, Thalheimer took command of his company’s prototype aircraft for the first time in order to test its hydrofoils. There are three modes for the electric-powered watercraft: float, foil, and fly.
Like any powered boat, it leaves the dock. It rises farther from the ground on hydrofoils, which are the same type of hydrofoils used by sailing ships competing in the America’s Cup. It can reach speeds of over fifty miles per hour and hover around a person’s height above the bay thanks to the foils.
Its ability to soar up to 180 miles per hour at a height of 30 feet (10 meters) above the water is what makes this craft so unique; the first test flights off the coast of Rhode Island are scheduled for the end of summer or early fall.
If the Paladin is successful, it will lift using the same ground effect that pelicans, cormorants, and other birds use to save energy as they swiftly glide over the sea, coasting on a cushion of air over Rhode Island Sound. In just one hour, it could speed to New York City, which takes at least three hours by rail and longer on congested roadways.
Who will ride a seaglider?
Regent is already securing future clients for commercial ferry routes across Florida, Hawaii, Japan, and the Persian Gulf as it strives to demonstrate its seaworthiness to the U.S. Coast Guard and other international regulators.
Additionally, Regent is collaborating with the U.S. Marines to convert the same ships for use by troops who are island hopping in the Pacific. To travel larger distances, the ships would probably switch from electric battery power to jet fuel.
According to Thalheimer, who has the support of prominent capitalists like Peter Thiel and Mark Cuban, he is attempting to employ new technology to bring back the elegance and comfort of flying boats from the 1930s, which were common during the heyday of aviation before being supplanted by commercial airlines.
They’re safer, quieter, and emission-free this time, Thalheimer continued.
In an email last week, Cuban stated, “I felt they made travel easier in a way that made total sense to me.” Short lengths over water are challenging. It’s costly and inconvenient. Regent can resolve this issue and make the trip enjoyable, simple, and effective.
Chief technical officer Mike Klinker, who grew up lobster fishing, and co-founder Thalheimer, a talented sailor, became friends while they were freshmen at the Massachusetts Institute of technical. They later collaborated at Boeing. In 2020, they launched Regent.
A smaller model has already been tested and flown. However, following years of engineering study and development, the much larger, 12-passenger Paladin prototype of a product line dubbed Viceroy started foil testing this summer. There is a manufacturing plant nearby, and by 2027, the ships will be able to transport people.
Taking flight but not an aircraft
Wing-in-ground effect vehicles, like Regents, are classified as ships by the International Maritime Organization rather than airplanes. However, the London-based organization’s database of civilian ships only includes six worldwide, all of which were constructed before to the publication of updated safety guidelines for such vessels in 2018 in response to changes requested by China, France, and Russia.
Because they operate near other boats and are subject to the same collision avoidance regulations, the IMO claims that it treats them as maritime vessels. The Coast Guard adopts a comparable strategy.
According to Thalheimer, you drive it like a boat. The screen will show you if there is any traffic on the harbor. You would avoid a boat if you saw one. Boats and the like are never anything we fly over.
The transition from foiling to flying is one of Regent’s design’s most difficult technological issues. Although hydrofoils are quick for a seagoing ship, they are much slower than what is required to lift a regular airplane off the ground.
This is where the 12 propellers’ air is blasted, which successfully fools the wing into producing a lot of lift at slow speeds.
The computer simulations at Regent’s headquarters in North Kingstown, Rhode Island, have benefited greatly from all of this. Testing it over water is the next stage.
Capitalizing on concerns over tensions with China
The Soviet Union’s massive ekranoplan, which was designed to fly under radar detection but was never put into service, was the only warship known to imitate such a ground-effect design for decades. However, in the midst of increasingly heated international tensions in the South China Sea, navy experts have recently taken notice of social media photographs purporting to show a Chinese military ekranoplan.
Regent has taken advantage of these worries by presenting its gliders to the US government as a novel way to transport troops and supplies between Indo-Pacific island chains. According to Tom Huntley, head of Regent’s government relations and defense division, it may also conduct covert intelligence gathering, anti-submarine warfare, and serve as a mothership for small drones, autonomous boats, or medical evacuations.
They are extremely difficult to spot because they fly over sonar and below radar, according to Huntley.
Despite growing interest from the U.S. military, retired U.S. Navy Capt. Paul S. Schmitt, an associate research professor at the Naval War College across the bay in Newport, Rhode Island, said there are still concerns about their detectability, stability in different sea states and wind conditions, cost at scale beyond a few prototypes, and maintainability.
Schmitt, who has sailed and observed Paladin from a distance, said he is also unsure of the type of military operation that would be appropriate for Regent given its limited cargo capacity and relatively short range.
Floating past Interstate 95
Commercial opportunities are what most excite Cuban and other Regent backers.
One of the reasons Regent is promoting Miami as a center for its coastal ferry journeys is that it can take a whole day to drive Interstate 95 through all the communities that make up Florida’s Atlantic Coast.
Although the Viceroy seagliders can currently transport more people than a normal seaplane or helicopter, more and more electric hydrofoil firms are attempting to establish ferry services globally, including California-based Navier and Sweden’s Candela.
Given that they will all utilize the same docks and charging infrastructure, but may specialize in varying journey lengths, Thalheimer views his vehicles as more of a supplement than a rival to electric hydrofoils that are slower.
