air-cushion machine: Quick Facts

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Facts

Also Known As	ground-effect machine

Photos

Mountbatten class hovercraft

A large hovercraft travels across the English Channel near Dover, with the white cliffs of Dover visible in the background.

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Topics

aerodynamic ground-effect machine ram-wing craft air-cushion train sidewall craft aerostatic craft skirt peripheral jet Hovercraft HM.2 SR.N1 ship military aircraft airplane helicopter kite airship canoe balloon gondola catamaran

Key People

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Sir Christopher Cockerell

British inventor

NASA's Reduced Gravity Program provides the unique weightless or zero-G environment of space flight for testing and training of human and hardware reactions. NASA used the turbojet KC-135A to run these parabolic flights from 1963 to 2004.

Man-Made Birds in the Sky