Jul 192013
The second of two images of the Saturn-carrying hovercraft from Bell. Here it’s shown unloading a Saturn stage… it looks like the front end of the S-IC stage, but it doesn’t look like it would fit with the semi-conical engine fairings, never mind the fins.
Load in the rocket the other way – world’s fastest hovercraft
Can’t figure out, What would be the advantage of a hovercraft vs a tried and true boat? money saved on building a dock at KSC? can’t be, because it needs a wide and $$ road-ish thing to go to the assembly build…
> what would be the advantage of a hovercraft vs a tried and true boat?
Bell built hovercraft, not boats. Thus, they would propose a hovercraft.
Without access to whatever proposal documents there might have been, I can only guess at the reasons they included to try to sell the thing. My guess would be:
1) Much faster than a boat
2) The ability to go places the boat can’t, meaning it might be able to drive right on up to loading/unloading facilities some ways inland
3) Because it’s cool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De2SuYAjrdY
By going faster than a boat you have a better chance of avoiding the tornadoes, storms and other terrible weather thingies that happen all too often in that part of the US.
Even in the 1960’s, storm prediction was likely adequate to plan for avoiding hurricanes (tornadoes are not much of a threat out at sea).