565. Is There a G.E.M. in Your Future?

Paper

Abstract

I am happy to be here in San Diego today at this anniversary conference of the Society of Aeronautical
Weight Engineers, I am a bit out of my element here and I did not come to this conference to instruct or advise you on the subject of weight engineering, a subject i n which you seem to be very well informed. My purpose
here today is to ask you to pause for a moment to look in the direction of a commercial operator–SF0 Airlines’
and see if there might not be something new a n d interesting on the horizon which could occupy some of your design time .in the near future. Thus the title of this talk, ‘is There a GEM i n your Future.’ Now for those of you who are not sales oriented G E M stands for Ground Effects Machine. Actually, the machine has many names. Among them it has been called a Jet Skimmer, a Hovercraft, a Surface Effect Ship, a Ground Effects Machine, an A i r Cushion Vehicle, just to name a few. The name you apply to the machine will depend quite a bit on your political interest at the time. If your object is to keep out foreign competition, you probably will take the maritime view and look at the marine aspects of the machine and call it a surface effects ship. Then you might call on the Jones Act to prohibit foreign built vehicles from operating in commercial trade in the united States. On the other hand,
if you are trying to sell or promote foreign built vehicles in the United States you will look at its flight characteristics, call it a hovercraft and claim it actually flies