Hovercraft Are Cool
There is no denying that hovercraft are popular in the imagination of many people. From Joss Whedon’s insistence that there is no point to making a Sci-Fi movie like Serenity without a hovercraft to George Lucas’ repeated use of the craft and their variants in his Star Wars Universe they have long been the staple of science fiction.
What makes this notable is they aren’t exactly a modern idea. The original idea is older than the United States and hovercraft have been in practical use for about 50 years at this point. Such an old and established idea to be regularly thought of in terms of Sci-Fi.
The idea of traveling on a cushion of air just seems so fanciful. It seems so impossible to travel easily and effortlessly from water to land and back again. And yet, the reality is hovercraft can and do.
Unlike most things normally considered to be in the realm of Sci-Fi like space ships and such, hovercraft are both practical and safe.
The reason they are exciting to people probably has a lot to do with the pure audacity of a machine that has the power to lift itself up off the ground and float on air and then to travel at a high rate of speed without caring what is actually under it. Sheer power is always exciting to humans.
Usually, when something has this kind of power there is a serious drawback to it. Take for instance the SST Concorde. Even before it was determined after decades of use that they weren’t safe, they were plagued with all sorts of restrictions due to their impact on the environment. Not minor restrictions either, being forbidden from flying over the continental US is a major setback.
Hovercraft for all their impressive power and ability to traverse all kinds of terrain effortlessly have never faced being banned from use anywhere due to having nasty side effects.
Hovercraft are just *that* cool.