《考研英语阅读理解100篇 高分版》 Unit 21 - TEXT FOUR

Walk along the River Warnow, in northern Germany, and you may be lucky enough to spot a SeaFalcon, a sleek, white machine with two propellers, two wings and a distinctly un-birdlike tail. It looks like an aircraft. Which is what it is. Except, it isn't. It is a ship—at least in the eyes of the International Marine Organisation, which regulates such things. That matters, because ships are much more lightly regulated than aircraft.
The SeaFalcon is really a ground-effect vehicle. It flies only over water and only two metres above that water. This means the air beneath its wings is compressed, giving it additional lift. In effect, it is floating on a cushion of air. That makes it far cheaper to run than a plane of equivalent size, while the fact that it is flying means it is far faster—at 80-100 knots—than a ship of any size. Its designer, Dieter Puls, thus hopes it will fill a niche for the rapid transport of people and light goods in parts of the world where land and sea exist in similar proportions.
The theory of ground-effect vehicles goes back to the 1920s, when Carl Wieselsberger, a German physicist, described how the ground effect works. There was then a period of silence, followed by a false start. In the 1960s the Soviet armed forces thought that ground-effect vehicles would be ideal for shifting heavy kit around places like the Black Sea. Their prototypes did fly, but were never deployed in earnest—and their jet engines consumed huge amounts of fuel.
This did, however, prove that the idea worked. And two German engineers, Mr. Puls and Hanno Fischer, have taken it up and made it work by using modern, composite materials for the airframes, and propellers rather than jets for propulsion. One reason the Soviet design was so thirsty is that the power needed to lift a ground-effect vehicle is far greater than that needed to sustain it in level flight. The Soviet design used heavy jet engines to deliver the power needed for take-off. But the SeaFalcon uses a hydrofoil to lift itself out of the water, and Airfish 8 uses what Mr. Fischer calls a hoverwing—a system of pipes that takes air which has passed through the propeller and blasts it out under the craft during take-off.
The next stage is to begin production in earnest—and that seems to be about to happen. Mr. Puls says he has signed a deal with an Indonesian firm for an initial order of ten, while both he and Mr. Fischer are in discussions with Wigetworks, a Singaporean company, with a view to starting production next year. South-east Asia, with its plethora of islands and high rate of economic growth is just the sort of place where ground-effect vehicles should do well.
But a note of caution is needed. For another sort of ground-effect vehicle was also expected to do well and ended up going nowhere. The hovercraft differed from the vehicles designed by Messrs Puls and Fischer in that it relied on creating its own cushion of air, rather than having one provided naturally. That meant it could go on land as well as sea—which was thought at the time to be a winning combination. Sadly, it was not. Hovercraft have almost disappeared. But then, in the eyes of the regulators, they counted as aircraft.
1. According to the first paragraph, which one of the following statements is TRUE of the SeaFalcon?
[A] SeaFalcon looks like an aircraft and is a kind of aircraft as a matter of fact.
[B] SeaFalcon is not defined as a ship by the IMO because it is lighter than an aircraft.
[C] SeaFalcon is both regarded as an aircraft because of its external form and a ship because of its function.
[D] SeaFalcon is made with the appearance of a ship in order to avoid the regulation of IMO.
2. The SeaFalcon is different from the real aircraft in that _____.
[A] the device of air cushion is deployed in the SeaFalcon to provide the power for lift
[B] the SeaFalcon is far cheaper and smaller than an aircraft
[C] the SeaFalcon can only fly a few meters above the water
[D] the SeaFalcon adopts a kind of engine that is essentially different from an aircraft
3. The prototypes made by the Soviet armed forces in the 1960s was a false start probably because _____.
[A] the principle of the ground-effect vehicles was not deployed in earnest
[B] the prototypes led to scientists believing that such vehicle would never work
[C] the prototype was not an ideal vehicle to shift heavy kit in the Black Sea
[D] the prototype was made more like a jet rather than a ship
4. The design made by Mr. Puls and Hanno Fischer proved to be a successful case because of the following reason that _____.
[A] the power needed for level flight was much smaller than a ground-effect vehicle
[B] the vehicles designed by them were already well accepted by the commercial circle
[C] learned from the Soviet lesson and did not adopt the jet engine in the design, but used hydrofoil instead
[D] it has already won immense support from South-eastern Asian countries which were eager for such vehicles
5. Which one of the following statements is TRUE of the hovercraft?
[A] It was generally believed that to be able to go on land as well as sea was a great advantage of a hovercraft.
[B] The hovercraft was in fact a ground-effect vehicle rather than an aircraft.
[C] The special characteristics of the hovercraft were the actual reason attributing to its disappearance.
[D] The hovercraft proved to be a failure mainly because of its power system.