Soaring cross country vehicle

A hovercraft crosscountry vehicle defies deep, loose snow, marshy terrain and can even cross rivers. Racing at a speed of more than 50 kilometres an hour, this new machine can go through, tor instance, swamps with steep tussocks.

This vehicle has been designed by engineers in Tyumen, a city in Western Siberia. They have also devised a hovercraft loading platform with a self-contained engine, which can carry a load of six tons.

Such transport facilities will make it possible to lay oil and gas pipelines in intensely waterlogged parts of Siberia the year round, instead of only in winter, when hard frosts ice over the swamps.

From the newspaper Sotsialisticheskaya industriya

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The Soviet Union developed unique vehicles—the country had a wide variety of geographic and climatic regions, sometimes very harsh. This work was among the most important in the USSR, and it yielded excellent results! The country was an innovator and one of the world leaders in this field.

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