It also does so in a medium where the main drag force is induced by air rather than water, which is probably a comparably significant factor

▲

potato3732842 2 hours ago | parent [-]

It also needs to beat up that air enough to make the resultant forces overcome gravity acting on the airliner whereas the ship just gets to float there.

Apples to orages.

	▲	eesmith 26 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yup. Or to structure it a the earlier comment: for comparison, it takes me about 0.000065 MWh to cycle 1 nautical mile. That's a couple of apples.