btw cargo ships are already incredibly efficient tho.
even if they produce a ton of co2, when divided by actual amount of goods delivered, they are hundreds of times more efficient than trucks89Permanently Deleted
441,000x efficiency is good
100,000x efficiency is better.
Besides, now is the best time to do all the r&d for when fossil fuels are non-existant. Better to figure out how to mixmax wind while you have other options than when you have no choice.
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My company makes sustainable packaging, and the primary way we compete as a sustainable bag product for our food grade division is eliminating the CO2 costs associated with shipping overseas (most reusable grocery bags are made in China).
As a result, it takes around 600 of our paper bags to be as bad for the environment as one reusable bag.
While overseas shipping is necessary and as efficient as it can be (so far!), it is still a major greenhouse factor (so far!)
Also everything that touches a container ship ends up on a truck at some point, so there's not really any savings there.
Fingers crossed for the Golden Age of Sail Part 2: Wind Boogaloo, even if it hurts our bag division a bit. The net gain is too good to ignore
35Yeah but in the future Arasaka is going to lay a ton of AI controlled mines all over the ocean and lose control of them and ocean travel will be impossible. Oh wait, that’s just a ttrpg and a video game. A corporation would never do something like that in today’s world…
7They also use the fuel we can't use elsewhere and many do in fact use wind power in the form of giant kites when the wind is appropriate.
2Use fuel we can't use elsewhere? They use this refuse fuel because countries literally have laws banning their use within their maritime boundaries, because they're just that awful to burn. This shit fuel is used in international waters precisely because there are no international laws banning this.
Many use kites? The ship with the kites were a proof of concept, not a widely adopted maritime practice.
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Okay but can we compare them with trains first.
-6They beat trains. In fact all forms of goods tranports exponentially.
Doesn't mean they don't pollute, but ...at least you get something out of it? When American stop buying cheap Chinese shit and Chinese stop buying cheap oil from the Gulf, and when everyone stops buying produce out of season locally ...you see where I'm going with this.
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I was ready to mock this, but the more I look into it the more sense it makes.
57From the Wikipedia article linked below:
A rotor ship is a type of ship designed to use the Magnus effect for propulsion. The ship is propelled, at least in part, by large powered vertical rotors, sometimes known as rotor sails. German engineer Anton Flettner was the first to build a ship that attempted to tap this force for propulsion, and ships using his type of rotor are sometimes known as Flettner ships.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_ship
See also the Magnus effect.
49I know it's just me, but everytime I hear the expression 'What a time to be alive!', I think of the voice of the host of the Two Minute Papers YouTube channel.
Edit: I thought it was just me, but it wasn't just me
30I think of this scene:
14A fellow paper enjoyer!
9Hold onto those papers!
5
Isn't it like 20% fuel reduction only? Not insignificant
14There are lots of grand claims for the potential of wind assist on ships, but I suspect they're based on idealized physics and best cases. Actual results seem to be less impressive https://www.ics-shipping.org/news-item/potential-of-wind-assisted-propulsion-hindered-by-perception-and-funding-challenges/
They claim 5-10% fuel savings, which is decent, but not earth shattering. Pyxis, which started operation in August with two big wing-sails, is likely to be the best current practical evidence, but I haven't been able to find any results online. Speculation that it might reduce fuel consumption by 3 tons/day, which is about what you could get just by slow steaming.
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Do cargo ships go under bridges?
12Many do not. Few bridges cross major harbor entrances.
But I've also seen this concept before. The sails retract. If you look closely you can see how they're segmented.
9Wow! Would love to see them retract, sounds really cool
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Certainly not this one
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Boats with sails?? Blasphemy!! How are they going to stop when they get to the edge??? Argh,me and me mateys need fossil fuels..mo mercury mo problems, ya heard?
9You sunk my cargoship.
8Let's be real, we all love movies with wind powered fantasy-esque ships or conventional public transport. Sailing is just so cool and trains and trolleys are convenient or in my mind even whimsical. Why shouldn't we take modern approaches to sustainable and minimally polluting technologies?
I took a road trip halfway across America and I have to say, having a ticket for a sleeper car would have been cheaper, faster, and convenient. Why can't we have that option?
3That doesn't look practical at all. The point of cargo ships is to move containers, so they put them out in the open for rapid loading and unloading... Plus this "aerodynamic" design makes no sense. Most of the drag comes from what's under the water at low speeds and if it's a sailboat the wind will be behind them. At the scale of cargo ships some are 400m long, meaning these sails could be 200 m or more high... the small flexible blades on a wind turbine are 80 m at most.
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46You're kinda right. The person you were replying to was talking about container ships that operate on liner services, and indeed rotor (or other, there are more than one kind) sails would be impractical.
However, the vast majority of ships are not RoRos. In fact, they make up a tiny percentage of the global fleet. These kinds are sails are designed for bulk carriers and tankers which, along with container ships, make up the majority of the global fleet. If you want I can post the actual numbers (I am in the shipping and oil industry and have access to the proprietary sources that track this stuff).
The EU is making a massive push, mostly through ETS, to curb ship emissions by a signifiant amount, 40% less starting next year, and going to 50% then 70% the following two years. So sails in various forms are finally becoming a viable commercial (partial) solution.
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if it’s a sailboat the wind will be behind them.
Sailboats are fastest when sailing across the wind, called a "Beam Reach"
Like the other person said this is a roll-on-roll-off cargo boat meaning it transports automobiles and cargo trailers. But I believe this specific one only does new cars.
As far as being aerodynamic, on a normal boat having things like biminis up can make docking difficult but with sail boats in general, a draggy top can hurt upwind performance. Meaning if you have some sleek aero superstructure then you might be able to sail 30° from the wind, but a bunch of biminis, a big square pilot house, etc might push you to 45° from the wind.
As an example, this boat might do 45° from the wind and exposed containers might push it to 55°, but that's still better than a lot of old ships which had terrible up wind performance.
There is a different one that's a retrofitted container ship with smaller sails. They do take up the space of a few containers but not many as far as I remember.
Edit: also every spec in this is just an example.
19This looks like it might be a roll-on/roll-off cargo ship, which have covers like that. But at the speeds a ship travels aerodynamic drag is minimal so you’re right about that.
And those sails will make going under bridges pretty hairy unless they can be stowed somehow.
11They're telescoping so they can retract them for bridges or inclement weather.
11The sails in the render look segmented into 4 separate parts that are nested in one another, so I imagine they can retract into themselves from the looks of it.
Edit: Yep
3Looking at their website, it looks like the wings fold in half and then lay down.
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39Wait, why does this not sound fine? Oceanic cargo is basically the most tolerant of the the reduced speed you might see.
They're not claiming to have invented sail power, just to have made a way to make it viable for modern container ships.13Small correction on a right thinking comment: modern for any kind of ship other than container ships. Although if it takes off (which is something people have been talking about for 20 years), someone will eventually figure out how to stick some kind of sale on a post-Panamax boxship.
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