@stavvers actually this is not new. A move back to sailships is in development for years already.
With modern weather models being able to reliably predict winds for 4-5 days, sails have been competitive for well over a decade now, but the momentum of the fossil fuel tankers kept them out.
The main advantage of fossil fuel tankers was that they enabled more reliable course planning. Weather models back then couldn’t predict more than 2 days of winds — less than a single tour.
@stavvers It's a good idea. And when the cargo gets there they could move it on cars, but get this: the cars are all attached and have metal wheels and run on two parallel [sound of two silenced shots, breaking glass]
@stavvers I commend to your attention the documentary Pulling Power From the Sky in which techbros, starting with a reasonable idea for a kite-borne wind turbine but basically no knowledge of air vehicle design, sophisticate it to the point of utter uselessness before the backers finally pull the plug. On YouTube.
@stavvers After reading that article, I think I will not be surprised if the oligarchs pets next decide on an "innovative business model" where they'd put people on those boats and "finance their immigration" into other countries to provide "skilled labour"
@stavvers TBF this is a GOOD idea purely in engineering terms: kites can take advantage of wind speeds and directions that vary at different altitudes, aerofoils bolted to the deck on rigid masts are limited to surface winds. But it's still only a supplement for engine power: modern supply chains can't cope with VLCSs getting becalmed.
The real answer is marine nuclear propulsion. Or teleportation booths. Or sparkly unicorns. Or something.
@cstross@stavvers The big advantage of kites is that they're completely retractable and don't affect vertical clearance, which is strictly limited at most cargo ports due to their loading cranes (preventing the use of masts).
Also, even if this doesn't replace engines, it's still quite useful. There are some long-distance ferries in the pacific islands currently using a combination of sails, solar, and diesel generators (running scheduled service between high-clearance ports) that saw an over 90% reduction in fuel consumption compared to their predecessors. Kites could possibly expand this to low-clearance ports as well.
@dreamwinder@CatDragon@stavvers it's a shame nobody has "thought of" doing a school bus like thing (where it goes to the front of your neighborhood or to your house) but not for school... because city buses use approved stops and routes, all of which are a two hour walk away (and are actually intended for Raleigh residents to get to a Wake Tech campus...)
@stavvers joking aside, there's nothing wrong with this thing, there's solid engineering work behind it, but the breathless superlative sales pitch makes my stomach turn
we live in the stupidest timeline where you can't sell anything these days with "hey, i've taken this old thing that was kinda neat but we abandoned a century ago, tinkered with it to make it better and here it is"
@almostconverge@stavvers I also dislike most breathless tech hype. In this case, I think the kite advantage over mast+sails+keel is that you can add the kite to existing ships with minimal intervention.
However, the better way to curb emissions is still to reduce total trips globally, particularly when the purpose of the trip is to transport fossil fuels themselves.
If the kites are cheap enough, maybe they can be a stopgap on the way to achieving that.
@kboyd@stavvers yes, that's the key engineering feat here, the ability to retrofit almost any container ship with minimum floorspace loss
as for how much this helps globally, as an engineer my genuine opinion is...don't expect the solution from engineers
give us a specific problem and we'll find a solution that fits the parameters but we're terrible at judging whether this is the correct problem to solve
@kboyd@stavvers the tech world is largely shite due to the fetishisation of the engineering mindset, as if it were some higher kind of thinking rather than what it is: a good way to figure out how to build stuff
@stavvers@almostconverge yeah but - and I promise I'm not joking - being able to waggle the kite about makes it pull harder. Physics is... odd.
So far it's been cheaper and easier to just make bigger ships though - this idea has been kicking about for at least a couple of decades now without any takers, and I'm not sure what has changed to make it suddenly viable.
@almostconverge@DreadShips@stavvers As of this year, every ship was assigned a carbon intensity indicator, which may restrict their access to European and North American ports if it’s poor, and the EU carbon trading system is being extended to shipping from 2026. So yes, the industry is definitely waking up to the financial impact of their emissions.
@almostconverge@stavvers Ultimately, no energy production is going to be sustainable unless it's based on solar energy, directly or indirectly. Capital accumulation has mostly depended on releasing stored energy from hydrocarbons. In the long run, that's going to be remembered as a brief bubble based on squandering limited resources -- provided anyone survives to remember.
@mmlvx@foolishowl@almostconverge@stavvers
Unlike the hoverboard, there are already working prototypes of nuclear fusion reactors that generate more power than they draw. The only thing left to do now is scale up.
@JamesDBartlett3@mmlvx@foolishowl@stavvers that was a single experiment achieving a single event (no sustained ignition), but the worst thing is...it's unfortunately a lie
or rather, clever manipulation of figures
note how they say "it produced more energy from fusion than the laser energy used to drive it" in their own press release
that wording is critical because the energy put into the lasers was far, far more than what reached the target (lasers being very far from 100% efficiency)
@JamesDBartlett3@mmlvx@foolishowl@stavvers to make matters EVEN WORSE, the energy "output" they measured is the total, theoretically capturable energy, not what you'd get in a reactor, which is again far less
and even that energy would somehow have to be converted to electricity, so more losses there
overall we're still about 20 years away from actual break-even, as we've been over the last 50 years
@almostconverge that’s not quite right: 50 to 20 years ago we were "50 years away from fusion", now we’re only "20 years away", so I expect that in 15 years we’ll be 10 years away and 30-50 years from now we may be able to increase the amount of available energy with fusion reactors.
@daycoder@stavvers@Jennifer_Pinkley Yep-- This is an engineering challenge, and not because putting a kite up is difficult, but because making a system that requires minimal maintenance and management compared to the fuel savings it provides is difficult when you're competing with marine diesel engines.
@BillySmith@daycoder@stavvers@Jennifer_Pinkley Of course. But they were used on sailing ships with large crews dedicated to managing rigging, and there was no diesel engine on board that could propel the ship reliably and economically. Now there is, and these new systems must pay for themselves in this new context.
That is very different from usual techbro-work-- the engineering here is to make something that pays for itself in a heavily regulated industry.
@BillySmith@daycoder@stavvers@Jennifer_Pinkley Also, on sailing ships, almost by definition, the ship would travel to catch a good wind, while nowadays, demanding course deviations would not be acceptable to any great extent.
@kdund@BillySmith@daycoder@stavvers@Jennifer_Pinkley One could presumably have a backup engine to get one out of the doldrums. (In the days of sailing ships, they used a small boat with oarsmen to pull the ship into a wind.) Although it could be that a backup engine would add too much weight.
@stavvers@Jennifer_Pinkley "We are absolutely convinced that wind is really the next big thing that will radically change and maybe revolutionize shipping."
"What if we took large bins of cargo on wheels and tied them together and placed them on some kind of rail? It would be called chainwheelbins! we could reduce carbon used in the transport of goods by over 50%!!!"
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