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I'm not crazy right? That's what sails are.
“What differentiates it from other wind solutions,” says Bernatets, “is that the wing is not just pulled by the wind and countered by the ship.” Instead, it flies in figure-of-eight loops, which multiply the pulling effect of the airflow to give what he calls “crazy power.”
“Plus, we fetch the wind 300 meters above the sea surface, where it’s 50% more powerful,” adds Bernatets. The combination “explains why the power is tremendous for a system that is very compact, simple on the bow of the ship, and can be retrofitted on any ship, not just new ships,” he says.
Does "crazy power" provide "ludicrous speed"?
No, in fact they’ve been engineered to make sure that doesn’t happen. If you go to plaid way out on the ocean, it’s a horrific mess to clean up.
Reject engine
Return to Wind
Are the kites potentially a next level of efficiency for sail? Not in an overall sense, but as a supplement and in the sense that you can still design boats for maximum hauling.
Gotta wonder how much a kite would add in terms of lowering the fuel usage really though, doesn't seem like it would make much of dent. Nor are the ships designed to take that weird force angle presumably
Ships designs are good for a variety of strains - they're built to get tossed around in storms after all.
Also about the sails comparison - I think the kites are retractable and redeployable, ending up with a variable, lower ship profile.
Water also has super high drag forces - it sounds efficient to counteract the constant water drag using constant air drag instead of constantly burning fuel.
Also the kite in the photo would only be able to pull the ship as fast as the wind speed. The idea behind a proper sail is that you can go faster than the wind speed if it comes at you sideways.
This isn’t accurate. The kite is typically moving in the air, generating drag. This can easily surpass wind speed. You see the same effect in kiteboarding (both water and land varieties.)
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Gotta wonder how much a kite would add in terms of lowering the fuel usage really though, doesn’t seem like it would make much of dent.
The article says 20%. It's even included in the excerpt copied to this thread...
Cargo ship with sails are also being developed and built.
The difference I imagine is that be a kite can be retrofitted into an existing ship. Or on a new ship without too many modifications.
But this one's really big
It goes to eleven (knots).
Ships powered by wind? It'll never work.
Next thing they'll claim that the wind can be used to generate electricity. Stupid climate terrorists.
blow me! they must be tacking crazy.
And horses could be used to pull platforms on 4 giant wooden wheels, that could cut carbon emissions too!
But drastically increase plop emissions
Interestingly, cars were seen as cleaner due to the lack of street poop.
Something Something full circle
The joke is people forget how bad and messy horse powered transportation was, not saying gas is great but not "oh god the shit" levels.
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Great-Horse-Manure-Crisis-of-1894/
i've no useful comment to add, but for those who don't click
Horse carcasses therefore also had to be removed from the streets. The bodies were often left to putrefy so the corpses could be more easily sawn into pieces for removal.
Cities must've been... fragrant places, for a lot of history.
Give it 50 years - we will be shocked we used to walk around in streets with 100s of 1000 of little gas burning engines coming past us.
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A sailboat? My guy that's a sailboat
It's not. It's much closer to kite surfing. Most importantly you don't need a keel for a kite and it also takes up way less space when not in use.
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We’re re-inventing sails now are we?
Its honestly not a bad idea. When Sails fell out of fashion, canvas was the height of technology, nobody gave a fuck about emisions and tanker fuel was cheap AF.
If the owners of tanker/container fleets can see a $20,000 reduction a year in fuel costs by fitting a modern well designed $10,000 sail that costs $5000 a year to maintain. They will.
If multinational trillion dollar industries can find ways to save money AND go green at the same time. Good.
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I know it's maybe silly to talk about sails as a new technology -- and my initial response was to join the dunking. But, fuck it.
Anything that cuts the use of fuels in shipping is good and should be encouraged. If letting nitwits feel smart is the price of a better world, I'm happy to pay it.
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Big difference is a modern sailboat like a ketch or sloop can maintain a straight course as much as 45 degrees into the wind. A Victorian era square rigger is greatly more limited with a range about 60 degrees off either side of downwind. A kite would be even more limited, probably within 45 degrees so it would only be useful when going mostly downwind. Still if it's cheap and easy to deploy it's free energy when it can be used. An interesting parallel is the spinnaker sail used on a typical sailboat flies much like a kite and can only be used within a similar downwind range. It's a very powerful sail when it can be deployed.
ITT: people getting mad that someone tried modernizing an old idea in an attempt to do something good.
No one's mad, we just think it's funny
The trouble is that it takes decades to create an effective sail captain and crew, and it's insanely hard dangerous work. Read some accounts of how sails were actually managed back in the day, and it's terrifying (at least for people without a head for heights, gaaah).
The good part is you can program a computer to manage the whole system, with human in the loop.
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That's why this is different and they aren't talking about going back to fully-rigged sailing ships.
(Actually, who are we kidding? They couldn't care less how hard and dangerous the work was. The real reason they like this new design because it doesn't have masts to get in the way of loading cargo.)
To be fair, a lot of the work can be automated or remote controlled with today's technology
Hey everyone...listen..hey...I got the greatest idea ever. We attach...listen.. we attach the kite to a pole on the boat.
I have been seeing such claims since watching them on Beyond 2000 tv program in the 1990s.
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this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
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