81–90 of 233 posts
Jesus, I'm surprised we haven't seen all sorts of crazy ideas coming out of Maersk to reduce this overhead given that it's the bulk of their cost. Wind pillar things seem kinda tame compared to the shit I'd try to pull to save that level of money... Across all vessels no less!!
As sled runners are to wheels, so the wing is to the Magnus effect rotor.
Lift goes up with the square of the radius. Think about that.
I'm in the process of ramping up a toy company that builds and sells kits for Magnus Effect drones.
I plan to just keep making them bigger, first for cargo then for mass transport. It will be necessary to move people efficiently by the million in the decades to come. Already floods and wildfire have begun to increase, soon enough the waters will rise and it will be needful to move our asses.
By using a simple recursive-fractal infrastructure there's pretty much no upper limit. Cf. "Tensarity"[1] and Alexander G. Bell's cellular kites[2]. Also Bucky Fuller's Cloud Nine[3]. Self-powered[4][5].
I imagine huge aerial machines, more like gauzy flying buildings than aircraft, that carry a million or more people at a time. Cities in the sky.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensairity
[2] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Alexander+G.+Bell%27s+cellular+kit...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Nine_%28tensegrity_spher...
[4] Tethered power generators, "Magenn" company, defunct? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_wind_turbine
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaneless_ion_wind_generator
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ignorant question: if operational costs trump all, especially fuel (Maersk says in the article 60% of operational cost) why not pure sail power? Is there some other maintenance cost or infeasability there? Or is there another hidden variable that is not satisfied?
unpredictability of wind, i'd imagine.
Some years ago I read The Box by Marc Levinson, a history of containerized shipping. Highly recommend it. If you live in SF and have wondered about the numerous barely used piers, this book explains their history as well - and why the major container terminal ended up in Oakland instead. One of the painful early lessons for the industry was the discovery that minimizing operational costs (particularly fuel and mainte…
Edit: It is even likely that the chase of lower operational cost played a major role in the current oversupply of capacity (thanks to a glut of mega sized ships)
Some years ago I read The Box by Marc Levinson, a history of containerized shipping. Highly recommend it. If you live in SF and have wondered about the numerous barely used piers, this book explains their history as well - and why the major container terminal ended up in Oakland instead. One of the painful early lessons for the industry was the discovery that minimizing operational costs (particularly fuel and mainte…
Ignorant question: if operational costs trump all, especially fuel (Maersk says in the article 60% of operational cost) why not pure sail power? Is there some other maintenance cost or infeasability there? Or is there another hidden variable that is not satisfied?
They are the most important factors in the context of reliably shipping goods from port to port. If there was a sail technology that allowed reliable transit, predictable speeds and times (really slow is OK, a little late is not), and didn't cause an increase in other costs (say, insurance or maintenance), and could move the tonnage involved (up to 40 tons per container multiplied by thousands of containers, or enormous dry goods loads), I suspect it would capture a sizable portion of the market.
Edit: it occurs to me that significantly reducing fuel costs would allow entirely new kinds of loads to be transported and potentially radically alter the world economy. I once saw a chart where the Y axis was price per unit and the X axis was unit density. There was a line on the chart, above which it is economical to ship a good, below which it is not. The top right of the chart had things like electronics - which have been shipped since the dawn of the industry. The bottom left had things unprocessed ore, which have never made sense to ship.
From TFA... > Maersk Line spent around $3.4 billion on fuel last year for its fleet of around 800 vessels. Wouldn't savings from wind power be bad for the petroleum industry? And therefore by lobbyist extension bad for everyone?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Sources are never provided. We also do not need to provide sources for statements such as 'water is wet'. Anything on a boat, or even shoreside near to the ocean is subject to corrosion and corrosion protection is a serious maintenance issue. I've lived 2 km from the sea and even there the nails would rust right out of the building due to the salt that the wind would carry in.
Yes, salt water is corrosive. And yet, there are metal ships with viable lifetimes. This sub-thread is a bit less helpful than I am asking for. Edit: Come on. It's not impossible to engineer for ocean use. Wave power generation: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-250... Longer term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_power_cable
What these ships are mostly surrounded by are waterfields that go as far as you can see. Can they come up with some sort of rolled flexible solar panels that once ship goes into full sail they release their “solar tail” behind that floats on the water surface and captures sun and turns it into electricity for ships’ engines? I mean 300 meters square of solar panel should be sufficient to push the ship at its nominal…
What are the specifications of such a system that it would generate sufficient power to cost-effectively augment or replace internal combustion, and what would the viable price-point for installation be considering costs of bunker fuel? Other comments [3, 4, 5] added the kind of information that might help to answer that. I am interested in sources, and discussion which isn't immediately dismissive of something unproven.
Put another way, how much would low-grade petro-fuels have to cost before this became a viable alternative, and what sources support your conclusions?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_solar_cell
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_power
[2.5] https://www.tugtechnologyandbusiness.com/news/view,hybrid-pr...
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=17886124
[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=17886177
[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=17886190
Edit: spelling
Edit 2: added a reference
What these ships are mostly surrounded by are waterfields that go as far as you can see. Can they come up with some sort of rolled flexible solar panels that once ship goes into full sail they release their “solar tail” behind that floats on the water surface and captures sun and turns it into electricity for ships’ engines? I mean 300 meters square of solar panel should be sufficient to push the ship at its nominal…
for comparison a Wärtsilä RTA96C is rated for over 80MW which means you'd need over 0.5million m^2 of PV panels to match this. (about 85 football pitches).
Feasible but expensive
And I thought IT loved acronyms.