Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Largest cargo sailboat completes first Atlantic crossing

marineinsight.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 281 posts

Re: Largest cargo sailboat completes first Atlantic crossing

#121

Post by hvb2 »

nradov wrote: post #51
bloudermilk wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sincere question: have you done the math? If so, this conversation would be a lot more interesting if you shared it.

How much sail area would it take to move a 20000 TEU ship at, let's say, even 12 kts? How tall would the masts have to be? Would they fit under bridges? You guys are talking about total fantasies here.

> Would they fit under bridges?

You do realize that none of those ships could get into any port, right? We've made modifications to accommodate that.

I tend to agree with you that putting a fixed sail on top of a container vessel won't fly.

Maybe ships would need to be smaller. I think the size of ships was mostly increased because it makes it more efficient. But if fuel is free, you could have smaller ships take direct routes instead of the layovers we do now. That might compensate for time lost as well due to lower speed.

This is a PoC not a finished product

Re: Largest cargo sailboat completes first Atlantic crossing

#122

Post by [deleted] »

jacquesm wrote: post #14
Aurornis wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or find a way to keep human crew happy on long, slow voyages across the Pacific. The few people I know who pursued jobs on boats did so because they liked being out at sea, away from land. Combine that with the modern availability of high speed internet via Starlink and entertainment is not a problem.

> The few people I know who pursued jobs on boats did so because they liked being out at sea, away from land. Maybe it wasn't just the land they were getting away from.

[deleted]

Re: Largest cargo sailboat completes first Atlantic crossing

#123

Post by urig »

rdtsc wrote: post #101
BurningFrog wrote: post #72

This ship carries 5300 tonnes of cargo. The average transoceanic container ship carries around 150,000 to 250,000 tonnes.

Use it for luxury goods! "Why _my_ iphone arrived in Baltimore on a clean cargo ship, so yeah, ..." I am only half joking. Anything luxury of vanity related, just add the fact they've gotten to the consumer on a clean ship and you'll find some people to pay extra for it. The more expensive the better. They can brag about it to each other.

Bottom line: impressive optics, zero impact for this technology on global warming, it's a distraction.

Re: Largest cargo sailboat completes first Atlantic crossing

#125

Post by Zacharias030 »

gerdesj wrote: post #40
defrost wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a dim recollection of exactly this as a VC proposal likely put to YC in the past 24 months or so. I think the notion was to fit masts to existing container ship and stacks, and I gsve it scant attention as my intuition (I once studied actual civil/mech engineering prior to jumping ship for applied math) suggested masts are better as integral parts of ships rather than bolt on after thoughts. EDIT: Wingsails to…

"suggested masts are better as integral parts of ships rather than bolt on after thoughts." It seems quite mad that we even need to debate this. Wind is free power and we have at least 2000 years of engineering to draw on how to use it. Any propulsion unit needs to be effectively attached to a ship. Screws are attached longitudinally, low down and push. Sails are a bit more tricksy. A triangular sail mounted along th…

I thought (and think) that the teaclipper‘s square sail rigs wouldn’t be considered state of the art for any course the ship might sail.

Re: Largest cargo sailboat completes first Atlantic crossing

#127

Post by lukan »

urig wrote: post #123
rdtsc wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use it for luxury goods! "Why _my_ iphone arrived in Baltimore on a clean cargo ship, so yeah, ..." I am only half joking. Anything luxury of vanity related, just add the fact they've gotten to the consumer on a clean ship and you'll find some people to pay extra for it. The more expensive the better. They can brag about it to each other.

Bottom line: impressive optics, zero impact for this technology on global warming, it's a distraction.

Or an experiment? Maybe eventually finding its niche, even if it doesn't solve climate change, but why would the impact be zero? If it does not use oil, then this is CO2 not released.

Re: Largest cargo sailboat completes first Atlantic crossing

#128

Post by titannet »

opdahl wrote: post #78
BurningFrog wrote: post #72

This ship carries 5300 tonnes of cargo. The average transoceanic container ship carries around 150,000 to 250,000 tonnes.

Does anyone know how well this scales? I assume it just doesn’t make sense to actually make one of that size when they are testing out the concept.

A "normal" ocean-going Ro Ro ship would be over 200m long and quite a bit higher. Typically only the lowest deck can carry trucks and heavy loads and the upper decks carry cars. Their solution of only having the heavy load deck is sensible since they need a low center of gravity to counteract the sails and any added deck height hurts the sailing characteristics. With all that said, there is not much to scale it up. They could make it a bit longer but probably mostly easily: risk in bad weather, structural integrity demands from the added sails and all that may quickly add up.
Post reply on HN