31–40 of 65 posts
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Island hopping is a niche where electric flight might get started. Hawaii is looking at running some next year. https://www.sfgate.com/hawaii/article/hawaii-electric-airpla...
They do it on Vancouver Island in B.C.
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This might be useful for a tiny island. Ship from a large Caribbean island to a small one for example. The distance means the round trip is day (night?) trip, and there a things you want shipped in every day, but airplanes are expensive. I'm sure there are other niches where there is only a small amount of cargo going from point A to point B as well. However in general the world needs more cargo and so this doesn't m…
I actually think there's an argument to be made for this to be an alternative to typical cargo ship operations. The challenge when moving goods via ocean vessel is that everything takes _a long_ time. Loading and unloading the vessel can take days. Transit is weeks. Unloading the vessel takes days. You have 2 options now: air freight which is crazy expensive but gets it there in a few days max or ocean freight which…
20 years ago I read this magazine article about putting kites on container ships for efficiency. This gadget seems to have durable appeal to entrepreneurs and/or suckers. https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2005/09/17/sa... The company recently went bankrupt, by the way. It turns out that gigantic container ships are already incredibly efficient.
"415 metric tons of goods. That means they have about five times more cargo space than an airplane, but are five times smaller in length than a typical container ship." Not to take anything away from this (it's great), but for reference, an average vessel in Maersk's fleet can carry about 100,000 metric tons so you'd need about 250 of these to replace a single container ship. Not sure why the article decided to compa…
"415 metric tons of goods. That means they have about five times more cargo space than an airplane, but are five times smaller in length than a typical container ship." Not to take anything away from this (it's great), but for reference, an average vessel in Maersk's fleet can carry about 100,000 metric tons so you'd need about 250 of these to replace a single container ship. Not sure why the article decided to compa…
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This was my exact intuition. At 450 metric ton, we're three orders of magnitude away from what large container ships can do. It's a nice PoC but this is clearly just PR from DHL. Air freight is also an odd comparison since it's usually time-sensitive and/or pricey ($100+ per pound).
It's DHL. If you want your package or pallet shipped to some island it might take a long while until a big container ship makes the next stop there. If it can stop there at all. For a package/freight company, the capability to run ships on your schedule to small harbors is valuable. And a catamaran could be a competitive alternative to other smaller container ships What I don't understand is that they are talking abo…
But whatever reduces the use of "bunker fuel" which is the most toxic vile fuel around (cruise ships use it too)
Let's see it last. It won't. This is just a short-term private endeavor/vanity-press project. Just because a business uses a "sustainable technology" does not make it a sustainable business. Comparing cargo ships to airplanes is apples vs. oranges and reveals the author's deliberate "headline" motivation and lack of technology understanding compared to the actual ground truth of shipping. Until fuel prices change for…
20 years ago I read this magazine article about putting kites on container ships for efficiency. This gadget seems to have durable appeal to entrepreneurs and/or suckers. https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2005/09/17/sa... The company recently went bankrupt, by the way. It turns out that gigantic container ships are already incredibly efficient.
Or most research and technological development requires years or generations of experimentation and failure before success. And every time, the creators and innovators are told they are wasting their time, suckers, look how many failures came before you, ...