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Future sailors: what will ships look like in 30 years?

theguardian.com

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Re: Future sailors: what will ships look like in 30 years?

#21

Post by Retric »

krschultz wrote: post #15

As someone that has designed (military) ships, here are my thoughts. - LNG is definitely happening, and that alone will make a massive difference in emissions. - No shit smoother bottoms and bulbous bows are better for efficiency, that's been standard practice for decades and large cargo ships are generally not that old. - Counter rotating props are interesting, I could see that being a big win but the mechanical com…

What about solar? I know it does not scale down very well or work for the military, but solar seems useful for the largest ships.

MV Barzan is a container ships that's 400 m x 58.6 m. If you take say 400m x 50m * 24% solar panels that's ~6500 HP in full sun. I know the engines are significantly larger than that but not sure how much they use at cruising speed.

Re: Future sailors: what will ships look like in 30 years?

#22

Post by bluGill »

krschultz wrote: post #15

As someone that has designed (military) ships, here are my thoughts. - LNG is definitely happening, and that alone will make a massive difference in emissions. - No shit smoother bottoms and bulbous bows are better for efficiency, that's been standard practice for decades and large cargo ships are generally not that old. - Counter rotating props are interesting, I could see that being a big win but the mechanical com…

I would expect counter rotating props to be more reliable. Instead of one big engine/prop you have two smaller ones. While it is more likely that something will break, it isn't a catastrophic failure: you continue to your destination using just the other engine/prop.

Re: Future sailors: what will ships look like in 30 years?

#23

Post by jhayward »

foreigner wrote: post #8

I love how the concept sailing ships look nothing at all like traditional sailing craft. Turns out that we have over a thousand years of experience designing and operating sailing cargo craft - maybe it wouldn't hurt to look at some of the older designs guys?

Have you taken a look at what designers do when they have access to modern materials and control systems? They don't design Triremes, for good reason.

Have a gander at the America's Cup boats, for instance.

Re: Future sailors: what will ships look like in 30 years?

#24

Post by bluGill »

gk1 wrote: post #2

I'm excited but skeptical. Energy-saving concepts have been around for a long, long time. For example, I first heard about the use of kites[1] over a decade ago, yet the company that makes them is struggling to stay afloat. The issue is that commercial ships are very expensive to build, even using parametric design — where you basically plug in your desired cargo capacity and get a complete blueprint in return. Also,…

Changes for emissions are not really worth anything to shipping companies in general. However changes in efficiencies can add up quick. Fuel is a significant cost, and so if you can take it down by a few percent that change adds up.

Re: Future sailors: what will ships look like in 30 years?

#25

Post by alexhutcheson »

rs999gti wrote: post #4

Maybe nuclear power for commercial ships? Global navies have proved and refined nuclear power technology for their ships. Why not apply this technology to the commercial sector, instead of carrying gallons of diesel?

Too expensive and complex. Even global navies don't use except in unusual circumstances that absolutely require it, like subs, aircraft carriers, and a handful of polar icebreakers.

Re: Future sailors: what will ships look like in 30 years?

#26

Post by bluGill »

maxerickson wrote: post #9
rs999gti wrote: post #4

Maybe nuclear power for commercial ships? Global navies have proved and refined nuclear power technology for their ships. Why not apply this technology to the commercial sector, instead of carrying gallons of diesel?

Naval reactors are expensive upfront and expensive to operate. So the likeliest path to commercial nuclear vessels is onerous carbon regulations. That path isn't likely.

Naval reactors have some design choices that don't make sense for shipping. Things like they can shutdown and restart the reactor quickly. A Submarine sometimes needs to get into max quiet mode as quickly as possible and then when the threat is gone get back up to full speed. This is obviously required for a war vessel, but for a commercial ship can use a cheaper reactor that can't be abused like that.

Re: Future sailors: what will ships look like in 30 years?

#27

Post by Gravityloss »

The following contains simplifications.

The shipping sector is squeezed by regulations and fuel prices. If you burn a tonne per hour and it costs a thousand bucks, thats about 8 million bucks per year. If oil price goes up, shipping gets more expensive. Those with newer more efficient or alternative fuel using ships get hit less.

If oil price goes down, it is the opposite.

Regulations need to be predictable. Ship building projects take a long time. If you can be sure that your fuel costs will be high in the future, an investment in better efficiency will pay itself back in a shorter time.

Re: Future sailors: what will ships look like in 30 years?

#28

Post by LeifCarrotson »

krschultz wrote: post #16
Drdrdrq wrote: post #12

What I'm waiting for is for foils to become useful. It doesn't make sense to (only) replace energy source, drag should be minimized too. Admittedly it will take a long time for technology to be ready for these huge ships though.

Hydrofoils are generally higher drag at low speed, they only make sense when you want to go faster than displacement speed. That doesn't make sense for most cargo, anything time sensitive is going by air.

There is a large gap in price and performance between 15-knot container ships and 500-knot aircraft. The former costs $0.1 per ton and takes months (7+37+7 day cargo transit), the later costs $5 per ton and does it in less than a day.

There are already lots of hydrofoil passenger ferries where passengers pay a lot less than a plane ticket but more than a slow monohull ferry ticket to get to a destination a bit more quickly.

On land, you might send something across the country at 60 mph on a truck for $0.4 per ton if you don't want to wait for rail or pay for air, but as far as I know, no such middle ground exists for ocean freight.

There are certainly customers who can't afford and don't need next-day air, but would pay more to get components in perhaps 5 days (60 mph hydrofoil, 6000 mile Pacific crossing, plus a day to load/unload) instead of 5-8 weeks, if there was a business that catered to that.

Re: Future sailors: what will ships look like in 30 years?

#30

Post by ceejayoz »

bluGill wrote: post #22
krschultz wrote: post #15

As someone that has designed (military) ships, here are my thoughts. - LNG is definitely happening, and that alone will make a massive difference in emissions. - No shit smoother bottoms and bulbous bows are better for efficiency, that's been standard practice for decades and large cargo ships are generally not that old. - Counter rotating props are interesting, I could see that being a big win but the mechanical com…

I would expect counter rotating props to be more reliable. Instead of one big engine/prop you have two smaller ones. While it is more likely that something will break, it isn't a catastrophic failure: you continue to your destination using just the other engine/prop.

More reliable than one propeller, sure, but many (most?) large ships already have multiple, don't they?
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