China’s Nuclear-Powered Containership: A Fluke Or The Future Of Shipping?::Since China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) unveiled its KUN-24AP containership at the Marintec China Expo in Shanghai in early December of 2023, the internet has been abuzz about it. Not jus…
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Another possible innovation would be people onboard to row
Advertise it as a new fitness program that includes seeing the world for free.
Just drain the seas and drive them around on big tank tracks
Yeah but where to put all that water? On the moon?
If we can make the world hot enough it’ll just become clouds
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You… you know that clouds… rain, right?
I thought that was bebe Jesus crying when I touch myself
Just flush it down a big toilet
A tethered ring would be cheaper, and also possible
Hey I’ve seen that movie, it was fictional. Let’s not make it real.
With the labor shortage these days, we’ll definitely have people coming forward!
This is also being tried. The first such ship set sail recently.
I’ve only heard of big kites being used to help reduce fuel consumption on cargo ships. If you have a link to an example of a cargo ship that uses the wind as its primary power source, please share it.
https://trendydigests.com/2023/12/20/wind-powered-cargo-ship-sets-sail-on-historic-voyage-2/
Keep in mind that “primary” power source isn’t going to happen. You’re not moving modern cargo loads on wind power alone. But it can provide supplementary power, reducing fuel usage.
Is there a hard theoretical limit to the capacity of a primarily wind powered ship?
My understanding is that like most things you start running into issues with a) how mass scales (so at a certain point you start adding more mass of sails to push the mass of sails you added to push the mass of…) and b) structural integrity (ie, you can’t just make a sky scraper taller by doubling all the dimensions; at some point steel just isn’t strong enough).
There’s also the issue of speed; no matter how many sails you add, the wind only goes so fast, and it doesn’t go reliably. Modern shipping has deadlines and no one is going to settle for “We got becalmed” or “We lost two months because we were tacking into headwinds the whole time”.
The first sailing transport ship set sail recently…? Can we define “recent” lol
Yeah, um. The first modern …
An interesting alternative to sails are Flettner rotors. They’re pretty much just rotating pillars, and are being tested on some cargo ships to reduce fuel consumption.