FYI, the main innovations of these kite sails compared to traditional sailing ships are that it doesn’t need masts that get in the way of cargo handling and that it requires fewer crew. In other words, it’s not faster or anything; it’s just cheaper.
You also need vastly less sail area and the things are more reliable because wind gets quite a bit stronger and reliable at 100-300 metres up. The system actually isn’t new. AFAIU main reason for it not getting wide-spread adoption is that shipping lines, not ship owners, pay for fuel.
Modern cargo ships are so huge traditional sails wouldn’t provide enough force to push them around. Neither will these kites, mind you. But, supplemental energy will still be a bonus, and a kite can reach higher and sit in faster, more stable winds.
Modern cargo ships are so huge traditional sails wouldn’t provide enough force to push them around.
Believe it or not, “proportionality” is a thing. You make the ship bigger, you make the sails bigger to match. Simple! Granted, previously, making sails bigger was limited by the weight of the things when hoisted by men operating manual winches, but now we’ve got motors now to solve that, and higher strength-to-weight ratio materials, too.
Point is: I maintain that, in principle, you could make a post-Panamax sailing ship – even a traditional fully-rigged one – if you really wanted to, and it would be capable of sailing at hull speed on wind power alone. It’s just that they don’t want to for reasons unrelated to technical feasibility.
You’re assuming everything scales linearly, which is not necessarily accurate. The square-cube law rains on many people’s parades.
I can see how you’d think that, but I’m really just asserting that these specific things scale well enough to still work at post-Panamax size.
A bigger challenge would be sourcing enough shantymen to be feasible. I’m not sure that the world has sufficient production capacity to provide the necessary rum for more than a handful of ships.
I have it on good authority that the Wellerman will handle this issue, along with any concerns with tea and sugar supply
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Not really. Drag grows with area and so does force from a sail. The larger ships will be faster per unit volume if anything.
Sailing cargo ship is a thing. There’s a record breaker recently in fact.
It would be really interesting to see a fully rigged ship with dozens of sails where the rigging was pulled by motors and controlled by computers rather than humans. It would also be interesting to see what they could do with modern materials. Nylon sails, carbon fibre masts, steel lines, etc.
Having said that, I would bet that a real modern cargo ship would probably use fancy solid wing-style sails.
You underestimate the power of wind, stranger.
You underestimate the force of wetted surface area resistance. The sail area needed to move a modern cargo ship at the snail’s pace of old sailing ships would be unmanageably large. You simply couldn’t hold enough sail area to get them near their current speeds. These hybrid sail concepts are nice, but all they do is save some fuel.
The longer the ship, the more masts you can add, so the length doesn’t really matter. What would matter is the width, but I don’t see why the sail surface area couldn’t scale with the ship’s surface area. Sure, it would be a huge amount of sail, but it’s a huge amount of steel.
The resistance from the wetted surface area scales up a lot more quickly than the wind force does. You’d have to completely redesign the hull shape to try to compensate, significantly reducing internal cargo volume and still not getting the ship above a few knots of speed…
The resistance from the wetted surface area scales up a lot more quickly than the wind force does
Really? Can you explain why?
Digging up my old naval architecture notes I’m reminded that I was a bit wrong in pointing out the real problem. It’s the speed that causes an exponential increase in required effective horsepower, not the displacement. And it’s exponential by a cube factor, so doubling the speed typically requires about 8x the power.
So, you can make a giant ship move under wind power, but you can only ever get so much power from the wind, limited by how big you can effectively make your sails and all the wind turbulence issues that arise from that. Sailing ships never went very fast, so that speed is never going to get much above 4-10 knots, as horsepower requirements above that just start to skyrocket. And there are few merchants who will accept that kind of speed when the competition will get their goods to market 2-3x faster using engines. Even goods that can survive a longer voyage will lose out on profit to those that get to the best market the quickest.
The really neat thing about this is that the largest factor in creating this drag at higher speeds is actually the waves created by moving. You end up trying to sail upstream, essentially, as you outpace your wake. There’s a certain point where, if you’re going fast enough, the resistance goes back down a bit as you ride your own wake, but beyond that it’s a vertical line. There are some real clever things you can do to get around this with lighter sailboats, but anything hauling cargo is just too bogged down to try it.
So, I got that information from a different Lemmy comment, and on the spur of your contradiction I went looking myself. My search results are flooded with mostly useless news articles (they went to tell stories, not relay technical information). Regardless, the most ambitious claim I’ve seen is to reduce emissions by up to 90% for a ship design that can’t handle shipping containers and is about 1/4 the size of the largest ships being produced today.
Don’t get me wrong, I want this to happen. In fact, I would ban carbon-fuel shipping today, if I could make it happen. That being said, I don’t think we’ll ever get back to 100% wind power.
The sail kite project has had claims of up to 10% fuel savings for about 20 years, now.
It’s all moot when we should just be focusing on figuring out practical nuclear shipping. It’s the only way to meet or exceed our current standard and be carbon-free. The NS Savannah proved it could be profitable ages ago, and that without any economy of scale to reduce costs.
They found out rhe hard way with the Ever Given
Hmm i feel like there it was a case of working against the ocean whereas here I think it is working with the wind so it shouldn’t be THAT bad… but who knows…
It was more a comment on the power of wind on a modern container ship.
Why can I only think of that journey to the center of the earth movie with the kite sail and had the one dude browsing google with the PSP. Why can I only remember two things from that movie?
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Hoist the mainsail and shiver me timbers.
Arrrr me packages going to be delayed? I’ll keel haul the lily lubber!
They are literally kites—not sails. I’ve never seen a sail flying 100 ft above a ship before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinnaker
When a vessel is running (meaning moving in the same direction as the wind) it can fly a spinnaker, which is just a kite on short lines.
And the load on its sheets is enormous. Oh boy can it cause a problem if anyone makes a mistake handling it! Now imagine the load from the kites proposed. I wonder if that is even feasible with today’s materials.
Edit: did some reading around. So it seems at current level the system can be used as a supplementary propulsion saving some fuel. Ahoy, mates, we are back and our sails are higher than ever!
When it comes to material stresses the sails can always be scaled down, but off the top of my head kevlar and zylon would be good candidates for getting the biggest, toughest sail in an economic fashion.
If you want to go down a related rabbit hole take a look at the sails used in regattas. The technology and money that goes into them is ridiculous.
Oh I know something about regattas, did some myself, and the base of one of America 's cup boats is nearby. Truly impressive.
The mast on the ship in the picture is litteraly 127 feet.
The proposal mentions 300m, so…
And I am replying to a comment about 100ft not the post…
Congrats? I’m bringing up that the numbers in the comment were meaningless because they were way off what was proposed.
Thanks? Not sure what you are on about, but have a nice day!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasailing
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“What differentiates it from other wind solutions,” says Bernatets, “is that the wing is not just pulled by the wind and countered by the ship.” Instead, it flies in figure-of-eight loops, which multiply the pulling effect of the airflow to give what he calls “crazy power.”
“Plus, we fetch the wind 300 meters above the sea surface, where it’s 50% more powerful,” adds Bernatets. The combination “explains why the power is tremendous for a system that is very compact, simple on the bow of the ship, and can be retrofitted on any ship, not just new ships,” he says.
The retrofitting part is great news
A 300m line holding turbulent
sailkite would never have the chance getting tangled or snapping and killing someone when it whips backSitting in a metal tube in the sky sounds just as dangerous, yet here we are.
Yeah there’s similar problems for the ropes that anchors are attached to as well, so they shouldn’t be using those either.
The chain for the anchor can be much heavier as it doesn’t have to be suspended by something flying in the wind when being drawn out. The water also acts as a shock absorber (as do the individual links) if the chain were to break.
What about mooring lines? They snap too.
The point is that people working on ships already know how to take precautions around lines that can break with enough force to kill a person. They establish zones on the ship that people can’t be in when the lines are being used. This is a very old problem that was solved a long time ago.
“What differentiates it from other wind solutions,” says Bernatets, “is that the wing is not just pulled by the wind and countered by the ship.” Instead, it flies in figure-of-eight loops, which multiply the pulling effect of the airflow to give what he calls “crazy power.”
That’s an innovation over square-rigged ships, sure, but not so much over fore-and-aft-rigged ones (where the sails act like aerofoils).
And what is wrong with taking stress off the engines? I hate how they report this like it is a joke, because it is still a solid step.
They’re not a joke, they’re a product called Seawing, made by a French company. They’re being being actively tested and can be retro fitted to existing vessels rather than requiring a new design.
Correct, I think they were saying it was being reported on as if it was a joke. Not being taken seriously as a good step towards reducing carbon emissions.
And they’re a lot more advanced than traditional sails.
Traditional sails only work with surface winds, which are relatively weak. These giant kites can go much higher and take advantage of much stronger and more reliable winds at higher altitudes.
You can also go upwind with traditional salsa
I think it’s more the refried beans that cause wind.
Why the fook is the flag flying against the wind?!?
Sails don’t billow into the wind. They are set at an angle to it. Just enough to inflate them, creating an airfoil. The remaining wind blows across the airfoil, creating “lift” (like vertical airplane wings) that pulls the boat along more efficiently. That’s why sail boats can actually go faster than the wind.
From this photo, the wind is blowing almost parallel with the sails.
The type of sail you’re referring to is ‘bermuda-rigged’, like the smaller ones at the front of the boat in the picture. The big ones in the middle of the picture are ‘square-rigged’ which are really only good for sailing downwind.
I think the square rigged sails could be rotated, so you could sail with a cross wind. You would just have a fair amount of trouble sailing upwind.
Maybe, although I haven’t seen anyone doing it. I’m guessing you would need a sheet to each corner to trim the sail tightly enough which I think would be too much of a headache for the crew. Worth thinking about tho, especially in a castaway situation!
Huh, TIL.
My guess is the sails deflecting the wind to be that direction where the flag is.
But they’ll steal the wind! How is that helping the environment?
and who’s making money off it. cause if there is no money, no one will do it unfortunately.
I know this isn’t really anything new, but it dies look like they are making progress while is great.
My immediate concern with these is lightning strikes on the kites
They will have planning for that, just like they do the container ship towers which also have to deal with lightening.
True, I bet it would be really cool to watch these mechanisms in action
We have missed you Mr Picard Maneuver x
<3
Hey I literally just finished watching The Battle episode a few minutes ago for the first time. K thx bye now
Hey, that’s awesome! Hope you’re enjoying the watch.
Big kites if true
🙆♀️
The thing about those big kite sails is the wind has to be coming from pretty much astern for them to work; if the ship is sailing into even a quartering headwind they’re of no use.
There’s a technology…I forget what they’re called, some kind of turbine, where you have a couple of tall spinning cylinders on the deck, which interact with the wind in such a way to provide thrust for the ship, this is mechanically simpler, fewer ways it can go wrong, you can just hinge them down and secure them in a storm or to pass under bridges, and they can drive the ship in quartering headwinds.
I’ve seen kiteboarders able to go in pretty much whatever direction they want as long as there is wind. These kites are the same thing but bigger.
That said, idk if cargo companies really want to be adding distance to the trip by tacking back and forth into the wind. My impression is that they want to get there ASAP and screw the fuel consumption.
They will slow down to conserve fuel, because when you’re burning it at the quantities these ships do you’re talking millions of dollars per voyage, and especially if you’re going to end up waiting in line like you do at American ports…why hurry?
Because faster trips means more trips per year. Even if the margins per trip is lower due to increased fuel consumption, quarterly revenue is higher. Even if significant time is waiting at port.
That said, I don’t work in the logistics industry, so I don’t have the number to say how much the difference would be.
By why hurry I mean, why rush to cross the Pacific ocean only to have to wait at anchor for a dock to become available in Los Angeles harbor?
There’s an old law, been on the books since the 19th century, that requires ships traveling between US ports to be US registered and be crewed by mostly US citizens. This causes a problem in the modern day because…imagine you’ve got one of those gigantic containerships leaving Asia for the US, the ship is owned by who gives a shit and the crew was chosen practically at random from citizens of the world. In a sane world, you could plan the trip to visit several ports along the US coast, dropping off cargo from Asia at each where it’s most convenient, and loading cargo that’s going to your next port of call. Well unless the ship is American, this is illegal, which makes the United States a complete fucking problem, which is why tthere are just…containerships hanging around outside US ports waiting to offload ALL of their cargo whether it makes sense or not, taking on whatever’s at this particular port, and then leaving the Western hemisphere again.
Huh, I assumed the queue was first-come-first-served, are you telling me that these ships reserve a time at a port in advance? That’d make sense, and in that case you’re right it only makes sense to arrive there just in time for your reservation. But if it’s FIFO then it still makes sense to get there ASAP even if you’re waiting, because arriving later doesn’t make the wait shorter.
Wrt USA being a problem, I feel like that’s probably true of every industry lol
