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Technology

Cross The Atlantic Ocean In 3 Days - By Ship 140

Posted by timothy from the quick-honeymoon dept.
Mr. Anonymous writes: "I keep wondering where do they find such stuff. ZZZ online is updated again, with issue #69. They write about FastShip - a 250 meters long water jet ship able to cross the Atlantic Ocean in 3 days. Speedy beast :-) It can also carry 10,000 tons of cargo." Note that this should all be couched in hypotheticals -- but I'd sure prefer to travel to Europe one day by boat than plane, and 2003 isn't that far from now.
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Cross The Atlantic Ocean In 3 Days - By Ship More

Cross The Atlantic Ocean In 3 Days - By Ship

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  • It seems that way to me...
  • One billion tons? 1 km in length? What the hell are you smoking? A ship that size would be have ten thousand times the displacement of today's 100,000 ton aircraft carriers, and over three times their length as well.
  • The reason freight train takes high priority over passenger train is because Amtrack doesn't own any rail tracks excpet that of North East Corridor (Bos-NY-Wash).

    Private rail companies, which doesn't have passenger service, own most of the tracks, and their controller natually have their freight train pass and keep Amtrack waiting.
  • Hi!

    I think this is a Very Bad Idea.
    Right now, there are a lot of sailing ships around. I've lived on one of these things for 5 years, and you always live with the spectre of a hige metal wall suddenly looming over you.

    Commercial shipping is dangerous enough already - high-speed boats would make sailing yachts impossible.

    Case in point: on the north sea, high-speed ferries are in operation. Sailors are absolutely terrified.

    ---
    "What, I need a *reason* for everything?" -- Calvin
  • A boat that fast will ensure that atlantic whales become extinct in decades!

    And we know what happens when whales go extinct...
    Giant, glowing, rod-shaped alien spacecraft start sucking the water out of the oceans.
    I think that's a good enough reason to save the whales.

    --K
  • Aren't these the same as the boats deployed around the British Isles? I took one from Wales to Ireland a few years ago, and I heard that they were talking of deploying them between England and France too. They're fast: we crossed the Irish Sea in under 1.5 hours. Dunno how they handle in rough weather though as we were lucky to have two calm trips.
  • And now it's rusting away in (I think) Norfolk because, a few years after it went to sea, the passenger jet aircraft appeared on the scene.
  • "Also last time I checked a plane could go over the atlantic in something under 8 hours"

    Yep, we did Toronto to London in 6 hours a few weeks ago. Of course, London to New York on Concorde is something like 3 hours or less.
  • Would you want to step foot on a ship whose captain is primarily interested in how quickly the trip can be completed?

    And somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but as I recall the Titanic's trip was less than 72 hours before it hit the iceberg, and it was not far at all from reaching port when that happened. So why is a 3-day trip so surprising almost 90 years later?

    -Steve :)

  • the blue riband is the award given to the fastest transatlantic ship. the subject of heated competition until the late 1950's, the blue riband is given only to real ships. they must be commercial vessels and have to complete the trip without refueling. this decision was made after a richard branson, owner of the virgin company, made a speedboat specifically designed to break the record. the virgin challanger ii had to be refuelled three times and had no purpose other that trying to take the blue riband.

    the SS United States is the current westbound record holder. The record was set in July 1952 at 3days 12hours 12minutes at 34.51 knots.

    The eastbound record was held by the ss United states for nearly 38 years until a hovercraft broke the record in 1990.

    the current eastbound record holder is Catlink V, a 91 meter catamaran ferry which completed the trip in 2days 20hours 9minutes at 41.28 knots.

    here's a site about the riband: http://www.blueriband.com/

  • I'll see your two cents and raise it to four. Not only can we speed up our journeys or product-transports (where are we going so fast anyway?), but we should also be able to speed up the decline of a number of marine species - thump a few whales on the noggin while speeding across the Atlantic.
  • They probably don't give a damn about animals, but maybe if the US Army complains that their submarines can't use their sonar equipment anymore ...

  • Damage to coastlines (Score:4)

    by nut ( 19435 ) on Monday February 05, 2001 @12:52AM (#457040)
    About 5 or 10 years ago in New Zealand they started operating some larger and faster cataraman ferrys between the north and south islands. The ferrys travel for most of their journey through an area called the Marlborough Sounds, which is mostly national park, and an area of great beauty, and value in terms of tourism and conservation. Recently there has been a lot of controversy over their operation as it was found that the wake from these boatswas doing real damage to shorelines in the sounds, i.e. basically destroying the habitat of all those small cratures that live right on the edge of the water. I'm not sure how exactly long these boats are, but on the order of about 100 metres I would guess. So large fast boats can have serious environmental consequences, especially in coastal waters.
  • I read that the biggest problem in getting aid to people struck by the earthquake in India was not getting the supplies to the region -- it was distributing the supplies once they arrived. Airplanes can get supplies to disaster areas but it still needs to be distributed efficiently.
  • At that speed it'll shatter Icebergs

  • Re:surely boats would be inherently less efficient (Score:5)

    by nut ( 19435 ) on Monday February 05, 2001 @12:58AM (#457043)
    No, not in terms of energy efficiency. If you have a displacement hull that is not travelling faster than it's hull speed (a theoretical maximum speed for a hull that is not planing, directly related to the waterline length) then the hull is effectively riding its own wave, and there is very little drag at all. If you carry a lot of wait through the air you have to use a lot of energy just to keep that weight up in the air. With a boat the displaced water supports that weight, and you only have to use energy to move that mass horizontally.
  • Wouldn't the pitch changes be proportionally less, not more, at high speeds?
  • By international law, IIRC, territorial waters extend 12 miles off the coast, though the US, Canada, and other nations have taken the position that 12 miles = 100+ miles.

    Hewing to a 12 mile rule might add a few hours to the time. Instead of arriving at 8 am in London, you get there at noon. Big deal.

    The US (and most other countries) have outlawed non-military supersonic flight in their airspaces. This is a major reason the only cities the Concorde ever served regularly were (other than London/Paris) New York, Washington, Miami, and Rio de Janeiro. To go 500 miles inland is to add one hour to the flight time, decreasing the average speed aignificantly. This would reduce the Concorde's advantage, time, which is the reason they could get away with those high ticket prices.

  • comfortable aircraft-type seating

    Aircraft-type seating is comfortable!?

    Compared to what? A splintered broom handle?

  • Having enjoyed the speed of a recent catamaran trip across the Channel, but not enjoyed the seasickness so much...can anyone explain the technology behind this FastShip? Could it really carry passengers? I have my doubts, given the sickness-inducing speed...unless it hovers or something.

    -curious flaneur
  • The Navy has the ships (the only ones the USAF/Army have are inflatable rafts used on "Special Operations"). They also have a relatively large aviation section. And the Marines are technically part of the Navy (they come under the authority of the Secretary of the Navy and the Chief Naval Officer).

    Since Congress created the Navy in the 1790's, there has been a rivalry between the Army and Navy (thus things like the annual Army/Navy football game). When the Army started developing their Air Corps in World War One, the Navy began pushing to have their own Air Corps. In the 20's they finally succeeded and started building aircraft carriers.

    In WWII, it was decided that it was a good idea to keep the split air forces, because it was deemed easier to train sailors to fly than to train fliers (who were themselves often converted soldiers) to sail.

    It wasn't until 1947 that the Air Force was formed out of the US Army Air Corps.

  • I can't imagine something that is able to go this fast being very sea worthy. Sems like we'll see a little bad weather and a few hundred of these boats on the Atlantic floor. Also last time I checked a plane could go over the atlantic in something under 8 hours. So these things are certainly not passenger carriers.
  • The point here is cargo.
    You can't get 10,000 tons of cargo on the
    concorde, however fast it may fly over the
    Atlantic. How many trips would you have to
    take to match the workload of 10,000 tons?
    (metric tons or otherwise).
    How many planes of the Concorde ckass be needed to do it in 72 hours?

  • But then... (Score:3)

    by gvonk ( 107719 ) <slashdot@@@garrettvonk...com> on Sunday February 04, 2001 @11:50PM (#457051) Homepage
    Tom Hanks will NEVER get rescued.
    ...Cue visual of Hanks running down the beach with the flashlight, stops, looks: The boat moves all the way across the horizon in about 5 seconds...

    "Damn, Wilson! Another Fastboat"


  • The C-141 is small potatoes. The C-5 Galaxy is where it's at.

    According to the USAF [af.mil]:

    • 43,000 pounds of thrust in each of it's GE TF-39 engines (172,000 pounds total)
    • 222.9 foot wingspan
    • 247.1 feet long
    • 270,000 pounds of cargo
    • 769,000 pound max takeoff weight
    • 518 mph top speed
    • Cost: $152.8 - $179 million

    I see these gigantic puppies in the air all the time: one of the key bases for these is a former B-52 base, Westover, that's now a Reserve base.
  • I used to work for Newport News Shipbuilding, the company that build the SS United States. Yesterday they ran an article in a local paper on the history of the ship and its future. The ship was mothballed in 1969, I believe. It has changed ownership several times usually with the organization with plans for refurbishing the ship going broke. The last owners salvaged all the ornate interior woodwork. Today there is yet another owner trying to raise the $350mil to get the ship seaworthy again. It really is a beautiful ship. I hope he succeedes.


  • It was called the british empire.



    Seth
  • Anyway, catagorize this along with

    "flaircraft" that "fly" with weird wings that push against high pressure squeezed between them and the ground a few feet below. Make it big enough and it can transport a lot passingers in comfort.

    passenger and cargo submarines that go fast and save fuel because they are under the surface turbulence.

    Giant planes with giant clear bubble domes on top and swimming pools.

    Standing tough under stars and stripes
    We can tell
    This dream's in sight
    You've got to admit it
    At this point in time that it's clear
    The future looks bright
    On that train all graphite and glitter
    Undersea by rail
    Ninety minutes from New York to Paris
    Well by seventy-six we'll be A.O.K.
    What a beautiful world this will be
    What a glorious time to be free
    Get your ticket to that wheel in space
    While there's time
    The fix is in
    You'll be a witness to that game of chance in the sky
    You know we've got to win
    Here at home we'll play in the city
    Powered by the sun
    Perfect weather for a streamlined world
    There'll be spandex jackets one for everyone
    What a beautiful world this will be
    What a glorious time to be free
    On that train all graphite and glitter
    Undersea by rail
    Ninety minutes from New York to Paris
    (More leisure for artists everywhere)
    A just machine to make big decisions
    Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision
    We'll be clean when their work is done
    We'll be eternally free yes and eternally young
    What a beautiful world this will be
    What a glorious time to be free

  • Ekranoplanes (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This article immidietly makes me think of the ekranoplanes. The ekranoplanes are pretty much normal aircrafts, except that they are designed to fly extremely close to the ground, and thus make use of what by pilots are called ground-effect. Ground-effect is apperently some aerodynamic phenonemon that creats sort'of an air-cushion when you fly close to the ground, and helps holding the plane up. So the ekranoplane can fly, not really as fast as a regular air-plane, but a lot faster than any ship, and I saw a documentry about it a while ago which claimed it uses some ~60% less fuel than an air-plane. If I'm not entirely mistaken, the russians developed this under the cold-war to be able to fast deploy troops behind the enemy lines.. or something.

    Ekrano/wig-planes [se-technology.com]

  • It is my understanding that most modern cargo vessels can cruise at about 20 knots. The choose to chug allong at about 13 knots because that is where the "sweet spot" is. Having a single gas turbine engine spinning one impeller at a high enough RPM to drive a large cargo ship at high speed is possible, but who wants to pay the fuel cost?

    For now, I'm gonna chalk this one up to wishfull thinking. And maybe Coast Guard/military specops. Just take a look at the films from the '50s and '60s previewing all the inventions that we will be using in 2000. The main difference between then and now is that they actually had working prototypes of the suitcase car and the inflatible airplane.
  • Here in HK the hydrofoils I take to get to Macau feel much more like airplanes (smooth and boring) than boats. The initial acceleration presses you into your seat like a plane and once the boat is up on the foils it's pretty much isolated from the chop. And there you are...just sitting there...eating peanuts and drinking sprite. The pitching and splashing of the local ferries is so much more fun. I don't think I'd be into a long voyage on a plane or a boat, but I certainly don't like being so isolated from the sea that I'm not even aware of it.
  • Sonar is Echoed off the hall of the ship, I don't think noise of an engine is is going to effect it much..maybe, I am not a Sonar expert.
  • The high speed service between the Netherlands and the UK can no longer travel at maximum speed near the coast because the ship produced a so called soliton wave. I wonder wether the fastships also produce soliton waves.

    A normal wave has a part which is lower than the waterlevel and a part which is higher. A soliton wave only has the part which is higher than the main water level. It is a "wall" of water traveling across the sea. It can do real damage to the shoreline and f.i. ships it meets, overturning them.

    So these soliton waves have devastating effects, although I dont know why. If someone could enlighten me on that part, that would be nice as well.
  • So the ekranoplane can fly, not really as fast as a regular air-plane, but a lot faster than any ship, and I saw a documentry about it a while ago which claimed it uses some ~60% less fuel than an air-plane.

    Problem is that it takes a lot of thrust to get the thing flying in the first place. The Russian prototype, KM, can cruise with just the 2 engines mounted on it's tail. But it also needs the 8 wing mounted engines to get airborn... So only really useful for transoceanic flights.
  • The Titanic, IIRC, struck the berg southeast of Newfoundland. It's destination was New York, still at least a day or so away. The Titanic was, I blieve, on pace to set a record, but it would have been 4-5 days. This is 3, which may or may not shatter the record of the SS United States.

  • Re:Wow! 10,000 tons of crack cocaine! (Score:3)

    by wobblie ( 191824 ) on Monday February 05, 2001 @08:36AM (#457063)
    no. no one imports crack directly, it is imported as coke then cooked into crack right here in the good USA.

    --
  • Hello *,

    On the QE2, I've crossed the North Atlantic in 4.5 days. It was one of those cheap moving-the-ship-around trips, so they cared more about speed that having a long enjoyable trip. Now they do, the run in five days, slow and relaxed.

    Three days sounds like a yawn to me, wake me up when they do it overnight!

    -krish
  • My Grandpa was an engineer on a similar project in the sixties. They had a prototype build, it just wasn't economically feasible then. I think it was FMC, but I'm not positive. -W
  • When you consider the data rate of moving 10,000 tons of high density data storage across the Atlantic in three days, this is also probably the fastest "network", or data transfer mechanism currently available from U.S. to Europe.
  • I've been thinking a lot in the wake of the California Energy Crisis, and one of the thoughts I've come up with is this:

    Why can't one build power plants using gas turbines instead of boilers? I mean, the article said that the FastShip uses five turbines producing 250 MW each... In aggregate, that's 1.25 GW if you ran the output shafts to an electrical generator. After you get the power off the turbine, you can collect the combustion heat using a heat exchanger and use the steam from that to produce some additional power. And as the parent of this post said, with the proper baffles and muffling (the heat exchanger would probably help in this area), the noise pollution is as near zero as anything else. Gas turbines can probably be designed to run on just about any liquid or gas-phase fuel you'd care to mention from hydrogen to kerosene, so fluctuations in fuel cost wouldn't have nearly the catastrophic effect on operations. And gas turbines are probably much cleaner than a coal plant at the same level of power output.

    The only question is, what am I missing? I haven't been able to talk to anyone who would know what the relative efficiencies of boilers and gas turbines are, so I have no clue what the economics are as far as fuel usage. I'm also not sure if, say, 2 GW (eight turbines in a plant) is anywhere near the type of capacity that current power plants operate at. Can anyone give me an evaluation on whether I'm in the right ballpark or not?


    --Fesh

  • I agree. Planes are completely unsuitable for the bulk of cargo as they are less efficient. However, flaneur was wondering about the feasibility of these boats as passenger ships, and in particular about the potential for sea sickness. The story even mentions a desire to take a boat to Europe rather than a plane, which are where our comments about flying time versus sailing time comes from. Cross-atlantic trips are pretty dull and I don't see the attraction to going by sea when flying is so much quicker (if you want to be entertained at sea, go on a fancy cruise.)

  • Re:what about the noise? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How much noise does a hurricane make? Boats are small compared to nature.
  • they where talking about the polution.

    _ _ _
    I was working on a flat tax proposal and I accidentally proved there's no god.

  • I can't believe you actually paid money to see that movie.
  • Hence the resurgence in popularity of Airships. Zeppelin's making a new one, as is ATG [airship.com]
  • It's nice that you live in New Zealand and all, but you still should be aware that the Atlantic is a rather big bit of water, with not that much coastline.

    So large fast boats can have serious environmental consequences, especially in coastal waters.

    which this boat isn't planning on travelling in.

  • You've just described a combined cycle power plant. Someone else already invented it. There are some already built.
  • Well when I went to Canada last (1997 - http://www.polsci.wvu.edu/henry/travels/) a new ferry service just started which could cross the Bay of Fundy in 3 hours. While I was there, one of these ferries ran over a 65 foot fishing boat. Literary.
    As for the "Perfect Storm" - (1) The ship was built in the 60s. (2) It is a military ship - designed to work under extream condidtions and punch its way though waves.
  • Well, in the middle of the Atlantic, nobody will be there to hear it! Presumably it could go more slowly, and quietly, in port.
  • Or if the price for a stateroom was about the same as for a tourist class seat on an airplane. But this depends on whether the ride is rough or smooth. The general rule is that the bigger the ship, the less it is tossed around by the waves. With a big ship, you can design it so speed actually stabilizes them, in normal weather. But the North Atlantic makes waves bigger than any ship...
  • We have a professor that works at a local power company.. As he describes it, jet turbines are used when the max power demand is exceeded. A sort of emergency power to keep the grid going. However, this occurs at enormous costs.

    So in answer to your question, as it turns out, they're just not as efficient.

    Perhaps there are more efficient engines out there, but I've never heard of Jet's being referred to as efficient; just powerful.

    -Michael
  • It depends on whether the passengers are generating a high value or not. High speed rail is very profitable because you move more people, paying more money, in less time - look at Acela Express on the east coast, priced 2x ordinary coach service. But there's no way that this ship would be attractive enough to passengers to make money that way. People only travel by ship for fun these days, and luxury is more important than speed.

    To ship cargo, though, this could be useful, and might even make money.

  • I don't have time at the moment to read all of the commentary regarding this issue and it is possible that someone mentioned my own observation. Just last week I was discussing with a fellow worker the issue surrounding the US "scientist" who was held by the Russian authorities for spying. It turns out that he was seeking information regarding a sub launched missle...that is able to travel several hundred miles per hour underwater by creating a stream of bubbles at the nose. If one were to use that same technology to help propel the submerged bow of a large ship so as to modify the laminar flow up to a particular speed...and then again the same technology on a submerged hydrofoil...the hydrofoil would be able to raise the large hull out of the water. Traveling on a small surface area will surely make the boat go faster. Forget standard sailing hulls...they cannot touch hydrofoils. With the current technologies available they just need to set gyroscopes to the systems developed. As for fast and large boats go look to the Playstation II and it's competitors. Many are 75 to 120' long and are now setting world records WITHOUT HYDROFOILS.
  • According to some dinner conversation I had a few years ago, Korean Air ships DRAM into SFO by plane, and ships back cherries on the same planes. Kind of a weird juxtaposition.
  • As a "damn, I already hit submit" follow-up. I hear superficial comments about the amount of energy in various products.. Please, someone correct me where and when I'm wrong, but here goes: Traditional unleaded gas has very little actual energy; just a lot of explosive kick. Desil fuel has a slower burn and transmits a lot more energy (I'm led to believe that this is why they're preferred for trucks). Jet fuel is a hybrid, fast burning, high energy (I guess as we'd view nitro). Next in ideality, you wouldn't even ignite the fuel, but just burn it off slowly and collect the entirety of the heat (steam is the traditional collector). The idea is to get a complete burn; jet-fuel leaves a lot un-burned; as does gas. And finally we get into biology: You directly convert the chemical bonds into a useful form (such as ATP). From this, every ounce of energy is extracted, and you have clean recyclable emmitions to boot.. I _believe_ fuel cells provide some sort of chemical conversion of fuel to electricity, so I would be inclined to believe it to be the most efficient.

    Maybe in another 50 to 100 years we'll be able to convert nuclear raditation into liquid fuel (through processes adapted from nature) which is then decomposed by a mini biological reactor that produces electric voltage and current. Safe, clean (well sort of, depending on the feasibility of clean fusion), easy to transport / store, decentralized (ideally no need for the power grid). Let me know if any of you want to help me make this open source. ;)

    -Michael
  • Good point. We have had the same discussion in Scandinavia. We have the quick Cat ferries between Denmark and Sweden. They are very quick and very comfortable, but as they gained in popularity it turned out that perhaps they weren't as good for the environment, and some people called for them to be banned. First it was the problem you mentioned above, that the big waves created by the speed were slowly wearing down the coastline. (We have the same problem with the huge cruiseships that go throught the Stockholm archipelago and over the Baltic sea, so working class Swedes and Finns can get drunk on tax free booze and go to each other's capital citys and vomit.) The second problem (with the Cat ferries that is, not the drunken bogons) was that appearently the jets were whipping up tons of water every day into foam and turning the fish into chum. And last was that they were not very fuel efficient.

    This was a couple of years ago, I haven't heard anything lately about it. So maybe the environmental fears were exaggerated, the boats were banned, or it just faded from public consciousness.


    ************************************************ ** *

  • The Length(feet)/Speed(knots) ratio for planing is normally between 3 & 5. So for this boat to plane, it's going to have to be travelling at at least 250'/5 = 50 knots. For a boat like this, reaching 50 knots and getting on the plane is going to be no trouble at all.

    I'd just like to see it planing over a 10 metre swell!

  • From the article:

    "The ship will be really fast - it's top speed will be around 43 knots"

    But maybe that will be enough.

    --

    "I'm surfin the dead zone
  • .... TITANIC? hahhaha. Its probably safer by plane, dont you think so?

  • I live on the south coast of the UK, and we've got a new high speed passenger ship that does the run over to france.

    The current one will do 50 knots unlaiden and fully fueled, and the one they've got on order will cruise at 55 knots with a top speed of 70 unlaiden. Admittedly its only passengers + cars and the odd truck, but it sure beats the 15 knot ferries!

  • There are solutions. One of the most promising is to make a cross between an Ekranoplane and a hovercraft; it uses hovercraft-style lifting to get the thing out of the water and then can accelerate quite easily.

    An interesting idea, presumably you would use turbofans (rather than turbojets) diverting some of the bypass air into the skirt.
  • the [seacontainers.com]
    seacat built in Australia is almost as fast and has been in production for a few years, even the Oz army has one, they used it from Darwin during the East Timor dispute.

  • We have here a service between the mainland and Tasmania... two main ships, the Spirit of Tasmania, and the Devilcat, described here [tastravel.com.au] as a:

    The DevilCat operates from 21 December 2000 to 16 April 2001, and is a fast wave-piercing catamaran ferry offering comfortable aircraft-type seating and refreshment facilities.

    It makes the 300 mile trip in six hours or so, at a speed of 80km/h (50m/h).

  • Trans-Atlantic transit time is a bit of a sore point for me and I guess also for a lot of people in the UK and Europe who order stuff from the US online. Basically it goes like this:

    Surface - Theoretical transit time, around 10 days, total delivery time 6-8 weeks.

    Air - Theoretical transit time, 7-12 hours, total delivery time 10-14 days.

    Basically what I'm saying, is that a ship that can cross the Atlantic in 3 days would be the most pointless thing imagineable if the cargo is just going to sit in a warehouse when it arrives. Sorting out the appallingly bad distribution networks at each end would be much more useful.


  • Here's another to add to the list..

    Supersonic Submarines..
    Travelling beneath the surface at Mach 2.
    The idea is that the pressure is so high at the nose that water turns into steam
    and creates a steambubble through which the rocket-powered sub travels..
    The catch is that it has to be launched from a submerged cannon.
    And of course, you have to pray there's no whale in your path..
    Now there's environmental conscience for ya..

    There's no sig to see here. Move along.
  • Noise is not necissarly an issue. A friend of mine used to work at a aero-drivative turbine generation plant for the navy. Inside the building were a few jet engines running electrical generators. These engines were capable of powering a MD-11, and they were running at full throttle most of the time. Outside the building you could barely hear a hum, due to all the baffles and mufflers. Plus, things like cruse ships and most big boats run on turbines, but you usually don't hear cruise ship goers complain about the engine noise...

    Eric
  • I don't think the US Army has any submarines.

  • Re:Also an article in Scientific American (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The computerized photo on ZZZ is has more detail than the computerized photo at SciAm, so I guess they have done something in 3.5 years.

    Yeah, added an American flag

  • Of course, rumour has it that on the last run of the Queen Elizabeth the engineers wanted to really crack the engines wide open because they figured they could beat the SS United States ... Unfortunately, manglement wouldn't let them ...
  • cross the atlantic in three days... sounds like my ping times :)
  • I read about these about 4 years ago in popular mechanics or popular science. I don't remember which for sure. The ships themselves were designed by an engineering class at MIT. IIRC, they were able to achieve its efficiency in waves by making the hull slightly flexible, out of the same type of material airplane wings are made out of.
  • 100 km? Last ship I drove was 53,000 tons and it took us about 1200 yards going from a standard bell to full stop. Get a clue before you post false data like that.
  • Sigh. Are we back to this again? Another dinosaur who thinks that using parts of your body as a unit of measurement is the way to go. Let's see: 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, 5280 feet in a mile, 1760 yards in a mile. All very logical and easy-to-remember constants. Not.
  • Yes, it is kind of rusting away but in Philadelpha. You can see it evryday at a little south of Penn's Landing, if things haven't changed in the past 6 months (I left Philly in August.)

    I kept hearing a paln to make some kinf of marine museum with the SS United States and the USS New Jersey. They are on either side of Delaware river.

    I happened to meet two people who traveled on the SS United States. One is an American (my landlord, a professor and a gold medalist in 1952 Olympic Games in sailing!) and the other a German (a woman who works at a port museum kind of place in Hamburg).

  • During the Cold War, the DoD was looking real hard into building a fleet of transport vessels that could go 50+ knots to outrun soviet subs through a tight corridor intensively patrolled by NATO ASW forces. No need for one now. Besides, nobody has ever made a profitable cargo carrier with gas turbine technology so dont expect this ship to be profitable either.
  • > comfortable aircraft-type seating

    Hehe, and how would 3 days of sitting work out, blood-clots-in-your-ass-wise?
  • The heck with the boat... bring those engines out here to california - we could use them for power!
    Pretty bad when large companies have build their own power plants cause the city refuses to build more that they need.
  • Well this only runs between December and April, as, I guess, the other months the Bass Strait is too rough for it to operate, leaving it to traditional ships...
  • Interesting note: This boat seems to have the same series engine as the Boeing 777 [boeing.com], the Rolls-Royce Trent. I don't know how these compare in actual fuel economy, but the ship carries 10,000 tons with five engines, while (I think) the plane carries only 20 tons with four.

    But that doesn't make sense - the 777 carries up to 550 passengers. At .1 ton each, that makes 55 tons. I think the figures I have are for passenger planes. Maybe the total cargo capacity is close to 100 tons; that's still only one percent of the ship's capacity. If you factor in a 10x speed advantage for the plane, you still only get 10 percent of the ship's capacity for roughly the same fuel usage.
  • One of the ways that ship builders try to get around this is to try to alter the 'effective length' of the boat. I suspect that the conacvity at the back is designed to do just this. If the boat can be made to have only half its length in the water then the planing speed is halved.

  • Re:surely boats would be inherently less efficient (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 05, 2001 @03:34AM (#457110)
    I think that you got that wrong; a ship at hull speed is not riding it's own wave, it is sailing up it's own wave. Ships require a lot of power at hull speed because of this. Once they get over the hull speed (planing) the power requirement drops a bit but is still relatively high to that of a displacement type hull.

    For displacement at low Froude numbers (dimensionless parameter: Fn=V^2/(g*L)) the power requirement is roughly proportional to the square of the velocity. At higher Froude numbers the effect of the ship sailing up it's own wave becomes greater and the power requirement becomes a lot higher. typically ships will have it's highest resistance when approaching hull speed...

    Transportation by ship is much more efficient at low Froude numbers. Fast ships are relatively inefficient (Have you ever noticed the gas consumption for an outboard engine on a typical speed-boat ?). A good example of a displacement ship that often sails at near hull speed is a tug boat when it is not tugging anything; it has massive amounts of installed horsepower but a very short waterline length.
  • The record for transatlantic travel was by the SS United States 1959 wasn't it? Less than 72 hours I believe.

  • Cargo Only -- Not People (Score:3)

    by scotpurl ( 28825 ) on Monday February 05, 2001 @05:20AM (#457116)
    Face it. Per unit of cubic space, transporting people earns far less money than transporting material goods.

    If anyone has used the American rail system, they know this. Passenger trains are often shunted aside to wait for higher-value, but slower freight traffic to pass.

  • press release fodder? (Score:3)

    by LinuxParanoid ( 64467 ) on Monday February 05, 2001 @05:20AM (#457117) Homepage Journal
    I wonder how much of the article was press release fodder. The claim that transporting objects typically takes 21 days is just BS. That probably includes red tape and loading, which the 3 day figure probably doesn't. My one experience in transatlantic travel took me 6 days on the fairly hefty QE2-- looking it up, it weighs 70,000 tons. Transporting 10,000 tons in 3 days is definitely an advance but I don't quite see anything revolutionary about it.

    --LP
  • Only now I realized that the only affordable way to transport different goods across the ocean is using a ship (airplanes can't be used to transport everything, they are too expensive). This only way usually takes 21 days and this is a great waste of time. FastShips will be able to change this situation - using them even at the very beginning will be 10 times cheaper than using an airplane. The company is going to manufacture four sea monsters and start the trial operations in the second half of 2002. The commercial operations will begin in early 2003.

    This ship can hustle that emergency aid out to poor people faster and cheaper than in a plane, man. Much higher aid costs/transportation costs ratio with a Fastship.

    Think about how much better earthquake-beleaguered India would be doing if 100 fastships made a beeline for it the day of.

    -perdida

  • Well, in the middle of the Atlantic, nobody will be there to hear it! Presumably it could go more slowly, and quietly, in port.

    The point was brought up elsewhere on this thread that marine mammals may be affected; not an altogether unfounded claim, sea creatures can be hurt by the sound waves caused by underwater explosions (such as nuclear tests or detonations required in oil drilling), but I admit there's a big difference between explosions and loud ships. Douglas Adam's Last Chance to See has a really poignant chapter on freshwater dolphins in the Yang-tze, who live out their whole lives surrounded by sonic chaos caused by the ships that throng the river. They often become disoriented and get caught in propellers. (this is off-topic I know, but I really recommend this book; might just be Adams' best work)
    --
  • I sailed across the Atlantic in 1994, and I can say that a container ship moving at 20 knots is damn scary when you're going 7. So stay clear of the shipping lanes, you say? Yes, that's usually a good idea, but it can be a pretty big detour. We showed up on radar, but at sea when "there's no-one out there", very often the crews of ships will get lazy. We saw a few ships, and only managed to raise a third or so of them on radio. Why pay attention to the unchanging sea?

    There's a water-jet catamaran ferry between, I think, Portland and Yarmouth, that goes something like 40 knots. Most ships hit whales from time to time, but this one doesn't give the whales a fighting chance. And the crew are so accustomed to the occasional thump of hitting a whale that when they ran down a fishing boat one day in a thick fog, they didn't even notice. Of course, no-one has any business fishing on the Grand Banks these days anyway, but still...

    It's hard to dodge icebergs at 50 knots, too. Unlike any half-sane boat, ice absolutely doesn't show up on radar.

    Yes, it'd be a nice trip, but I would have to question whether they'll find anyone whom I'd trust with such a dangerous vehicle.
  • >How much noise does a hurricane make?

    Little ones go `weeeoughghghhhh`, larger ones go `RRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR RRRRRRRRRRR`.

    >Boats are small compared to nature.

    You are quite correct. Nature is much bigger than a boat.

  • SS United States :3 days, 10 hours and 42 minutes (Score:4)

    by N8F8 ( 4562 ) on Monday February 05, 2001 @04:22AM (#457138)

    The SS United States was the brainchild of one of the world's foremost marine architects, William Francis Gibbs. His dream was to build a passenger ship that was faster, safer and more technologically advanced than anything else afloat. It was truly a construction project that challenged conventional thinking. In 1952, his dream became a reality when the SS United States crossed the North Atlantic in 3 days, 10 hours and 42 minutes averaging 35.59 knots (65.48 km/hr or 40.96 mph). The design characteristics encompassing the United States read straight out of a James Bond novel, many remaining classified by the Navy well into the late 70's:

    To read more go to S.S. United States Homepage [ssunitedstates.org].

  • They don't have a real skirt, like hovercrafts, but an almost normal wing that is extended back to the tail of the 'plane' (it's not a real plane, since it can reach only very limited heights). What really makes it interesting is that those ekrano-planes or WIG (wing in ground) planes don't count as planes for the law either: no flying permit (or whatever it's called) needed. They're boats for law.

    There's some info here
    //rdj

  • This kind of thing is dangerous for slow ships... (Score:3)

    by magic ( 19621 ) on Monday February 05, 2001 @05:49AM (#457143) Homepage
    I never considered collisions between ships much of a problem (I mean, hey, there's a lot of ocean out there) until I sailed a 48' sailboat across an ocean [graphics3d.com]. It turns out that the ocean is pretty crowded.

    In 14 days of sailing, we had to change course five or six times to avoid collisions with tankers and other large shipping vessels. A fast ship would have made this impossible. On the open ocean, you can't see farther than about 4 miles around you (that dang curved earth thing). A large, fast moving ship would plow through anything less than 100' long because it wouldn't even notice them and they wouldn't be high enough to see it coming.

    -m

  • Also an article in Scientific American (Score:4)

    by JeffL ( 5070 ) on Monday February 05, 2001 @12:09AM (#457144) Homepage
    There is also an article [sciam.com] about FastShip in Scientific American which explains a bit about the hull design.

    Of course the article is old (10/97?) and states that service between Philedelphia and Europe should start in 2000. I guess they are a bit behind their earlier estimates. The computerized photo on ZZZ is has more detail than the computerized photo at SciAm, so I guess they have done something in 3.5 years.

  • the technology (Score:3)

    by zorn ( 75591 ) on Monday February 05, 2001 @12:10AM (#457145)
    According to the inventor's article [sciam.com] on the Scientific American site, the FastShip really does plane. He calls it a "semi-planing" hull. This occurs becuase the FastShip has slight concavity to its hull in the stern. Supposedly, this lifts the stern and helps eliminate drag. Oh yes, I would imagine that any ship that can carry cargo would be able to handle passengers as well, but what passengers want to make that trip?
    Zorn

  • what about the noise? (Score:5)

    by xeno ( 2667 ) on Monday February 05, 2001 @12:17AM (#457146)
    Seems that a boat with multiple high-power turbines moving a 750' hull at 50mph would make a hell of a racket. Has anyone considered the amount of damage this noise level would do to ambient marine life (particularly large marine mammals)? Would any environmentally-conscious nation allow this to operate in its waters? It seems like this design might make most of the crossing in a short time, but spend several days slowly coming into and leaving each port. Hmm.

    my $0.02
    Jon

  • Re:what about the noise? (Score:5)

    by nomadic ( 141991 ) <nomadicworldNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday February 05, 2001 @12:28AM (#457147) Homepage
    Would any environmentally-conscious nation allow this to operate in its waters?

    Since an environmentally-conscious nation doesn't seem to exist right now, they shouldn't have any trouble...
    --
  • than air-based devices... Surely if someone could build something with the same kind of speed and payload, that flew or hovered somehow, it would be more efficient -- air provides much lower drag than water...

    rr

  • Supervillian Supplies (Score:3)

    by nobody69 ( 116149 ) on Monday February 05, 2001 @05:54AM (#457154)
    Is it just me or does a lot of the stuff in the ZZZ archive sound like supervillian supplies - superfast ships, mesicopters, exoskeletons, laser freezing guns, personal robotic assistants, microsubmarines, smart dust, etc., etc.

    Maybe we should send in 007 and/or the JLA to check it out? Or better yet The Authority:)
  • I'm not sure if this is a great idea, though.

    For one thing, an ekranoplane would make a lot of noise from the jet engines needed to keep the vehicle riding on that cushion of air. And it needs quite a lot of them--and that means lots of fuel burned. I remember the most common Russian design had a big turboprop engine on the tail for forward motion and two NK-8 turbofan engines in the front to create the air cushion--quiet that won't be!

    Also, I'm not sure if the Russians really bothered to fly an ekranoplane in rough seas. I don't think the air cushioning effect is going to work if you have 3 meter or higher waves.
  • Couldn't you use a catapult mechanism to overcome this? It seems that the extra 8 engines are probabaly going to add a lot of otherwise unnecessary mass to the aircraft. Of course it still doesn't overcome the oceanic storm problem (waves can be a problem if you're trying to use ground effect to stay airborne).

    Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
  • http://www.cargolifter.com/

    Only 160 tonnes, nowhere near 10,000 tonnes but it will be the 1st of its kind.

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