Computer-Controlled Cargo Sailing Vessels Go Slow, Frugal 210
An anonymous reader writes "Big container ships are taking it very slow these days, cruising at 10 knots instead of their usual 26 knots, to save fuel. This is actually slower than sailing freighters traveled a hundred years ago. The 1902 German Preussen, the largest sailing ship ever built, traveled between Hamburg (Germany) and Iquique (Chile): the best average speed over a one way trip was 13.7 knots. Sailing boats need a large and costly crew, but they can also be controlled by computers. Automated sail handling was introduced already one century ago. In 2006 it was taken to the extreme by the Maltese Falcon, which can be operated by one man at the touch of a button. We have computer-controlled windmills, why not computer-controlled sailing cargo vessels?"
USV (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Windmill != Ship (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLInrjUtFGI [youtube.com]
true- it wasn't a harbor-- but I still ain't gonna sit underneath this puppy
In a way, it's already hapenning (Score:5, Interesting)
SkySail: using the a computer controlled parasail to improve fuel efficiency. Article http://www.popularmechanics.com/outdoors/boating/4235055.html [popularmechanics.com]
Re:economics and variability (Score:5, Interesting)
The unreliability of sail is an issue, though. I think we'll see "hybrid" shipping becoming more common -- kite sailing when the wind is favorable (or perhaps kite-assisted), fossil fuels when it is not. This will reduce costs & environmental impact, a nice combo.
Here [slashdot.org]'s a discussion we had previously on kite-assisted shipping.
Hmm.. does it have to be a SAIL boat? (Score:3, Interesting)
can it be a big mother mounted windmill and an electric motor???
bonus being- no tacking into the wind-- rotate the damn windmill and head on into it...
Re:Security? (Score:3, Interesting)
And it's much easier to have a policy of never paying the ransom if there are no human hostages.
Re:economics and variability (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I think the more immediate concern. . . (Score:2, Interesting)
This may not count as zero impact in the short term, but ...
As kids we visited the atomic museum (I forget the name) in Los Alamos, NM. The had some sort of simulator where you could turn dials corresponding to different human activities. The output was a list of various things such as pollution, hunger, population, and so on. AT least a dozen. All of them had a red, yellow, or green lights. A few had numerical output.
So we started turning this knob, then that. Lights would go back and forth between red, yellow, and green. Suddenly the whole board lit up green. Except population, which was red and said 0. I guess we solved most of the worlds problems.
So I'm reluctant to say there's nothing we can do with zero impact. But I'm even more reluctant to try the one idea that might work!
Re:USV (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately, it would be pretty illegal.
Now, if you DID lock them in, and then proceeded to finish one's several-week journey... well, I hope they brought food and water with them. It'd be like Survivor, in some dingy corridors, with rifles and angry pirates.
Re:Security? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:economics and variability (Score:4, Interesting)
The bean-counters decided it was better to operate off a relatively fixed cost like fuel and have a dependable schedule. The whole story of the 20th century has been "Yeah, you could do this or that but it's just simpler and cheaper to use fossil fuels." Environmentalism won't drive alternative fuels, economics will. If it becomes cheaper to use sail, we'll go back to sail. The cost of fuel will only rise from this point, peak oil is here, so the economics we need for sail should be here now.
Go read Eric Newby's The Last Grain Race [amazon.com]. It's a great book, but it's also relevant: it's the story of the author's trip round the world as a sailhand on the last commercial sailing fleet, in 1938.
His ship, the Moshulu [wikipedia.org], was one of a fleet of grain freighters that sailed from Europe to Australia, loaded grain there, and then sailed back again. They occupied a particular peculiar economic niche; being specialised sailing ships and technically quite simple, they had very fixed costs. As a result, it was feasible for them to stay in port in Australia for several months while small loads of grain trickled in from the farmers. Steamers were unable to do this, as they needed to be constantly trading to offset the fixed costs. Instead, they'd have to rely on warehousing, which would eat into profits.
It also helped that the Moshulu's owners didn't spend much on maintenance; some of Newby's descriptions are terrifying.
On Newby's trip, she made the voyage from Belfast, Ireland to Port Lincoln, Australia in 82 days, which is pretty good. She could do about 17 knots. Apparently she's now a restaurant ship in New York.
Read his book --- it's fantastic.
Re:pirates (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, in the long run it'd be a very good thing if a band of Somali pirates got their hands on some nuke fuel.
The pirates themselves don't have the capability to convert it into anything more than a dirty bomb.
The pirates could sell the material to the terrorist organization du jour. They might be able to make a slightly more effective dirty bomb out of it.
That's if the focused attention from the bulk of the western world hasn't given Somalia a new coastline that is twenty miles further inland than the old one.
Somalia is an honest-to-diety failed state. The U.N.'s negligence in this matter is criminal. Iraq and Afghanistan, while not friendly with us were at least stable. (So we go in and destabilize them...) Meanwhile a country that should have intense international attention is ignored. Sadly, it's going to take a few Americans getting offed to trigger the good ol' Pearl Harbor reaction. It's going to suck for those few Americans but those Somali pirates are in need of a history lesson on what the phrase "to the shores of Tripoli" is referring to and that no country does knee-jerk reactions like we do (and when we do it the whole world feels it).
Re:pirates (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually the pirates are doing the real work of nation building just as pirates usually are. It just happens that they are on the other side and not ours otherwise we would call them the navy or entrepaneurs.
Another criminal activity in Somalia is the use of their waters/ports/military supply routes by rich trading nations who pay nothing back for what they are using and only get away with it because Somalia is a failed state. However, now that they are getting more organised (less failed) we call them pirates because we (USA) isn't in favour of stability, democracy or anything like that unless it profits us.
http://www.republic-news.org/archive/208-repub/208_potvin_pirates.html [republic-news.org]