kyraneko:jumpingjacktrash:daco-bromanian:guabirudropout2:dailytechnologynews:This wind powered cargo
kyraneko:jumpingjacktrash:daco-bromanian:guabirudropout2:dailytechnologynews:This wind powered cargo ship is set to change the way we ship the goods across oceans. The model is very practical and is looking at a possible launch in 2024. https://ift.tt/2MKA9PbWind powered ships!? What a time to be alive!we really are in the future ok i did have a good laugh but the more i think about it the more awesome this is? i mean, the reason we quit using sail power wasn’t because it didn’t provide good propulsion. it was because sails were fragile, labor-intensive, and subject to the whims of the weather. from an industrial revolution era perspective, being able to know that your cargo is going to be chugging across the atlantic at a constant 10 knots and arrive friday after next at the latest was HUGE. it’s no wonder we never went back, even after fossil fuels became not only gross but expensive.this design? using aerofoils like plane wings, with full rotation ability and telescoping height, controlled by computer from the wheelhouse? all the problems with sail power are suddenly over, except the ‘how much wind is there’ one. and that one is significantly reduced by modern weather data gathering systems.i love the age of sail as a fiction setting because sailing tall ships was so fraught and busy and stressful. the captain or bosun was shouting out orders based on what he could see and feel and guess in that very moment, and maybe some clues like the movement of fog or birds in the distance, and a bunch of underfed guys with crippling ptsd would go rushing up and down an enormous jungle gym with no safety equipment, quite often coated with ice or in the pitch dark, and if they screwed up they died. amazing drama.but for real life oceangoing experiences, give me this. a ship so big it feels solid as a rock, sails like skyscrapers, no mechanical sounds but the occasional hum of servos adjusting their angle, gliding serene across the water like a reflection of the moon. yeah. give me that.There’s so much cool stuff from the past that got shunted aside because something else was not necessarily better so much as easier and cheaper, at least temporarily, and then ran on sticking power and the absence of prior competition once circumstances changed, and a lot of it deserves consideration in terms of what could be done with modern technology, materials, and practices.Wind as a propulsion source. Steam as an expansion medium in engines. Vernacular housing. All sorts of indigenous and traditional ways of doing things. Sometimes “obsolete” is temporary. -- source link