Big brains reinventing the tall ship
this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
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Environment
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Shit, nobody tell these people about sailboats
I once heard of a giant kite technology like this called “sails” but it was retired in favor of fossil fules
Kites are more efficient. For one they can be much larger, but you can also put them at angles that you can't operate a sail at.
Kites don't take up deck space like masts for sails do.
Sailboat 2.0.
Sailboats: Am I a fucking joke to you?
Right? This just sounds like sailing with extra steps.
This has been in sci-fi books for ages and I am all for it. Airships, slow travelling, all of it.
I’ve seen stories like this before. I want to see a story about something like this actually in widespread use.
I've thought about something else. Instead of using huge heavy costly cargo ships, just put each package on a solar powered water drone and make thousands of them. Let them run on solar and control them by setting a GPS goal. Track them by satellite. Collect them when they get there. I can wait a week more.
Idk man. The largest container ships carry ~40k shipping containers. Do you really think we could make 40k-ish solar boats and unload them efficiently? I think a better solution would be to transition the ships away from fossil fuels.
The current issue with large container ships is that they're extremely expensive. They're assets meant to be financially depreciated over 50+ years, so they'll be in use until written off. A lot of currently operating ships are even older than that.
And yes, I do think that the entire business could be disrupted by a swarm of robots if the robots are cheaper. The only problem is that customers are expecting delivery shorter times. Yeah well and that someone has to believe my crazy idea enough to actually do it. It is a thought experiment.
The latest "innovation" in shipping was actually just driving the ships more slowly to conserve fuel. Turns out, most people were ok with things taking slightly longer if it was cheaper. I don't think that's the main thing stopping your idea. I just don't think it's feasible to make the number of small ships and I don't think ports could efficiently load and unload them.
That said, with the current supply chain issues and the ships scrapped during covid, now is the time for disruptions in this industry.
I would like to see a plan for a port that can handle 40k vessels per day.
Perhaps if we split it up to a thousand mini ports. In those ports, then maybe we could have small cars pick up each individual package, as trucks are so large and inflexible. :D
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