Wasn’t there something about global currents getting fucked by the climate change, creating a lot of dead zones in the process and rendering this sort of development virtually pointless?
I’ve seen articles about ship kites for multiple decades now. Why is this tech still treated as a novelty?
Is it because they can’t get it to work?
no idea, i guess either that or it never pans out to be cost effective.
I thought it was the low speed. And variability of wind
How about cargo carriers being too heavy and lacking any aerodynamic qualities? Every time another article like this pops up , I smell “BOT”, because it’s the same recycled, outdated information promoting certain shipping companies by name and the accompanying photo is never of a cargo carrier, but of a tall ship/school sailing ship that is designed to motor sail, i.e. run its relatively small engines and use some of its sails at the same time. It saves a little time and a little diesel, but that’s all. The manpower needed to even save that small amount of fuel is 10 or 15 skilled sailors per watch, so minute adjustments can be made as needed to keep the “kites” full, among other duties. You can’t keep a super tight arrival schedule in port to deliver animals or luxury cars, if you’re motor sailing. BOOOTTT :)
that would contribute to both of the above
Giant kites? You mean sails? Not exactly cutting edge technology.
Generally these ideas do actually mean kites rather than sails. The article in the image is about a design for a kite on a cable a few hundred metres long. This would only work when going downwind, but it does mean it’s a lot easier to retrofit to existing ships
