Slashdot Mirror
Cross The Atlantic Ocean In 3 Days - By Ship
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.
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.
Best Slashdot Co
"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.
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.
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
At that speed it'll shatter Icebergs
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.
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
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.
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"
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
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.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
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
Sneakemail is to spam filters what an ounce of prevention is to a pound of cure.
Ekrano/wig-planes
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.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
no. no one imports crack directly, it is imported as coke then cooked into crack right here in the good USA.
--
Well, in the middle of the Atlantic, nobody will be there to hear it! Presumably it could go more slowly, and quietly, in port.
sulli
RTFJ.
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
-Michael
To ship cargo, though, this could be useful, and might even make money.
sulli
RTFJ.
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.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
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
-Michael
I'd just like to see it planing over a 10 metre swell!
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
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).
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
Interesting note: This boat seems to have the same series engine as the Boeing 777, 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.
.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.
But that doesn't make sense - the 777 carries up to 550 passengers. At
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
If intelligent life is too complex to evolve on its own, who designed God?
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.
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.
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
Goat sex free since 2001
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.
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
>How much noise does a hurricane make?
R RRRRRRRRRRR`.
Little ones go `weeeoughghghhhh`, larger ones go `RRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
>Boats are small compared to nature.
You are quite correct. Nature is much bigger than a boat.
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.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
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
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.
According to the inventor's article 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
/ is the root of
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
I think not...(*poof*)
rr
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
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:)
"Bugger this, I want a better world." - Jenny Sparks
http://www.cargolifter.com/
Only 160 tonnes, nowhere near 10,000 tonnes but it will be the 1st of its kind.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.