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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.
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
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 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.
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
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
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.
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*)