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Solar Boat To Cross the Atlantic
Roland Piquepaille writes, "A group from Switzerland will soon attempt the first Atlantic crossing in a solar-powered boat. This ship, named SUN21, is a 14-meter-long catamaran able to sleep 5 or 6 persons. The goal is to leave Seville, Spain, in December 2006 and to reach ports in Florida and New York in the spring of 2007. This boat will achieve its 7,000-mile trip at a speed of 5-6 knots, about the speed of a sailing yacht, by using photovoltaic cells and without burning a single gallon of fuel. The consortium behind this project wants to demonstrate that the time has come for solar boats." The boat will cost about $556,000 to build and it will be for sale at some point after its crossing.
Every sailing vessel is basically a solar powered boat. Been doing that for eons. Why change now?
Catboats with sails makes a very reliable clip night and day with little or no fancy technology - and can easily be mated up to such a solar-panel system for an added kick and redundancy...
Finally, an alternative to the environmentally dangerous effects of the sail.
Because wind and currents don't always go in the direction you might want them to?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Because they can. :)
But how much oil did it take to make the solar cells?
Censorship is obscene. Patriotism is bigotry. Faith is a vice. Slashdot 2.0 sucks.
What if the sun doesn't shine at all during the journey? After all, there's a lot of funky weather patterns going on these days.
With a trimaran design, one could make a low displacement ship with a huge deck area. Of course, there's always the cloudy day to mess things up, but with enough batteries on cuold get through a day or two. Really though, this isn't about efficiency, it's more of a "Look what we can do." kind of thing, and a good starting point for research into marine solar applications. How much does salt water effect common types of solar panels? What's the most efficient type of motor for this application? What's the best way to mount solar panels onto a rolling and pitching surface? These are all questions that might be answered by a program such as this.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Why does that matter? Sailboats can go in any direction other than straight into the wind. They aren't pushed forward by it.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
Okay, so we currently have the ability to have the front page not show articles posted by specific Slashdot editors. How about expanding that, so we can specify specific submitters, such as Roland Piquepaille for example, who's articles don't show up?
Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
the ship will undertake the first motorized crossing of the Atlantic without using a drop of gasoline
Except for all the nuclear powered ships and submarines.
I'd have serious concerns about reliability etc. too. Consider that many sailing adventures end up with broken masts and similar misfortunes that people are able to recover from because they're using ancient technology. They can put together something that sails from broken masts and torn sails etc and limp in to port. Fixing up broken PV is probably not something you can just do armed with a hammer, saw and a knife.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Voice Over Mr. and Mrs. Watson of 'Ivy Cottage', Worplesdon Road, Hull, chose a very cunning way of not being seen. When we called at their house, we found that they had gone away on two weeks holiday. They had not left any forwading address, and they had bolted and barred the house to prevent us getting in. However a neighbour told us where there were.
...(ditto) and of course here.....(a series of quick cuts of various atom bombs and hydrogen bomb at moment of impact) and Manchester and the West Midlands, Spain, China ...(mad laugh)
The camera has come to rest on a very obvious isolated beach hut; it blows up. Cut to a building site in a suburban housing estate. There is a Gumby standing there.
Voice Over And here is the neighbour who told us where they were (he blows up) Nobody likes a clever dick. (cut to stock film of a small house) Here is where he lived (it blows up) And this is where Lord Langdon lived who refused to speak to us (it blows up). So did the gentleman who lived here....(shot of house: it blows up)... and here
Cut to a presentation desk. The film is on a screen behind. We see it stop behind him as the presenter speaks.
Presenter Ah, well I'm afraid we have to stop the film there, as some of the scenes which followed were of a violent nature which might have proved distressing to some of our viewers. Though not to me, I can tell you.
(cut to another camera; the presenter turns to face it,)
In Nova Scotia today, Mr Roy Bent of North Walsham in Norfolk became the first man to cross the Atlantic on a tricycle. His tricycle, specially adapted for the crossing, was ninety feet long, with a protective steel hull, three funnels, seventeen first-class cabins and a radar scanner. (A head and shoulders picture of Roy Bent comes up on the screen behind him) Mr Bent is in our Durham studios, which is rather unfortunate as we're all down here in London. And in London I have with me Mr Ludovic Grayson, the man who scored all six goals in Arsenal's 1-0 victory over the Turkish Champions FC Botty. (he turns) Ludovic... (pull out to reveal that he is talking to a five-foot-high filing cabinet) first of all, congratulations on the victory.
Mr Grayson (from inside filing cabinet) Thank you, David.
Anyway, very silly stuff, you get the point.
http://www.ibras.dk/montypython/episode24.htm#11
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
I think what's most interesting about this is hybrid vessels, that use both sail and solar power. Obviously the big limitation with sailboats is a lack of wind, which often occurs in fair-weather scenarios (high pressure system, thus clear skies). Solar propulsion would often complement wind power when needed most. It would also be useful for the other times when sail power is not used, such as navigating in and out of the docks.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Yes, but this boat will (apparently) have no sails. It's sort of a 'look at me, no hands' exercise carried forward to spending a 1/2 million dollars to say so.
But... If Fossil fuels runout, you can't make enough energy needed to produce mass quantities of solar panels and fiber glass.. But I could still fell a tree, build a sail boat and eventually make a sail.
So, Solar loses, wind wins!
Good ol' `wind'. Nothin' beats that...
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
Furthermore, while being becalmed is annoying, diesel will get you out of it nearly as well as electric (or you can wait it out). Near a storm, however, you need serious engine power and can be in overcast weather for weeks. Finally, sometimes 5 knots simply won't cut it; if that's the best this motor can do it is unlikely to get beyond hobbyists.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
It's a Roland Pigpail article. It's delusional. No need to worry.
time for what? really expensive toys that take several months to get across the Altantic?
anything but mainstream.
What if the sails themselves were solar panels?
What if solar and sail were not concurrent? (solar for sunny days and no wind)
What if the solar panels primary purpose was to store energy to run on-board systems and for docking?
There are many iterations here, but it's an idea worth pursuit. (I think)
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Try about 1000 years, Columbus wasn't the 1st, The vikings used sailing ships too.
Actually half a million isn't unreasonable for a brand new 46' Trans-Atlantic capable powerboat / sailboat.
Price out a nice new Sea Ray Sundancer, last I checked their Sundancer 460 (roughly 46' of real space, like 51' tip to tip) model runs between half and three quarters of a Meg.
That said, I like the earlier idea of making the sails out of solar collector material (memories of Tron come to mind) and using that juice to fill up the batteries, run those the massive electric motors like this thing does.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
From the web-page: "Much of the expanding long-distance goods traffic on our oceans as well as many leisure boats could be powered by ecological solar energy. Solar energy will be the future of navigation techniques. But it needs more publicity and more confidence."
It sounds nice, but the practical application for the actual transportation of goods is something else.
The great things about ships is that the volume increases as a cubic function (roughly) of the length, but the drag only increases as the square. The area available to solar energy is more like a direct linear relationship to length what with ships being kind of long and skinny. That means that you can eventually build a ship big enough to carry it's own fuel to cross an ocean, and if you go bigger it can carry cargo even. Bigger still means more cargo with less fuel per cargo needed (generally). This is why we now have 1000 foot long container ships and 300,000 DWT ULCCs (Ultra Large Crude Carriers). But these ships that require less energy per volume still require a *lot* of energy, and not just energy, put power too (they need that energy fast). For example, the ship I work on (600 feet long by 75 feet wide, about 20,000 GRT--small by today's standards) requires about 14,000 horsepower to travel at about 17 knots when fully loaded. Just using a crude area approximation for the ship's dimensions and, say, 33% efficiency for solar cells you would get about 1630 kW of power, or about 2180 horsepower. 2180 horsepower won't even move a ship that size fast enough to maintain steerage. This isn't even mentioning the other auxiliary electrical loads associated with a ship (pumps, motors, air conditioning, sewage processing, etc.). Factoring average load for my ship in to that, you get about 1000 kW (1350 HP) available for propulsion. This is like trying to row a canoe with a spoon. Of course, if you don't put anything in the ship power consumption goes way down and you eventually get to the point where you have a boat like what they're using. But what business that makes money by moving lots of goods from A to B on a schedule is going to build a fleet of boats that can't carry anything and go very slowly? Maybe recreational boaters, but I don't see it so much for the commercial shipping industry.
I do wish them fair winds and following seas for their crossing, and hope that they are indeed correct that "Solar energy will be the future of navigation techniques" if for no other reason than we need to, as a society, start reducing out carbon footprint. As an engineer (a marine engineer, at that), though, I see a very long a tortuous path ahead.
If your toast does not accquire any kind of royalty, please do not contact us. We can't help you.
But on TV, the Vikings row their boats.
What?
I don't think anyone is getting the big picture. This is more of a move towards powering larger and larger vessels up to the size of today's fuel-burning ships. I don't think they're going "lol, who needs wind guys, am I right?" I think they realize as you must that it's rather impossible to make modern day ferries and passenger liners that don't burn fuel with current research. Hey maybe it's even possible to add to the technology of sails so much that you could make faster boats that use sails. Who knows?All I'm saying is, they're probably looking at this as the first step in a larger process and picture. If they're not, then they're missing out.
1. Effectively, sailboats can go "straight into the wind" by zigzagging (tacking). Unfortunately, this doesn't work so well in narrow channels (e.g. rivers). In this regard, the solar ship would have an edge, particularly on heavily used rivers.
2. As many people here have pointed out, sailboats have been around for a very long time, meaning that we've had a lot of time to improve their design and construction. If the first generation of a solar ship can be competitive with current generation sailboats, I think that this bodes well for the solar ship in the long haul.
3. Owing to the enormous forces involved in propelling a large ship using wind, the design, construction and operation of sailing vessels can be quite expensive. Half a million for a boat that can cross the Atlantic doesn't seem so bad, especially for a first-generation custom-built effort. With large scale production, I would expect to see prices come down.
4. The masts, sails and standing rigging of a sailing vessel seem incompatible with modern top-loading cargo facilities, whereas I can imagine that a solar boat could be designed for compatibility with existing port equipment.
5. Although batteries weigh a lot, so does fuel. And, unlike cars and trucks driving cross-country, ships crossing an ocean don't have the luxury of refueling, so they have to carry it all with them. On a solar-powered ship, you just need enough battery capacity to get you through cloudy patches.
I'm not 100% convinced it'll work, but the idea has merit.