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Future Ships Could Float On Bubbles
MattSparkes writes, "Creating a layer of bubbles underneath a ship's hull could improve fuel efficiency by 20%. When you consider that 90% of the world's goods are transported by sea, the importance of this discovery is obvious. 'Conjured up from thin air at the flick of a switch, this slippery blanket will help transport a fully laden tanker or container ship across the ocean at higher speed, and using far less fuel, than ever before... There is currently no other technique in naval architecture that can promise such savings.'" The article looks in some detail at the engineering problems that will need to be overcome before this technique is practical.
Creating a layer of bubbles underneath a ship's hull could improve fuel efficiency by 20%
But have they tried rainbows and/or fairie dust?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Since methane hydrates releases are still suspected in the sinking of ships, how do the researchers account for the loss of buoyancy? Since this research calls for redesign of current ship building know-how, how are they planning on addressing the buoyancy part of the equation? To read more check out this http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn1350 and http://jbj.wordherders.net/archives/000992.html someone trying to weaponize the buoyancy concept. http://www.nexusresearchgroup.com/fun_science/buoy ant1.htm A fun science experiment for the kiddies, or others that want to understand it better.
I thought putting millions of bubbles around a ship was a good way to hide it from SONAR?
"There is currently no other technique in naval architecture that can promise such savings.'""
Hovercraft. Ground-effect seaplanes. Boats that use skis.
Layer of Bubbles? How can Michael Jackson decrease fuel consumption.
That's how I float in the tub!
The wife wanted a spa and I'm just doing my part for energy efficiency.
Sounds a little like supercavitated torpedoes, where the bubbles minimize drag except in this case they aren't encasing the ship in air. What ever happened to supercavitation anyway? Was it actually ever used or extended beyond torpedoes?
Have they factored in the amount of energy required to create the layer of bubbles?Seems like creating a layer of bubbles around the hull of a giant ship would take quite a bit of energy.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The theory being that the air bubbles help reduce the noise hence they're more silent to passive sonar systems on submarines, useful for anti-submarine warfare.
Or did I read it in a Tom Clancy book? Probably a little from column a and a little from column b.
Hi:
This is done to mask the sound of the ship to lower sonar's ability to hear it. There's a follow-up system for squirting air into the wake to dispell the noise created for similar reasons. However, the primary benefit is to reduce detectability. I'd hate to imagine the fuel consumption needed to drive air compressors at such a rate to reduce friction as the primary goal.
--Not an engineer.
why not just skip the "we reduced friction with bubbles" and proceed directly to the "we ooze along in a cloud of our own mucous" technology?
Is to use a nuclear powered fully-submersed shell which uses super-cavitation to acheive high-speeds with minimum drag, and have it generate a powerful magnetic field above it to suspend a freighter above the water. Like a water-based, self-contained maglev.
Sure it's total impossible and you'll whine about minor problems like air friction of the freighter, the power requirements for doing something like this, and stabilizing the boat above the submersed shell, but wouldn't it look cool!
With this knowledge, no one will be able to touch my son's boat at the next Boy Scout's boat race!!!
Putting bubbles around a ship will decrease its displacement, thus making it sink more to compensate for the loss of displacement, it will sink until it displaces exactly the same weight in water as the ships weight. I doubt this will help with friction, as you must, by definition displace physically the same amount of liquid, only now its harder to do, and the ship must 'sink' deeper in the water to displace it. Seems like smoking fairy bubbles to me
Why bother reinventing the wheel when they could just glue a bunch of air hockey tables to the outside of a boat?
have courage
Since he wrote about this technology in "Jingo" (putting the discovery in the mouth of Leonard of Quirm, way back in 1997), I would guess that this is not a cutting-edge discovery.
The ship will try to displace it's weight in the water. Bubbles have way less buoyancy and the ship will try to sink down thru the layer of bubbles, as the trapped air in the bubbles will not be able to support the weight of the ship and the air will compress greatly.
One of the theories of the Bermuda Triangle is that vast deposits of methane hydrate ice at the bottom of the sea suddenly turns loose and floats up to the surface. Any ship happening to be sitting there when the methane bubbles come up underneath it sinks pretty quickly as the frothy water cannot support the weight. When the methane reaches the surface and there is suddenly plenty of oxygen, there also suddenly comes a major fire / explosion hazard if any ignition source is nearby.
...this is not one of Roland Piquepaille's excellent blog posts. Why should I trust this source?
Tiny bubbles under my ship
make the hull super slick
tiny bubbles make our trip
fast and silent and super scientific
So here's to the scientists
who help us cross the sea
I can't wait to make that journey
When you consider that 90% of the world's goods are transported by sea
Bzzzt. The submitter misstated the article, so this statement is flat out wrong.
From the article (emphasis mine):
in 2003 more than 90 per cent of all goods that were sent around the globe went by ship
So in the context of global shipping, 90% of goods are transported by sea. Obviously far, far less than 90% of the world's goods are transported globally in the first place.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
I could have sworn I heard about this idea years ago. I think it could have been 6 years ago. I remember something about this.
refers to: Shkval. Scared the bejesus out of the U.S. Navy.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
So, what's ``low speed?'' That's probably going to be any speed much below sqrt(waterline length in feet), with units of knots. So, for a 400-foot long ship, anything less than 20 knots is in the speed range where this is likely to matter. For a 900 footer, anything less than 30 knots. Most ships travel in that low speed range, so this could be practical.
See what I've been reading.
That would be the polymer idea mentioned in the article. When these are used as flocculants in sewage treatment, the batching and dosing plants need to be equipped with special high grip flooring because otherwise the floor gets lethally slippery if you spill this stuff and get it wet. Think banana peel times ten.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
Is to use a nuclear powered fully-submersed shell which uses super-cavitation to acheive high-speeds with minimum drag, and have it generate a powerful magnetic field above it to suspend a freighter above the water. Like a water-based, self-contained maglev.
Sure it's total impossible and you'll whine about minor problems like air friction of the freighter, the power requirements for doing something like this, and stabilizing the boat above the submersed shell, but wouldn't it look cool! And in the process we use the heat to change the viscosity of the water around the submerged part. Further we use the excess electricity to split the H2O into the components Hydrogen and Oxygen. Then we have giant gas collectors attached to the side of the tanker and we use the gas in the afterburners. Now wouldn't it SUPER cool to see a supertanker levitating in mid air with afterburners going?
Olympic swimmers are all wearing high tech swimsuits. Now, I don't exactly recall the spoken content of the bit piece that I saw, but there is some kind of magicness in that fabric that I think does just what this is talking about, passively. Acres of spandex?! Let the dont-mind-long-voyages-away-from-women jokes begin!
Phah! Bubbles? That's lame. Tenacious D seemed to have an even better idea when they toppled City Hall
The second decree: no more pollution, no more car exhaust, or ocean dumpage. From now on, we will travel in tubes! Get the scientists working on the tube technology, immediately!
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
This sounds like a lot of Hot Air! Pshh...
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
This is a February 2006 article.... slow news day ? Also the artcile is highly speculative , eventhe 20% isn't certain...
What they ought to do is replace the oceans with frictionless liquid helium. That would be way more effective.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Will the computers that control the pumps that shoot the air run on linux?
Or does one big bubble not count?
20% increase in efficiency will result in the consumption of "far less" fuel? Far out!
...I'd also like a pony.
I'm no engineer but if they hook really, really big hot air balloons up to the exhaust towers, wouldn't that lift it noticeablly too? A couple more ideas like that and they'll just be big airplanes lol.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
when he bubbles up out of the ocean then?
They're talking about tiny bubbles, more like a film of bubblage than a roiling cauldron. (Or, in the case of the air cavities also mentioned, large voids which would function more or less the same as somewhat leaky sections of hull, just without the actual hull wall being at the water-ship interface.)
The 19th century called, it wants its ships back.
Seriously, though, when the age of sail was coming to a close, the first engine-powered ships still had sails, for exactly that reason - save fuel when the wind is good, save time when you're stuck in the doldrums.
there are some sea mines that create a bubble to lessen the support that carrys the ship and cracks the hull.
I'm not a mechanical engineer nor have I looked at the math on this tech. but if you ask me I think it might not have to much of a chance based on the bubbles size and number of them it would take to support a tanker standing still let alone at speed.
as well there is a theroie that the bermuda triangle takes down ships with the release of carbon bubbles from the sea floor
it will be intresting to see it work.
I'd Tell you all my secrets but I lie about my past
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/navy/docs/swos/stu2 /NEWIS9_7.html
Some people will confuse the idea of bubbles with cavitation. Cavitation is loud and is avoided but it is caused when a screw manages to cause a phase change. The water turns to vapor and the the bubble collapses making a lot of sound and can even erode the metal on the screw.
The bubble of air that the navy uses don't collapse so no noise instead it acts like an insulator.
I wonder if you could use the exhaust gases of the ship for the bubbles for shipping application? You would have to cool the gas first but it might be a bit if a free lunch.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Seems to me the most bubbles I see when I'm on a big boat are off the stern, created by the engines and hull displacement themselves. If there was a way to channel those bubbles to the bow of the ship, you may not need extra engines/bubble makers on the front. Perhaps something like an in-hull channel that forces the bubbly soup from the stern up and under the ship, and ejects in under the bow. Either that or find a way to make the ships "Front-wheel drive" so to speak, and have the engines under the bow of the ship. This way the engine's propellers are creating the bubbles, and naturally give lift. Or if it's just the displacement that creates most of the bubbles off the stern, have the ship push a suspended or rigid bubble-making displacer off the bow of the ship. As the ship starts to move, the displacer could be lowered into the sea. Bubble boom could also contain air jets that force streams of bubbles under the bow.
Namaste
"Junior! What are those bubbles in the bathtub?"
"Just reducing drag, Ma."
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
And all those engineers are wrong. I just hope they all read /..
The supercavitational bubble is vacuum, not air. This is also the reason why the torpedo cannot be manoeuvred with traditional means once fired (since there is no water anywhere around it).
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Back in the day there used to be ships traversing the high seas with slaves pulling at oars and a slave master pounding a big drum. I can see it now - a large ship with the crew hanging over the edge blowing bubbles with very long straws listening to the drone of Don Ho's "Tiny Bubbles"....
For different purposes, they we're trying to obscure active sonar, of course it created more noise than it absorbed so it wasn't really feasible. It also had the side effect of letting the submarine 'slide' faster through the water. I don't have a reference to back this up, just a conversation I had with an instructor in Sub school in Groton Connecticut.
"There is currently no other technique in naval architecture that can promise such savings."
k /
6 -03.asp
I hate innacurate reporting. Adding Giant Kite-like sails to cargo ships is an alternative as well.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13325827/site/newswee
This is in use now and increases both speed and fuel efficiency far more than the 20% savings the air bubbles promise.
Imagine using both technologies together, or even adding solar panels to the sails for even more efficiency.
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2005/2005-04-0
Putting bubbles around a ship will decrease its displacement, thus making it sink more to compensate for the loss of displacement, it will sink until it displaces exactly the same weight in water as the ships weight.
A thin layer of bubbles will not do that. They will be at the pressure of the surrounding water and provide the necessary force to support the ship. To sink lower, the ship would have to move them aside - which it is already doing - but are limited in their ability to move by the resistance of the surrounding water. Meanwhile they are continuously replaced from the air source.
Now if you have a DEEP foam of bubbles beneath and around the ship - allowing the air to move sideways rapidly - the ship would indeed drop as if it were in midair - or (if the foam is only partly air) attempting to "float" on something less dense than itself. But a layer of bubbles against the hull will not do that.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
TFA says the most promising method of getting the air cushion is to build cavities on the underside of the ship. It takes some energy to maintain the cavities full of air, but it's a lot less than the energy required for the other methods.
However, the Vikings used the same principle centuries ago. Their way of building ships creates longitudinal grooves along the bottom of the hull, which form cushions of air at higher speeds. The overall shape of the hull also contributes to low resistance. I don't have any proper references, as I only saw this in a documentary once, but for example here is a brief mention of the idea.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
There is currently no other technique in naval architecture that can promise such savings.
But this one does? Promises 20% savings? I wonder if there's a hat ready to be eaten by the author. It's a really bold promise anyway.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
There has been a lot of theorizing that this is how some of the viking longships were so fast. Essentially the way the planks were laid out allowed the ship to catch air from in front of it and shove it underneath the boat, guiding it along its length. Look up the Gokstad ship for details.
I accidentally created a layer of bubbles around myself in the pool once, you should have seen how fast my WIFE moved!
S.S. Lawrence Welk?
I for one welcome our bubly overlords :)
The idea, while novel, is not new. The idea of a "100 knot Torpedo" has been around for awhile. The idea was to basically blow compressed air through a nozzle in the nose of the torpedo enveloping the torpedo in a "shroud" of air, as opposed to water, thus drastically reducing drag resulting from moving through the water.
The idea, when applied to a ship, has nothing to do with bouyancy(although it would certainly effect it) but rather reducing drag by displacing the water around the hull with air. While impossible to entirely remove the contact with water, even small decreases will reduce drag enough to make the whole idea worthwhile in terms of fuel consumption.
The problem with BOTH ideas is the interference with propulsion. A propeller does not work as efficiently in the same mass of air bubbles. Unless some means of keeping the prop out of the bubble cloud is devised, the resulting loss of propulsion will offset the gains made by the reduction of drag. This is the main reason the "100 knot Torpedo" is not used.
As far as noise reduction in submarine warfare, it is NOT quieter. Its simply different. It is akin to a propeller "cavitating", and in submarine warfare, that is like sending up a signal flare.
What they are talking about here us just surrounding the hull with a thin layer of bubbles.....maybe the ship sits a couple inches (to pull a guess out of my rear) lower in the water....but there's not going to be any danger of sinking a ship...
Actually it floats HIGHER - by about the thickness of the air film. (It would float higher by EXACTLY the thickness of the air film except that the film is compressed slightly by the higher water pressure at the bottom of the boat.)
To understand it:
- The film displaces water, just like the hull.
- If the hull sinks marginally, the film stays about the same thickness and it's the water below that is displaced.
- So the film of air acts like part of the hull.
- The total amount of water displaced is the amount displaced by the hull PLUS the amount displaced by the air.
- But the air under the boat is about the same density as the air above the boat. So only the craft's weight (plus any surplus weight of air from its compression by the higher pressure below the hull) is supported by the displaced water.
- Thus, to displace its own weight the hull plus air system must have the hull higher than the hull-only system by about the thickness of the air barrier.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
How does the ship floats if it's surrounded by air? If it can "float" on thin air, why can't it "float" on "thick air", i.e. "fly"?
I have heard of such a technique several years ago for torpedoes. But those torpedoes go fast and have wings still in contact with the water to provide the lift.
The Prairie/Masker has been used for a while to reduce the acoustical signature of ships conducting anti-submarine warfare.
"Where quality is like a dead stinking rat - you just can't miss it."
"The article looks in some detail at the engineering problems that will need to be overcome before this technique is practical."
For get the engineering problems, what about the financial problems. Mr. Bubble ain't cheap ya know...
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
How about reducing craps flying out of China? Surely that oughta reduce great deal on shipping fuel and save the "free market" from 3rd world countries' ridiculous low manufacturing and living cost.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
More soap thrown into it.... wow, aint we heading for the best times of humanity. The time when we will have no planet to live on anymore. Cool.
Hey, wait a couple of years and, with the discharges we put into the oceans all youll need is an air pump beneath the ship and the bubles will come up by themselves.
A private bathtub! NAH! We will turn the oceans into a huge bubble bath. Great.
Fucking A
NO SIG
More idiots adding more sh!t to the environment. We've already seen how the ocean provides the particulates and the water vapor for the clouds that keep the planet from going supernova...
I dislike greenies as much as the next guy, but adding polymer ejaculates to ships - battleships, ships of war, or just ships that have to go fast, to make them go faster or use less fuel.... ffs wtf are the thinking!?
From TFA: "The polymers probably won't damage the environment"
Let's start a famous quotes page, here are a few to kick things off:
Qld gov't: "The cane toads probably won't damage the environment"
B Gates: "You probably won't ever need more than 640k"
Local Dr: "This might sting a little bit"
The Shkval torpedo is the one weapon that I remember hearing about a couple years ago that used bubbles to reduce friction. Crazy stuff... who would have imagined that bubbles would help build a better weapon?
o
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VA-111_Shkval_torped
It's also worth looking at MIT's RoboTuna and RoboPike, robotic fish, and the penguin boat Proteus. These projects demonstrate that fish-like fins or flippers substantially improve propulsion efficiency vs. propellers, because they generate vortices of water that actually push a vehicle forward. MIT sees these vortices as the answer to Gray's paradox, which said that a dolphin would have to be stronger than it is to swim as fast as it does. (That article disagrees.)
A flapping drive would also have the advantage of looking cool.
Revive the Constitution.
Just a thought.
as it is the noise pollution ships create is having an effect on the environment.
will the bubbles add to this or decrease it by possibly masking it?
How tall would the masts have to be? Would the ship fit under the the golden gate bridge?
The US Navy has for years used a system called the Prairie Masker that is essentially a belt of bubble generators linked to a low pressure/high volume steam driven compressor. The reduced density at the water/air interface masks the water/hull interface by causing sound attenuation.
So are we going to have submarines crashing into tankers that they can't see and which have reduced maneuverability?
Was that African or European?
... iirc the bottle-nosed dolphin uses a layer of bubbles when they need a burst of speed. Works for them.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
FTFA linked by grandparent:
Gas. Not vacuum. The first thing I thought when I heard about the Shkval is "I wonder if the technology could be useful at ship-sized scales?", the first thing I thought when I saw the article here on slashdot was "Woo, supercavitating!"
j'ai découvert une démonstration vraiment admirable (de ce théorème général) que cette si
"They are moderately intellegent people. They do think of these obvious things..."
But are they as intellegent as slashdot posters?
Okay, so give me a trimaran with submerged outriggers, non-linear wave-formed hulls (Who has more info on this? I saw it recently, probably NewScientist, but can't find more info), bubble cavitation, solar panels, sails, and a kite!
I'd love to see the sails used to move a 75,000 ton ship, let alone the rigging to keep it in place through those uncommon gales at sea. And by golly, with all that tacking they'll sure make great headway. You know what would be even better than sails? Solar power!
Isn't it very self centered to pollute the oceans in the first place? I mean, more so than the land. We don't even life in the ocean (anymore). Yet we continue to pollute it and then ignoring the pollution by leaving the beach when the local sewage drain breaks open.
Makes me wish we could just have a mini-ice age. Nothing big. Just enough to cover the top half of Russia and all of Alaska...plus greenland...yeah...then we can just use trucks...no wait...no one lives in Alaska either...
[/sarcasm]
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
... move a supertanker or container ship with sails. Container ships make the US's biggest aircraft carriers look tiny: 317 meters for the Nimitz vs. 390+ for some of the largest container ships. By comparison, Google says the largest sailboat in the world is about 120m long. You might as well get behind the Nimitz and push, it would do about as much good.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
some researcher will find out that whales already do it. The reason they leap out of the water every now and then is to replenish the bubble layer inside their nano-scale bubble-trapping boundarylayer-less super low frictional drag whale-skin.
Next we'll find out that dolphins and killer whales do it even better than whales, or that whales are optimized for low speed drag but killer whales & dolphins have special features optimized for high speed.
Nature is light years ahead of us: she does nanoscale engineering including nano-manufacturing an in creature that feeds on plankton and small fish.
Hasan
Speaking of sails, I'll bet the America's Cup committee is hard at work on new rules to outlaw this technology. They don't want to face Dennis Conner at the helm of another low drag hull!
Photographs of Russian ACS Ships.
Explaination and Diagram
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Bypassing the blogodreck, here's the actua paper.
This is an old idea, and it's usually not worth the trouble. The paper says they achieved a 2% energy saving with the system, and might get 4% with improvements. Not a big deal. If the hull jets crud up and have to be cleaned or replaced, the costs of doing that will eat up the savings.
If somebody gets this up to 20% or so, it might start to pay off, but at 2-4%, no.
Ice breaking ships use something similar but it's to help break ice not to help reduce friction for the purpose of traveling through the water. It helps break the ice probably in a similar way that hovercraft ice breakers do by causing a cavity to form under the surface of the ice and it collapses.
My Dad was in the Canadian Coast Guard for 30 years.
Won't it take energy to produce bubbles? What about law of conservation of energy? They'll just use something else to generate the bubbles (perhaps electricity). So yeah, fuel may get saved. But hello, haven't we had hovercrafts? The ship would then just be one massively overweight hovercraft no?
I remember reading all about how the next wave of ships would be powered by artificial muscles! bubbles != muscles.
You're nothing; like me.
then add some soap and La Voila!
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Air lubricated hulls were the origins of the hovercraft. First patents on it were filed in 1877
Your container ship would need between 50000 and 100000 sq ft of sail. Given the size of those mothers, that's not unreasonable, especially if the sails are of suitable design rather than scaled-up small boat rigs.
Me? I'd put the sails on big offshore wind farms and offset the fuel savings to the ships, simply because a huge turbine with big anchors is safer than a sailing ship in a gale. The net effect would be much the same, especially as you put the wind farms where the wind is while the best sailing route is not necessary the shortest and safest route if you do not need sail.
Pining for the fjords
I am very pedantic, but the submarines HEAR other ships, they don't see them. And even with the military Prairie/Masker system, the ships are audible to submarines - just not at such a distance. Anyway, the civilian system won't "protect" the screws, and enough noise is coming from them for them to be audible
That technique is not new. Faster sea transportation systems have already been researched. See WIGS for instance. Wings In Ground Effect: transportation by sea, as fast as a slow airplane but more efficient than an airplane.
They were researched during the 60s, specially by the russians and the germans, for military purporses.
The bubble method described in this article also has already been researched for this kind of crafts.
Check it out: http://www.se-technology.com/wig/index.php
It'll only work well with crap-free hulls. That's OK just after dry-dock but cargo ship hull deterioriate fast.
Also
Water+oxygen+metal = rust
So, to use the air-layer efficiently, you need even more specialised paints, more sacrificial anodes, and shorter times between dry-docks to maintain hull-efficiency? You could well end up not saving money at all.
Note that most of the russian vessels are either plastic or pleasure boats. Typically, these sorts of boats don't get the usage of container ships and dry-docking is cheaper.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
Sirs,
This was done (I was part of operation) in the 1960s/1970s to 'hide' "mask" the sound signatures of ships from probing by potential foes.
The entire below water level hull was regularly allowed to be enveloped in partial and complete bubble layer(s). The lower hull layer reduced friction and power consumption for sea movement , however the energy to generate and disperse the bubbles was greater than the friction saviing.
Proces may not be energy efficient.
Regards Eion MacDonald
http://access.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Stories/microbubbles/
> researchers have tried using tiny bubbles
And I assume that when the ship arrives, instead of "Land Ho!", they are required to shout "Don Ho!"
You shall see a cow on the roof of a cotton house.
It's not cavitation. Cavitation is entirely different both in its source and its action. This is bubbling air around a ship. Not huge frothing masses that will interfere with the prop. And it won't necessarily make a ship sit lower. It will likely make it sit higher. Air under the hull will add an upward force.
If it all worked the way you thought, you'd be right. But it doesn't, so you're wrong.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
I know. I was firing for effect. Once upon a time I engaged in a pissing contest with a LtJg with a degree in library science by following his incompetent commands explicitly. My punishment was to be sent to the sonar shack for two weeks and I almost qual's as an op. His punishment was an ass chewing by the CO and being placed in hack for a month. I learned a fair amount and listened to a lot of whale-speak during my tenure there.
The same jg later almost took the Scorpion and Thresher out of port and starboard.
...future ships floating on bubbles. I want warp drives. What is this? A new generation of engineers who watched My Little Pony instead of Star Trek?
It's not easy being green.