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Spider-Like Catamaran Travels 5,000 Miles On One Tank
Lucas123 writes "Proteus, a Wave Adaptive Modular Vessel that looks like a spider, is so fuel efficient that it can travel 5,000 miles on one load of diesel fuel. The 100-foot-long, 50-foot-wide boat rides on metal and fabric pontoons that have hinges and shock absorbers to flex with the motion of the waves, which helps it to skim over the water at a max speed of 30 knots. It made its debut yesterday in New York harbor."
So less that 2 MPG???
Doesn't sound that great even with a crew of 10 a 747 gets better milage per seat.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Just what I was thinking. They never say how big the tank is. The boat could be very efficient or it could be the equivalent of a super tanker. Actually super tankers are not to bad on the efficiency stakes, long water lines, but I think the point still stands. Really it is a case of bad reporting. It is like my friend who is working on quantum teleportation at ANU. Every couple of months the local news will pick up a story about something they will do and somehow spin it that we will be tele-porting around like Capt Kirk in 15 or so years. As he always says, assuming they can solve all the hard problems, it will work great as long as you don't mind being ripped into your component particles and then having 50% of them left behind in the process.
Superlightweight cars work great: fabulous gas mileage. My old Datsun 1200 weighed just about 1500 pounds and got better than 35 mpg even though it had late '60's engine and electronics. Currently, the Honda Insight is getting like 80 mpg, in large part because it weighs 1800 pounds. Here's the problem: nobody buys those cars. People have a strong herd mentality, and think, first off, that heavy cars are safer, and secondly, that if you have a range of options you choose something in the middle, not something at the very end. Thirdly, as people get older, they buy larger, heavier, more options-rich cars (which is why individual car models bloat over their lifetime, by the way: they're selling to the same people, over and over, only the people are demanding bigger and bigger cars.)
MPG is not really a super-relevant metric for cargo-hauling vehicles. A 747 gets a few feet per gallon, but it can transport about 10x as many people a given distance for a given amount of fuel burnt than a Cessna 152, getting about 17 miles per gallon. Gallon burnt, per pound moved a mile, or something like it, is much more useful. Airplanes are rated in gallons-per-seat-per-mile, basically, and it gives you a much better idea of what the machine's efficiency can be if fully loaded.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
I had already read about this on the Scientific American site. It gets about 2 1/2 mpg. Hardly anything that rates the Slashdot hype headline.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Large cargo ships are incredibly efficient at moving stuff around. The fuel costs are essentially zero to move a pound of stuff from China to here in a container. A vague ballparky number that'll get you in the area is 40 gallons per TEU per 1000 miles. That's 40 gallons of bunker fuel to more one 20 foot container 1000 miles, and that with a smaller ship.
It's all the everything else that costs money and fuel.
This thing sounds sort of crummy in terms of efficiency, which isn't too surprising. It's small, it's got a lot of stuff up in the air, relative to its size. It's probably moving pretty fast. At 12 tons all up, and 2 tons of cargo capacity, it's in the same ballpark as say a 40 foot sailboat (which happen to have easily-driven hulls, so the fact that it has sails is irrelevant), and a 40 footer will drink maybe 1 gallon per hour at 6 knots. That would take her 12,000 miles on the same 2000 gallons.
Note, however, your 40 foot sailboat wouldn't have anything like 2000 gallons on board. More like 50 to 100.
I'm having a littke trouble buying the 2000 gallon tank, on this thing, since that would run about 6 or 7 tons right there, which seems all out of proportion to the rest of the boat.
Finally, Ugo Conti is the inventor, but Jim Antrim from the bay area actually did the design work and the engineering. I think it was built up in Washington (Anacortes, maybe?)
The article sucks.
ever seen this before? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Shadow_(IX-529)
On the one hand, a SWATH has more hull-surface drag - but on the other hand, the greater submerged hull volume means more fuel storage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Waterplane_Are
I especially like this line from the story:
Not aboard for the maiden press voyage? Hmmm,,,,,
~
Possibly, but doubtful. IANANA (Naval Architect) but I do have a fair amount of sailing experience. The center of effort looks like it would be very high above the water, so I think you'd have a hard time bringing the center of gravity down far enough to make the boat safe in heavy weather.
Of course, I tend to keep a wary eye on those multi-hulled sailboats when the weather gets rough since they have a tendency to flip if you aren't careful (and a 50-60 foot catamaran is not something you can right very easily by yourself!).
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis hebes