Kite-Powered Ship Launched

The Grand Poobah writes "The big-kite technology we discussed last month has officially launched in Hamburg, Germany. Reuters has a writeup of the new technology, which aims to cut fossil fuel use on sea voyages by an estimated 20% by means of a huge computer-controlled kite. The link includes a video."

Comments

It's called reinventing the...

[Black Parrot]

sail.

Re:It's called reinventing the...

[kryten_nl]

Because

1. it can be used at these cargo ships normal cruise speed,
2. it saves the shipping company $1600 per day
3. and it utilizes higher altitude winds,

I would say they have succeeded.

Re:It's called reinventing the...

[Swizec]

If they managed to improve on age old technology, I say why not?

Re:It's called reinventing the...

[kongit]

perhaps they have succeeded but I still want a giant balloon on top of ships so I can go to Narshe with ease again and again

Re:It's called reinventing the...

[IBBoard]

I did think about that, but is it not slightly different?

I don't know much about the conditions at see (so potentially over-qualified to talk about it on /. ;) ) but wouldn't there be stronger winds higher up? Think of a normal kite - you hold it at ground level and you get a bit of a gust, but get it up to flying altitude and it is really pulling.

So they may have re-invented "the really high sail" by removing the mast and putting it on the end of a rope/tether instead, but not just a normal sail.

Re:It's called reinventing the...

[Anonymous Coward]

Saves the shipping company just measly $1600 per day? Come on, get serious, it is not worth the hassle then! The idea of using abundant available free energy is essentially a good idea, but obviously poorly refined in this case.

Clearly some adjustment is necessary, at the very least. OK, the sail is reinvented, but the whole concept of a sailboat freighter needs to be reinvented as well: the aerial unit needs to become the bridge of the ship, because of its elevated position. In case of too rough weather, it should be able to maintain autonomous flight and reattach after the calming. It also should be able to launch from the ship in windless conditions and search for a wind at higher altitudes, using own motor (not powerful enough to tow the ship, but able to move the kite around).

Perhaps the ships should be constructed sturdy enough to be carried (flown) completely out of water by two or more kites, when conditions are good? Considering the potential power of this propulsion, at least s hydro-foil hull may be desirable.

Re:It's called reinventing the...

[IainMH]

I took up kitesurfing in the summer. I can attest to the enormous power a kite can yeild - far more than a sail of the same size. Most people kitesurfing use a kite around 10-12 metres long depending on their size and the wind conditions. When I was learning the ropes (sorry), I used a 3 metre kite on land. I am not a small chap. But that 3 metre kite picked me up as if I was hardly there and threw me around.

Power kites are quite hard to learn how to control properly. I think the leap in the technology here isn't the wind which, as you point out, has been done before, but the control systems to keep the kite in the air, stable and effective.

Re:It's called reinventing the...

[christus_ae]

You've nailed the reasons this German comapany has invested and utilized this technology. It's not about "fighting climate change" like the pro-green TFA title, it's about saving $1600 a day.

Re:It's called reinventing the...

[shilly]

Your calculations and your "refinements" aren't properly thought out.

1) $1,600 / day *per ship* savings on fuel costs sounds pretty good to me -- nearly 600k a year. Of course that's a significant saving for a shipping company, look how they've borne down on crew costs to save relatively smaller sums. Assuming an installed cost of $750k, there's a payback time of just a year and a quarter, and that's conservative: fuel prices are heading up which increases the savings, the costs of production will head down due to economies of scale if the tech takes off, and the article notes that larger kites would -- in principle -- deliver larger savings.

2) Why on earth would you make the kite the bridge of the ship? The tether is about 300m long, what's the point of it being 240m instead? When you pull objects along, you attach the tether to the front of them, not the middle -- it's more efficient and it's more stable. Watch a child pull a toy dog along to see this principle in action.

3) They have their own solution to rough weather, and it's simpler than a frigging autonomous flight capability.

4) Lifting a fifty thousand ton ship bodily out of the water with kites doesn't sound like a terribly feasible solution. The hydrofoil idea might possibly be worth pursuing, but I suspect there are good technical engineering reasons for why large freight ships don't currently use this design that would preclude its use even with a kite.

Re:It's called reinventing the...

[oik]

FWIW it's worth, this was mentioned in the latest Frontiers episode:

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/frontiers_20071212.shtml

There's a little more info there...

Re:It's called reinventing the...

[dfenstrate]

It's not about "fighting climate change" like the pro-green TFA title, it's about saving $1600 a day.

The lesson for greenies is of course to find cheaper, more environmentally friendly ways to achieve the same output as fossil fuels.

Raising costs with punitive 'carbon taxes' will earn revulsion and support theories that global warming hysteria is really just a power and money grab.

Developing environmentally friendly AND cheaper, effective solutions will earn their developers lots of money and save the environment at the same time.

You catch more flies with honey than vinegar. This kite- it's environmental honey. Develop more things like it.

Re:It's called reinventing the...

[tjstork]

I would say they have succeeded.

I wonder what they do when the kite falls into the ocean?

Re:It's called reinventing the...

[rujholla]

Here Here!!

Re:It's called reinventing the...

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

Was it a saving of $1600 per day, or did he mean it cost $1600 a day to run the ship normally (without a kite) and that they'd be looking to save around 20%, so $320 per day?

Re:It's called reinventing the...

[IdeaMan]

Hmm, hydrofoil sounds interesting. One of the problems with that is control. You're multiplying 2 very tricky control problems by each other. Some sailing speed records were set by hydrofoils though. Hydrofoils need a certain minimum speed to get out of the water, and it takes a lot of power to lift the ship up to get into the lower power requirement hydrofoil planing. I doubt that a ship that large has enough power to get it up on plane. Maybe use air injection? (see http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V4F-4B4YVX3-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=2c70f5a8d0ade5705385e73f96d9f542)

Re:It's called reinventing the...

[Firethorn]

FTA: Under favorable wind conditions, the 160-square meter kite shaped like a paraglider is expected to reduce fuel costs by up to 20 percent or more ($1,600 per day) and cut, by a similarly significant amount, its carbon dioxide emissions.

I'd read that as saving $1.6k per day(under favorable conditions).

Time for research:
Daily fuel cost: 7,900 AUD ~ $6.8k. 20% of that is 1.36K. But then, it assumes heavy fuel oil at $130/ton, current prices look closer to $200. Then again, the dollar's value has dropped, so it'd skew stuff the other way.

Anyways, $1600 looks to be in the right range to be the savings. And only heading up, from what I've seen of HFO price trends on that site.

Re:It's called reinventing the...

[Anonymous Coward]

To this i can only say:

http://xkcd.com/357/

Re:It's called reinventing the...

[Anonymous Coward]

For the sake of the environment, I hope the ships stay away from Charlie Brown's tree.

Re:It's called reinventing the...

[Bo'Bob'O]

Huh? How is this insightful?
Environmentalists have been pushing for funding for development of clean, affordable technologies for years. Thats the very definition of a huge part of the environmental movement. Now, you clearly disagree with a lot of the ideology of the movement, everyone is entitled to an opinion and that is fine, but you clearly aren't the person who should be telling greenies what sort of "lessons" they should be learning, when, this is just the sort of projects they have been pushing for all along.

Well, let the environmentalist smearing begin.

Re:It's called reinventing the...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bulungi is with you, brother!
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30389

Re:It's called reinventing the...

[dfenstrate]

but you clearly aren't the person who should be telling greenies what sort of "lessons" they should be learning

I'm not, you smarmy prick? I think anthropogenic global warming is mostly bullshit (a full discussion of my position is outside of the scope of this discussion), I'm a capitalist, and I would buy this technology.

What's so hard for you to process? You can entice me into your practice of environmentalism with economics, when I ordinarily wouldn't give a shit (not really, but relatively speaking let's go with 'I don't give a shit').

Hey, it's great that tree-huggers have been working on this kind of stuff for decades. That's good. I'm cool with that. It's pretty clear not everyone has gotten the message, so don't go lecturing me about what I should talk about. The most visible (numerous?) environmentalists are angry, sophomoric juveniles who couldn't manage a 7-11 for a week, let alone a cargo ship. Given that, figuring out how to sell your cause to people who can is kind of important, isn't it?

You represent another problem with environmentalists- among their ranks are smarmy self-righteous pricks who think only they're qualified to speak about what environmental practices should be implemented or how they should be advocated. If you haven't noticed there are many among your brethren who want to use the AGW as a power and money grab. Those people can die in a fire.

Bring me something that saves money, does the same job, and helps the environment? I'm all ears.

Re:It's called reinventing the...

[Anonymous Coward]

Please see here

Re:It's called reinventing the...

[Anonymous Coward]

The kite needs to be attached to a place close to the "pivot point" of the vessel so that it maintains maneuverability, if the kite pulls either forward or aft of the pivot point then it will create a turning lever which will steer the vessel off course thus causing the autopilot to correct with rudder thus causing drag and inefficiency or possibly an accident. So if the kite is attached to the bow, it will be dragged along and will be very hard to steer. The location of the pivot point is dependent on a lot variables such as power, displacement etc etc and is "dynamic" in that it moves around with the changing forces acting on the vessel but is usually found about a third of the ship
s length back from the bow.
What you say about crew cost is quite ironic as the shipping companies will have to pay a higher price for officers from western countries to operate these kites as sailing is not something that is taught (or well understood) at Maritime Colleges in the third world countries they get the "cheaper" officers from, in fact it isn't taught at many western maritime colleges either so they'll probably lose a significant amount of their savings on that alone.
As an officer of a cargo ship, I can't see this idea lasting long.

Re:It's called reinventing the...

[Abcd1234]

The lesson for greenies is of course to find cheaper, more environmentally friendly ways to achieve the same output as fossil fuels.

Raising costs with punitive 'carbon taxes' will earn revulsion and support theories that global warming hysteria is really just a power and money grab.

Never heard of negative externalities, eh? Yeah, most non-greenies haven't. See, it's kinda tough to create price-competative, green technologies when the dirty ones are subsidized by the rest of the planet, as their prices don't reflect their true cost, in terms of environmental and health damage. As such, the only economically sound solution is a carbon tax, which forces the cost of those externalities back onto the consumers, who may then make a more economically (and, coincidentally, environmentally) sound choice.

Re:It's called reinventing the...

[nobuddy]

"You catch more flies with honey than vinegar. This kite- it's environmental honey. Develop more things like it." uhh... http://xkcd.com/357/

Re:It's called reinventing the...

[dfenstrate]

I've heard of negative externalities. The trouble is..

their prices don't reflect their true cost, in terms of environmental and health damage. .... that in determining the 'true cost' there's frequently a lot of slop and conjecture involved. Such slop and conjecture in these 'true cost' studies is usually tilted towards those who want to grab power and money 'for our own/ the planets good.'

Huh. Imagine that.

The latest UN conference was on 'climate change', throwing even more suspicion on the entire affair. Not 'global warming', not 'global cooling', but 'climate change.' Now the climate changing is cause for redistributive policies,abrogating any sort of democratic process and arbitrary negative externalities (read: new taxes to prop up overly-generous welfare states whose finances suck).

Pretty convienent for these folks to use an unfalsifiable thesis as a basis for the policies they want, Global warming? Climate change! give us money and power! Global cooling? Climate change! give us money and power!

Nevermind that we have records of the climate changing drastically for hundreds of millions of years with absolutely no help from humans. Did you know that greenland was actually green at some point?

Go study science and engineering if you want to actually contribute, and make something that is both economical and helpful to the environment. Sign-waving jackasses crying for carbon taxes will never be anything more than anchors on people who actually do a damn thing. (and engineering better solutions counts as 'doing something')

Failing science and engineering studies, go join greenpeace and harass the French Navy.

Re:It's called reinventing the...

[Abcd1234]

Such slop and conjecture in these 'true cost' studies is usually tilted towards those who want to grab power and money 'for our own/ the planets good.'

Bah, that's just a BS excuse to ignore valid scientific data. Go look at the numbers yourself and tell me that coal plants and oil refineries don't cause respiratory ailments. Even if you don't believe in the environment cost, the health damage alone is a valid externality to consider.

Then again, it's you same assholes that thought that dumping raw sewage into the ocean was a good idea (it's huge, what harm could we do!), resulting in miles of barren coastline.

The latest UN conference was on 'climate change', throwing even more suspicion on the entire affair.

Holy shit. You've got to be fucking kidding me. You conservative jerks twist the debate, managing to redefine "global warming" as "climate change" in the media, and then you use that exact fucking label to try and discredit valid science. Un-fucking-believable.

As for the rest, it's the usual global warming denialist bullshit. You'll believe what you want to believe, and no fact or argument will convince you otherwise. It's a damn shame, really... you seem like you might be a relatively intelligent individual, if not for your unshakable biases and prejudices. Well, that and your adolescent love affair with unregulated capitalism.

Re:It's called reinventing the...

[shilly]

You've not read the tech spec. There's bugger all point in having someone trained in sailing to run this system. It's not a sail, it's a computer-controlled kite. It doesn't depend on human input for use. If you're an officer on a cargo ship, you might like to spend some time looking at the actual details of the system before dismissing it so lightly.

Re:I worked on this during

[DeusExCalamus]

Kindly mod parent down as spam/troll please.

I predict...

[GregPK]

That Sail manufactures will all be getting a piece of this. It takes a lot of money to make a good long lasting sail. Not to mention keeping it in good repair overtime. Ocean air and the Sun aren't exactly friendly to Quality Sailing materials that are used on a daily basis.

Re:I predict...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ocean air and the Sun aren't exactly friendly to Quality Sailing materials that are used on a daily basis.

Oh well, that would probably kill the first thing I thought of adding to these kites and to sails, the paintable solar cells some have been working on.

Re:I predict...

[Firethorn]

Getting it up higher might help with the ocean air part a bit. Maybe they have some modern materials that can take the sun better.

Still, $1.6k saved a day could pay for quite a bit of maintenance.

How long to sails normally last under heavy usage?

Re:I predict...

[nadaou]

> How long to sails normally last under heavy usage?

to completely pull numbers out of thin air, from my experience with sailmaking I would expect:

* first few voyages, while fine tuning deployment & control software:
    burst a few kites per trip

* until cut is right and the kite flutters:
    tatter itself in 20-40 days use

* long term get the design right so just sun + wear and tear damage:
    6-24 months life per kite?

* it could take 5-10 years to perfect the kite design, by which time the material science will have changed enough to redefine the problem (see the ongoing windsurfer sail design (r)evolutions over the last 20+ years. it just doesn't slow down)

* the kite is probably easily replaceable as sea by the underpaid Filipino and Russian crew and would cost $10-50k.

* the control unit and deck hardware would the the expensive bits. for the first 5 years while they refine the design I would expect the deck fittings to only last 6-24 months before needing some sort of repair- the forces are huge and the slightest abrasion will chew itself through thick 316 stainless steel in no time.

Re:I predict...

[Firethorn]

* it could take 5-10 years to perfect the kite design, by which time the material science will have changed enough to redefine the problem (see the ongoing windsurfer sail design (r)evolutions over the last 20+ years. it just doesn't slow down)

By the same token, couldn't this add years to the lifespan from the start, due to using newer materials and computer aided design and testing?

I mean, the newest planes were designed entirely on computers, to include all sorts of simulations.

Re:I predict...

[GregPK]

I'm thinking, that they use two different kites. They use a light one to go up to the high hieghts of wind. Then they use the lighter one to work with a pulley system of some sort to pull the heavy kite up into the windy hieghts so they aren't fumbling around for two hours going nowhere trying to get this super heavy long lasting sail in the air. Once you got the heavy sail in the air pull the lighter kite down and store it in a place where it can dry out.

in other news

[Andreas Schaefer]

german scientists improve fuel consumption in cars by 60% using tiny horses for initial acceleration.
film at 11.

Everything old is new again

[mcrbids]

Sometimes, it seems, there are no new ideas. As others have said, what we have here is a glorified sail. Nothing wrong with that, but as fossil fuels become more expensive, we'll find more and more "old tech" make a comeback.

The biggest deal in alternative energy right now is the windmill, which have been used for what, 1,200 years? Now we have a (gasp!) sailing ship! Pretty soon we'll go back to using the electric car which was very popular in the early days of the automobile.

No, basic technologies are not new - what's new are refinements. For example, Linux is a re-implementation of a 35 year old Operating System having the chief innovation of a license change. I'm not knocking the quality that Linus has put into the Linux kernel, but Linux is written to be POSIX compliant, so while drivers are nice, Linux is basically no different than any other UNIX but for the license difference.

Innovation can come from some incredibly low-tech, unlikely places. For example, this guy has won numerous awards for sticking a pot inside a pot and filling the middle with wet sand - managing to solve a serious problem in Africa for low-cost refrigeration.

I guess what it comes down to is this: Technology is valuable when it works, not when it's complex. There's lots of very, very, very simple technology that nonetheless works very, very, very well.

Re:Everything old is new again

[foobsr]

Technology is valuable when it works, not when it's complex.

Maybe this is correlated with design objectives targetting 'social impact' (even if only unintentionally) while trying to optimize broad distribution of benefit instead of 'wealth-creation'.

Maybe the difference is whether technology is to support convergence towards trees vs. complete graphs.

CC.

Re:Everything old is new again

[evilviper]

Sometimes, it seems, there are no new ideas. As others have said, what we have here is a glorified sail.

Not really. It might be closer to a windmill than a sail... The idea of using the wind for power might be millions of years old, but new ways that do it several orders of magnitude more efficiently, and in significantly different ways, aren't the same tech by any stretch of the imagination.

This is a lot closer to a kite or a parachute. The ONLY similarity is has with a sail is that it happens to be powering a boat in this case. Far more differences than similarities, and I don't hear anyone complaining that sailing ships were just rip-offs of kites...

Eliminating the huge weight, manpower, and most of the wear that was inherent with sails makes this a vastly different product that could well have been a revolution in naval technology (exploration, trade, warfare, etc.) if it was around in the 16th century.

With wind turbines and electric cars you have a point that they aren't really new inventions, but they certainly have been VASTLY refined. In other words, a rocket that can fly to the moon and back isn't an over-sized bit of fireworks, but it's easy to oversimplify anything until it sounds trivial... Hey, a 3GHz dual-core computer is just a bunch of electric switches, and they had those in the 1800s.

This 'kite', however, is decidedly new, by any reasonable metric, and I look forward to seeing if it's actually practical for commercial use on a large scale.

Re:Everything old is new again

[jovius]

Sometimes, it seems, there are no new ideas. As others have said, what we have here is a glorified sail. Nothing wrong with that, but as fossil fuels become more expensive, we'll find more and more "old tech" make a comeback.
The industrial revolution and the age of enlightenment led us to overconsumption. Defoe's Crusoe is an exemplary of a human being getting in control with the nature - everything is possible with ingenuity and sufficient resources. Sadly the western societies especially have since declined to self-worship rather than co-operation, because we generally are weak before our needs and desires. Combined with individual freedoms the nature was lost into artificiality, and many aligned with a mechanical world-view of self-preservation at all cost, and for profit. It's interesting how the global awareness has been on the rise recently, but it's good to keep in mind that this wouldn't necessarily happen if there wasn't need for it financially. Scarce resources show us that our lifes (businesses) are and can be finite, and it would be optimal to be more balanced to spend the time here fruitfully or profitably. In that sense the trend you have observed is a natural way of seeking harmony that was lost, although the idealized modern view of the historical times tends to forgot the sorrowful and filthy side of the past reality. Maybe we are more mature now, however?

Re:Everything old is new again

[smittyoneeach]

You seem to imply that 'social impact' may be superior to 'wealth-creation' among the list of possible motives.
If that's the implication, could you lay out an objective proof as to why?
This is a sincere question.

Re:Everything old is new again

[joto]

Not really. It might be closer to a windmill than a sail... The idea of using the wind for power might be millions of years old, but new ways that do it several orders of magnitude more efficiently, and in significantly different ways, aren't the same tech by any stretch of the imagination.

Several orders of magnitude more efficient? That sounds very unlikely, given that sailing technology is pretty competitive these days, with competitions like Americas cup where investors are practically standing in line to pour money into new and experimental designs.

A kite has the advantage of catching air at a somewhat higher altitude, on the other hand, it has the disadvantage of not working at all in lower wind, higher risk of collision with other kite-driven boats, and so on...

But the main advantage of a kite is that it can be retrofitted to boats not specifically designed for it (although they still need a good keel). If you were to start from scratch in designing a new sailing ship, I find it very likely that it would still have a mast and sails, rather than a kite. In any case, even with a mast, you can still use a kite.

Re:Everything old is new again

[yanboss]

Advantages of a kite:
Wind at higher altitude is more consistent and stronger. Part of the reason americas cup boats have such tall high aspect sails

A kite flies back and forth through the air experiencing an increased wind speed compared to static sail

The center of effort for the force from the kite can be placed very low on the boat so that heeling moment is minimised. So no need for a deep keel or long heavy fragile mast.

With the kite retracted the wind propulsion system is hidden away. So reduced windage when travelling against the wind and no exposed parts in storms.

BMW oracle experimented with a kite instead of a spinnaker but rule restrictions within the americas cup make it hard to work with (Cant fly higher than the mast head, has to be single skin, only 3 control lines). So it was rule restrictions rather than the inherent principle of a kite that excludes it from the americas cup.

Re:Everything old is new again

[thebdj]

but Linux is written to be POSIX compliant, so while drivers are nice, Linux is basically no different than any other UNIX but for the license difference Are you saying POSIX compliance makes an operating system "UNIX"? If so, using that argument, Windows NT is like any other UNIX? Somehow I think people would disagree.

Re:Everything old is new again

[foobsr]

'social impact' may be superior to 'wealth-creation'

Quite unclear, for sure, since trying to increase the benefit of all also creates 'wealth'.
I wanted to rule out 'creation of wealth in a hand of a few' (a high gini-coefficient). If you target the latter, you, IMHO, end up with an inflexible, vulnerable system with a low stability.

On a very broad scale, thus necessarily fuzzy, a ranking of systems according to the probability that they include 'social impact' in evaluations might be:
'communism (as instantiated henceforth)' — tree-like flow of power by (normative) rules;
'capitalism' — tree-like flow of power materialized as money (underlying rules are normative as well, but this is hidden better);
'anarchy'— networked (complete-graph as a model) flow of information useful to create local optima according to local needs.

Targeting social impact in the first place also again transforms technological/scientific development into a human endeavour, as opposed to a technical/material one if you only look at ROI.

objective proof

There is no such thing outside maths, all science being empirical and the humanities not having switched to empirics too may be rated normative, IMHO.

But you may probably collect evidence by looking at existing systems, their ability to sustain equilibrium (which is one of the targets I rate important) as well as the underlying causes. The most obvious system is 'earth' (yes, there are subsystems that follow power(disambiguation: exp) laws, but the interconnectedness seems to be impressive. Here (/.), the Internet comes to mind (which, in a second stage, probably was designed with 'social impact' in mind (think 'global village'), with consequences like FOSS, p2p, on a smaller scale, 'instant mobs', consumer action ... . In contrast, you may look at 'optimized agriculture', highly vulnerable and not sustainable (e.g. GM-crops). Just examples.

I might point out that your call for 'objective proof', to me, is just an indicator that some 'human' aspects (of evolution), i.e. intuition and intention besides thinking, have been lost somewhere on the track.

Hopefully, this makes my perceptions (intentionally avoiding 'thoughts') a little more transparent.

CC.

Re:Everything old is new again

[Kadin2048]

although the idealized modern view of the historical times tends to forgot the sorrowful and filthy side of the past reality. Maybe we are more mature now, however?

That's putting it lightly. Until very recently, all but a very small elite in most places lived in squalor and physical discomfort, probably sick (by modern standards) most of the time, either freezing cold or sweating hot, living and dying without venturing much further than you could see today from a moderately-tall building. And based on the quantities of alcohol consumed, they were probably half in the bag most of the time.

With the possible exception of being perennially wasted (and even that would get old after a while), none of that seems particularly pleasant. We can talk about getting back to basics and in "harmony" and all this other trash, but there's nothing stopping modern people from living the way their ancestors did only two or three centuries ago. Very, very few people would want to, I think; myself included.

People didn't live like Robinson Crusoe. (And that aside, it's a pretty weird example to cite -- the whole point of Crusoe is that he's a Western European who tames nature with his body and mind, and manages to create 'civilization' where none exists from whole cloth. It's very much man-vs-nature in the standard Imperialist mode; hardly "harmony.") Real pre-technological life, particularly in tropical or desert climes, is pretty rough. And based on the only even arguably objective evidence we have available -- people's preferences over time -- once people are exposed to technology, they choose to use it. You see those choices happen over and over: children grow up, they have a choice between two cultures, and they pick one. It's a rare group that can hold out and make a low-technology lifestyle attractive enough to ensure their own preservation as a community (e.g. the Amish).

It's easy to speculate about the nobleness of pre-technological life and getting 'back to nature' in various forms, when you're sitting at the pinnacle of 6,000+ years of development. But the key to remember is that, every step of the way, people have chosen to adopt technology because it offered them a life that they thought was better than what they had already. I don't really see much reason to second-guess that process.

Re:Everything old is new again

[Anonymous Coward]

>> several orders of magnitude more efficiently

100x more efficiently than a sailboat?

>> This is a lot closer to a... parachute.

Did they drop the ship out of a plane?

Re:Everything old is new again

[ArsonSmith]

Well, partially true. NT did implement the small library section of the POSIX standard, but it is not 100% POSIX compliant.

Re:Everything old is new again

[chgros]

that could well have been a revolution in naval technology (exploration, trade, warfare, etc.) if it was around in the 16th century.
Especially if they had had the computers that this design requires ;)

Re:Everything old is new again

[Firethorn]

It's a rare group that can hold out and make a low-technology lifestyle attractive enough to ensure their own preservation as a community (e.g. the Amish).

And the Amish mostly do that by making it an all or nothing affair; IE you're raised to believe that family is pretty much all important, all through their life.

But when you become an adult, you have to make a decision: Either follow the rules about technology and everything else, or be cut off completely from family and the community of your youth.

Even so, even with larger family sizes, the Amish remains small enough to be an oddity.

Re:Everything old is new again

[joto]

I didn't object to kites being useful, or even "best" in certain situations. I did object to them being "several orders of magnitude more efficient", as modern sails are already pretty close to the theoretical maximum (and certainly not several orders of magnitude away from it). What you choose depends on a lot of factors, such as how much you want to invest up front, how much you want to pay for maintenance, reliability, practicality, performance, ease of use, legality, contest rules, etc...

Anyway, if they only planned to use the kite for a spinnaker, they are not truly experimenting with dropping sails. A spinnaker is merely a big garbage bag that needs to occupy the largest possible area, used when you're travelling almost exactly the same direction as the wind. Kites can be used to sail against the wind the same way (real) sails can (just ask any kiteboarder).

"Reduced windage when travelling against the wind" is a misnomer, as the "windage" is what propulses the boat forwards.

And while flying the kite back and forwards may increase wind speed at the kite, it will not drag the boat any faster through the water. There is an optimal position and adjustment of the kite (depending on where the wind is blowing compared to your direction), and that's where you put the kite. Flying it back and forwards merely removes the kite from the optimal position (and increases wear and tear).

Re:Everything old is new again

[smittyoneeach]

Thank you for a thoughtful response.
While I can imagine a more altruistic world through a religious eye, the problem I have with frequently with entities implementing 'social impact' is that their focus is stated in acute terms; "Gotta offer hurricane relief", but quickly shifts focus to chronic; "The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy"
Bureaucratic systems, unlike well engineered physical ones, tend to lack good negative feedback loops, as too many people discover power within inefficiency.
Subjective opinion:
Compensating systems with the goal of equilibrium at all costs can stifle what I'll call the human spirit. The US Constitution seems more bent on avoiding tyrrany, which, while appearing to work these 230+ years, may or may not be optimal.

Re:Everything old is new again

[foobsr]

Bureaucratic systems, unlike well engineered physical ones, tend to lack good negative feedback loops, as too many people discover power within inefficiency.

Again what I would call a 'tree-like' structure (also, perhaps, a cause for long lead times before and after the fact).

There is no reason that (networks of) humans can not be 'social engineered' (in fact society is, IMHO); equally, in a network of small enough nodes that rely on each others resources, feedback must emerge if not pre-designed.

stifle what I'll call the human spirit

Now that this is explicitly the 'opinion'-section, I might add that I have experienced (and I am still learning) that a more holistic approach to things (trying to attain equilibrium implies to look at the whole) does the contrary. In engineering terms this could perhaps be said like "the less energy you have to assign to maintenance of the structure of a system the more you can invest into (the improvement of) its dynamics".

CC.

Re:Everything old is new again

[smittyoneeach]

There is no reason that (networks of) humans can not be 'social engineered' (in fact society is, IMHO); equally, in a network of small enough nodes that rely on each others resources, feedback must emerge if not pre-designed.

This is interesting, but I think there may be some fundamental disagreement between us on the nature of the human spirit.
I've read about half of http://www.amazon.com/Amish-Society-John-Hostetler/dp/0801844428/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198024702&sr=1-3 which is about the best example of self-social-engineering I can think of. I suppose monestaries would also count, for all they tend to lack any organic reproduction capability. You can talk about the military (I have a few years of active duty to my credit), but it's a relatively superficial experience compared to being Amish or a monk.
Having said all that, my experience has been that there is an "entropy of the human soul" that is intrinsic, and requires significant control effort to repress. The Amish are born into a relatively inflexible social order; monks meditate their way out of it. The military takes a relatively thin slice of life and has varying degrees of success.
Scalability is an issue. Monestaries and the Amish, scaled up to the size of the US military, would shake apart--people just don't scale.
Hence the fairly universal historical (AFAIK) case that Communist governments have decayed into authoritarian systems and frequently collapsed--these utopian visions don't model the human spirit effectively.
Where there is success (monestaries and the Amish) they are small, and have an overarching religious component.

Re:Everything old is new again

[foobsr]

This is interesting, but I think there may be some fundamental disagreement between us on the nature of the human spirit.

There must be some optimism hidden deep inside me :)

Where there is success (monestaries and the Amish) they are small, and have an overarching religious component

I am with you there. Though, I still believe that time will force an overhaul on the currently ubiquitous model of society.

CC.

Re:Everything old is new again

[smittyoneeach]

There was a joke sig here on /. some while back.
"Under capitalism, man oppresses man. Under communism, it's the other way around."
Or, as Rush put it:
"The more that things change/The more they stay the same."
I, for one, read the Book of Ecclesiastes through occasionally, just to keep the perspective focused.
Technology is a variable, the human spirit is a constant.

Re:Everything old is new again

[foobsr]

sig

I always found it hard to label complex entities, but 'my model' does not fit in neither category. Call it 'taoist cybernetism' and think of 'The Dispossessed' by Ursula K. LeGuin (you may include elements of a kibbutz).

change

It seems the quote is attributed to Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr :(

Book of Ecclesiastes

Can not say much here, as I am a totally blank sheet.

Technology is a variable, the human spirit is a constant.

Hmm, cross-cultural studies tell otherwise, a striking example is given by the Pirahã people, IMHO.

CC.

Re:Everything old is new again

[jovius]

People didn't live like Robinson Crusoe. (And that aside, it's a pretty weird example to cite -- the whole point of Crusoe is that he's a Western European who tames nature with his body and mind, and manages to create 'civilization' where none exists from whole cloth. It's very much man-vs-nature in the standard Imperialist mode; hardly "harmony.") That was the point why I cited it. I agree with you with everything you said.

Re:Everything old is new again

[smittyoneeach]

>Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr
Yeah, should have researched that one.

Re:Everything old is new again

[Kadin2048]

Mea culpa, in that case. Glad we're on the same page.

Let's just hope

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's just hope the wind blows favourably 20% of the time otherwise...

Wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. That's quick - we just discussed it last month and they have already done it?! It's amazing what the modern man is capable of.

Re:Wow.

[kryten_nl]

Wow. That's quick - we just discussed it last month and they have already done it?! It's amazing what the modern man is capable of. I propose daily stories and discussions on:
- Cold fusion based power plants
- Jet-packs
- Mars terra forming and subsequent colonization
- FTL travel
and Duke Nukem Forever

Get off my lawn!

[Lalo Martins]

What, upgrading ships from combustion engines to sail? You kids and your newfangled fancy stuff! Next thing you'll be wanting oars!

Re:Get off my lawn!

[MichaelSmith]

Lets all hear it for those pioneering kite surfers who risk life and limb day in and day out to prove the concept behind this totally novel idea.

I predict an increase in the number of yuppies in the crews of ocean going ships.

not a great value

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow the sail only costs $725,000, and they say it will save about $1600 a day? Not so enticing. Also what happens in bad weather, seems like more of a pain that savings.

Re:not a great value

[vidarh]

Some remedial math: $725,000 / $1600 = 453.125. A technology which repays itself in about 15 months is very much worthwhile. It means you get 100% return on investment in two and half years. Even if the sail needs complete replacement every 2-3 years, or the equivalent in maintenance costs, it'd still be a good investment.

Re:not a great value

[ColaMan]

How long do you think the life of an average cargo ship is?

$725,000 / $1600 per day gives about 450 days before break-even.

Ships have a useful life of 20 to 30 years, so in the end, you wind up about 12 or 13 million ahead, even factoring in a total replacement at mid-life. And this rough calculation is just at (presumably) todays oil prices - when oil is double the price, you're now saving $3200/day and so on.

Plenty of scope for some serious cost savings.

Re:not a great value

[ultrafunkula]

That's not too bad. Break even after about 450 days, assuming that there aren't other maintenance costs involved.

Re:not a great value

[Anonymous Coward]

A useful life of 50 years is more like it. 20-30 years for the first owner, usually. Another interesting comparison is the rule of thumb with modern sailboats - during its lifespan it will wear out a dozen of sail setups.

Re:not a great value

[jsoderba]

Ships are not under way all the time, wind conditions are not always favorable, and the actual kite will certainly not last 10 years.

Re:not a great value

[octal666]

I really doubt that the kite survives without manteinance or replacing for 20 to 30 years.

Re:not a great value

[gekkakitsune]

They actually hope to get a lifespan of 1 year out of the kite. (spiegel.de)

Re:not a great value

[CastrTroy]

Yeah, and for all that trouble, you've saved about .0001% on the operation costs of your boat. Ok, maybe it's not that little, but let's think about this. How much does it cost to run a cargo ship for a day, including crew, fuel, fuel for crew (aka food), depreciation and maintenance of ship, and all the other costs of running a ship. Now lets add to that the cost of a sail, and the increased crew necessary to maintain and deploy such a sail, and think about how long it will take before you see any noticeable gains.

Re:not a great value

[OwnedByTwoCats]

If the kite only lasts 1 year, it is a problem (at today's cost of oil). It doesn't pay for itself before it wears out... unless the kite fabric is a small fraction of the installed system's $715,000

Re:not a great value

[fotbr]

Commercial ships are under way a surprising amount of time -- they're docked only long enough to unload/load.

Re:not a great value

[geekoid]

"eah, and for all that trouble, you've saved about .0001% on the operation costs of your boat"
You are too ignorant to talk on this subject. Stop it.

Think about this:
If the trials are successfull. AKA about 1600 a day in saving, the shipping industry is ready to jump on it.

So we can debate about it's plus and minuses, but the real experts want it and say it will be a cost savings.
I have a tiny bit of insight into the costs to run a ship based on some global logistics work I did a few years ago.

Re:not a great value

[Molochi]

That was my thought too. While I'm sure the actual sail is expensive I'd imagine the computer controlled part is much much more expensive.

Re:not a great value

[$random_var]

Of course, the $1600/day is in ideal wind conditions. But the great thing about alternative energy is we can just sit back and wait for petroleum to get more expensive, and suddenly the alternative energy technology has become that much more desirable.

Re:not a great value

[$random_var]

Your comparison of the cost savings of the kite to a percentage of the operation costs of the boat is disingenuous. If this kite is a clear money-saver, it will eventually be implemented, whether it saves 10% or 0.1% You don't get to be an international shipping company by ignoring technological improvements in efficiency, you get gobbled up by the nimbler companies who have implemented 20 different things which save them 0.5% and suddenly they're operating at a noticeably greater efficiency.

Re:not a great value

[deek]

If the kite only lasts 1 year, it is a problem (at today's cost of oil). It doesn't pay for itself before it wears out... unless the kite fabric is a small fraction of the installed system's $715,000

I'd imagine that the installation and equipment would make up the bulk of the initial cost. Can you really see a piece of kite material costing more than $10,000? It'd have to be gold thread laced.

Re:not a great value

[MightyYar]

Don't you think that the people dropping $750,000 on one of these systems have, maybe, just a little more experience in shipping than you do? Won't you give their decision the benefit of doubt?

Am I the only one who feels

[gzur]

that this sounds like something out of Snow Crash?

Re:Am I the only one who feels

[Fex303]

Well, it beats most news stories these days, which sound they're out of George Orwell's 1984.

Actually the sooner we get to a Snow Crash-like existence, the better. (Though I'd still prefer the Diamond Age.)

Never mind ships, what about cars?

[steevc]

Maybe it's time to revive this old idea

http://www.duntemann.com/charvolant.jpg

Re:Never mind ships, what about cars?

[mindwhip]

It seems someone already has.. but not for transport... :)

<URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kite_buggy>

So

[Anonymous Coward]

You know winds do die eventually. How long did the trip take? Oh 200 days because there was no wind half the time so we floated inthe middle of the ocean.

What is "kite"?

[AlgorithMan]

I'm not a native english speaker and don't know this word, and don't ask what hillarious translations dict.leo.org offers... (dragons, bad cheques, the star constellation "Bootes",...)

I'm pretty sure none of them is the right translation...
thanks for your help :-)

Re:What is "kite"?

[DeeQ]

a Kite is a toy that is attached to a string and flys in the air.

Re:What is "kite"?

[youthoftoday]

there is no better universal translator than google images: http://images.google.com/images?q=kite

Re:What is "kite"?

[nmg196]

Read the article and watch the video and you'll soon find out :)

Re:What is "kite"?

[owlnation]

Dragon is the correct translation.

z.B. der Drachen (Fluggerät)

Re:What is "kite"?

[nagora]

I'm not a native english speaker and don't know this word,

Do you know what the word "dictionary" means?

TWW

Re:What is "kite"?

[AlgorithMan]

Do you know what the word "dictionary" means?

As I saied, I looked it up and didn't think any of the words there were the right translation...
fortunately other people were more helpful, than you, so now I know that one of the words was the right translation after all...

Re:What is "kite"?

[nagora]

As I said, I looked it up and didn't think any of the words there were the right translation...

But did you actually look it up in a dictionary? It seems bizarre that you tried a couple of websites rather than something specifically designed to explain words to people who don't know them.

TWW

Hope for humanity...

[youthoftoday]

For a second there -- just for a second -- I thought there was some hope for humanity. Then I saw what it was carrying in those pictures.

Re:Hope for humanity...

[SanguineV]

Nothing says hope for humanity like a wind assisted ship carrying windmills (presumably for power generation)?

Re:Hope for humanity...

[Falladir]

Thanks, I was wondering what they were. They looked kind of like weapons to me too, but I thought they were too long and graceful (and probably fragile) to be missiles or torpedos or rockets.

Re:Hope for humanity...

[Chris Burke]

Those aren't the same ship.

Great start

[Danny3xd]

This is a great start but not the whole answer. The position of the kite allows it to only work with the wind coming from abaft of beam. (from behind)Also creating a "lee-helm", driving her nose down wind. To get the 20% fuel savings (I am guessing closer to 15%, from experience) 50% of the time, a second kite would be needed amidships. The wind would in fact be much stronger at altitude, But with little to block it 100 feet above sea level, I believe a schooner rig would be as productive, more often. "Down-wind" is not the best point of sail. "Close-hauled" is. Where the wind comes from either side of the bow. Creates an airplane wing effect that sucks ship forward. (Positive to negative) With kite alone, the ship would lose a lot of energy trying to stay on course due to rudder angle. Under perfect conditions, this will work great. Just not often. I am retired from the U.S. Merchant Marines and have worked and sailed on many tankers and schooners. I do believe we tossed sail aside to quickly. Amazing, free and renewable energy.

Re:Great start

[kryten_nl]

It's a steerable airfoil kite (like in kite-surfing) the power is generated by making figures of eight, roughly in the point you want to be pulled to. They've developed a nice automated pilot for controlling the kite. In this way the kite can deliver power in any direction that has a down-wind component. (You are right in stating that it is not as effective in all directions.)

Re:Great start

[popeyethesailorman]

"Down-wind" is not the best point of sail. "Close-hauled" is. Nope. A beam-reach, or perpendicular to the apparent wind, is the best point of sail. Close hauled is 2nd best. Down-wind is the least effective.

Re:Great start

[Danny3xd]

"Nope. A beam-reach, or perpendicular to the apparent wind, is the best point of sail. Close hauled is 2nd best. Down-wind is the least effective." Popeye, you are correct. Thank you.

Re:Great start

[shilly]

Are you sure that the principles that applying to sails apply to kites of this type? They appear to be quite different tech.

Re:Great start

[Danny3xd]

"Are you sure that the principles that applying to sails apply to kites of this type? They appear to be quite different tech." Absolutely shilly. I was trying to say (and failed) was that both (sail and kite) working in conjunction would be the best of both worlds of fuel savings. The kite is a great advance.

Re:Great start

[malonetdi]

It's much more feasible for shipping companies to tie kites to existing cargo ships, instead of overhauling them (no small feat) or replacing them with sailboats. Many ships also have stacks of cargo on top of them, which will get in the way of large sails.

Every once in a while, I go to a popular windsports beach and I see kitesurfers roll up their kites into a small backpack and simply walk away with a small kiteboard in their other arm, while windsurfers (sails) have to carry cumbersome parts to their minivan.

Regardless of whether or not sails are more efficient than kites, I am pleased to see shipping companies move towards clean, renewable energy.

Interestingly, kite surfers are able to move faster, both downwind AND upwind, than windsurfers (sails). The upward lift of kites help reduce friction in the ship's hull, which means even if they are heading upwind they still will see considerable fuel savings. Kites can be designed to have maximum vertical lift vs. horizontal pull or vice-versa. Fuel savings do not derive entirely from forward pulls. Sails can only drag ships forward.

The kites need less surface area than sails for power/lift. The surface size differences may not matter much to 170lbs recreational surfers, but it might mean something to a 10,000 tonne ship.

Re:Great start

[OwnedByTwoCats]

There are exceptions.

Paul McCready (of Gossamer Condor and Gossamer Albatross fame) mentioned in a talk I got to see that he had created a wind-driven water craft that could carry a person and make double the wind speed... directly upwind. Essentially a turbine driving a propeller, and the craft in general being a hydrofoil.

Re:Great start

[fprintf]

I couldn't wait to log in and make this same correction. Thanks Popeye.

On some sailing vessels "close hauled" is the most efficient, but only on vessels that sail faster than the wind, use apparent wind for most of their speed, and where "close hauled" describes how closely the sail is sheeted in, not absolute versus the wind direction. Windsurfers are a good example of a sailing vessel that sails fastest on a reach or broad-reach, but the apparent wind after it gets moving moves to a close hauled or close reach position, requiring the sailor to sheet in accordingly. But you would never see a tanker or large boat sailing in this fashion.

Re:Great start

[mzs]

With a sailboat the lee helm is cased by one side of the boat being slightly under the other. This happens because the sail on the mast acts as a long lever. This will not happen in this kite system. In fact it may help to pull the bow up.

Re:Great start

[OwnedByTwoCats]

Correction: Paul MacCready.

Re:Great start

[fprintf]

Re: your comments on kites being faster than windsurfers, you cannot make this claim without citing some sources. The current world record for a sail powered vessel is held by a windsurfer, after being held by a multi-hull for a few years, 48.7 knots.

The current kite sailing record is 47.92 knots according to http://www.sailspeedrecords.com/content/view/18/20/. The current outright speed record over 500 metres is held by Finian Maynard on a windsurfer, according to http://www.sailspeedrecords.com/content/view/14/16/

Regardless, I think your comment was specifically made for upwind *and* downwind sailing and I am really interested in learning more about these kites. Generally speaking I think windsurfers can get closer to the wind, though not nearly as close as a proper sailboat with a keel. I know of some races where it is winner-take-all for all types of sailing vessels, including kites and windsurfers, and there is a great variation in performance depending on the wind direction, speed and course layout. I not found anything that says a kite can beat a formula board around a course, but with recent advances in both sports I'd love to be surprised!

p.s. check out the online videos for kite crashes. They can be quite dangerous, possibly more than windsurfing was when it first started out. They are not kind to untutored newbies apparently.

Re:Great start

[Anonymous Coward]

Using a aerofoil kite solves most of the problems you have imagined. The 'lee-helm' issue is easily solved by a movable tow point (as they have dome at Skysails). The kite can acutally contribute positively to the stability and tracking of the ship.

Also, the kite certainly isn't directly downwind from the ship! It is a foil shape, just like a sail, and practically all of the power generated comes from the wing shape, but the surface area exposed to wind. Modern powerkites, the grandfathers of the SkySail design, fly at 70-80 degrees to the side of downwind direction. In fact going directly downwinds is the hardest direction under kite power, since you risk overtaking the kite. "Close-hauled" is the optimal direction, and going upwinds (to an angle of 30 degrees of so) using a foil kite is quite doable.

I highly recommend playing around with a powerkite at least once - especially for anyone with sailing experience.

Re:Great start

[popeyethesailorman]

You are absolutely right - it depends. In general, a sailing vessel's polar diagram predicts the fastest point of sail for any given wind speed. For example, with 8 knots of breeze, a Catalina 34 is fastest with the wind 60 degrees off the bow, but in a 20 knot blow she's fastest at 75 degrees apparent. While other boats will vary, iceboats are an extreme example, traveling so fast as to shift the apparent wind forward even when heading "down wind." I'm not sure how applicable any of this is to the kite-powered tanker. I was unimpressed by the video - the kite expended much of it's energy going side to side. Even when mostly ahead, the angle was so high as to exert more of a vertical lifting vector than forward thrust. But any little bit helps, I suppose, especially when you can take you time crossing large expanses of water.

We're doing it wrong

[quokkapox]

We (humanity) will face far more serious problems in this century, than suboptimal efficiency in our use of fossil fuels.

Hauling vast quantities of cargo around the world simply to exploit cheaper labor elsewhere, while consuming vast quantities of nonrenewable resources, is not sustainable.

We need to solve the energy problem NOW. We need to learn how to extract most of our energy from renewable resources (solar, wind, tidal [and nuclear as a stopgap]), and then work out the bioengineering we will need to regulate the atmosphere, prevent undesirable climate change, and produce additional energy and the materials for 21st century manufacturing.

The information technology revolution of the past few decades (at the expense of the environment) is what will have made all of that possible.

Strapping kites onto oil tankers will only help perpetuate the outdated, unsustainable economies we rely on today. Developing technologies that save the shipping company $1600/day is a waste of time and effort.

The goal should be, 20 years from now, that we don't need oil tankers anymore.

Then we can work on undoing the environmental damage caused by the industrial and information revolutions, and get started fixing the rest of our social problems.

Re:We're doing it wrong

[toppavak]

Strapping kites onto oil tankers will only help perpetuate the outdated, unsustainable economies we rely on today. Developing technologies that save the shipping company $1600/day is a waste of time and effort. I think I see what you're getting at here, but it seems to me that if the technology were applied to other sea-faring craft such as cargo ships or passenger ferries it could have the same effect. Or if not merely fuel-saving, then it could at least lower power consumption requirements such that a weaker propulsion mechanism based on an alternative energy source would suffice for transportation. I believe that the application of the kite towards oil tankers doesn't mean that it is only applicable to oil tankers. There's a huge number of ships in the world's waters that aren't oil tankers.

Re:We're doing it wrong

[kryten_nl]

Why you responded to my post, is beyond me. You certainly make a valid point, but you are using the wrong system boundaries. You're right that kites and the small horse used for the acceleration of sports cars (proposed below) do not solve the worlds problems. Indeed a paradigm shift is needed in order to fully solve our long term problems. We do not need to make transportation cheaper, we need to reduce transportation altogether.

Developing technologies that save the shipping company $1600/day is a waste of time and effort. You fail to notice that the effort concerned with developing and marketing such a kite are not interchangeable with the efforts to find clean and reusable local power generation methods. Do you really think that the founders of the company in question (SkySails GmbH.), could have contributed anything on the scale you are suggesting? The funding they received from local and European governments might be contributed to the uses you describe, but in comparison with fusion research it would still be a drop on a hot plate. SkySails was funded for 10% by public institutions (related to governments in one way or another) of which the EU contributed EUR 1.200.000. I'll leave the comparison with fusion research up to your friend Google.

Re:We're doing it wrong

[Rogerborg]

Hello. Do you know any actual humans? Here's something to ponder: economic interdependance and global trade is the most effective way to prevent war. If you stop trading, then your neighbour may decide to just come and take your resources.

Re:We're doing it wrong

[Teancum]

Prophesying the end of the modern world is something so old that you can find contemporaries of Plato and Aristotle who also did the very same thing. This isn't really all that new.

I suppose that some of those predicting the end of the Roman Empire were correct.... but it took several hundred years to happen. In that case, I suppose it gave legitimacy to those doom and gloom experts too.

We need to solve the energy problem NOW. We need to learn how to extract most of our energy from renewable resources (solar, wind, tidal [and nuclear as a stopgap]), and then work out the bioengineering we will need to regulate the atmosphere, prevent undesirable climate change, and produce additional energy and the materials for 21st century manufacturing.

We don't even have an energy problem. Indeed, all of the problems you are complaining about here is due to an over abundance of energy, not a lack of it. The fact that a doom sayer of the finality of the world like yourself can name off at least 4 different sources of energy that can be tapped and transformed into useful forms needed in modern industrial societies speaks volumes about how much effort is going into identifying useful energy forms.

The one huge problem, if there is one, about energy production is not how to extract the most out of the energy sources, but how to keep idiots from extracting too much from those energy sources at once. You may ask "Huh?" here, but pay close attention.... an explosion is just the rapid release of large quantities of energy at once at a point source.... aka a "bomb". And those kill people == very bad technology (to some people's thinking). This is the primary reason why nuclear energy (both fusion and fission) is the big evil bad guy, in spite of the fact that a nuclear future really is the best way to protect the environment in the long run. Not only for waste disposal, but even for mineral extraction costs (including intangible costs like environmental damage) nuclear fission is several orders of magnitude more efficient than petroleum and coal production techniques. For crying out loud, the typical coal electric generating plant produces far more toxic nuclear waste per kWh than a typical nuclear fission power plant. That is completely discounting silly things like CO2 that are now getting everybody's panties in a bunch. Fusion sources, if developed, are just the icing on the cake and make the argument undeniable.

The goal should be, 20 years from now, that we don't need oil tankers anymore.

This still doesn't solve the problem of how you can concentrate energy into a useful and portable source that can be tapped by ordinary people, for things like transportation and commerce. And mass transportation isn't always the solution, as there are legitimate reasons why many people don't want to be in a herd and travel the same route and to the same places that 90% of the rest of humanity is at.

FYI, did you know that when you throw a gallon of gasoline into your automobile, that at the refinery more energy was consumed in the processing of the gasoline than is available for you when you burn that fuel? Most of that processing energy comes in the form of electricity, which the oil refineries get from the same sources that power your light bulbs... but the point is that most fuel sources are just energy concentration mediums. And it is important to separate energy production from energy storage. Until you can develop an energy storage medium that is more efficient than petroleum, we will continue to require petroleum or something very similar for a very long time to come. Lithium ion technology looks very promising at the moment, as are some other interesting energy storage devices. Ethanol is, IMHO, a horribly wasteful energy storage form but at least it is a semi-viable replacement for common uses of petroleum if you absolutely must stop the black fluid mineral extraction processes. And most alcohols don't

Re:We're doing it wrong

[DancesWithBlowTorch]

We need to learn how to extract most of our energy from renewable resources (solar, wind, tidal [and nuclear as a stopgap])

Strapping kites onto oil tankers will only help perpetuate the outdated, unsustainable economies we rely on today. Developing technologies that save the shipping company $1600/day is a waste of time and effort.

While I agree that some "hybrid" (as in hybrid car) solutions are useless for tackling climate change, I have to disagree with you here. Ships have a similar problem as airplanes in that they can't be powered on batteries (too heavy) and thus cannot be powered by electricity produced elsewhere. Also, we don't want every merchant ship in the world to have a nuclear reactor on board, for obvious reasons. So sails are indeed an interesting idea, especially as they are proven to work, don't create any emissions and could, as the technology matures, be scaled up to supply much more of the needed thrust, maybe nearly all of it. This new system actually looks like it does exactly what you are asking for (extract energy from renewable sources).

Also, ships don't only carry oil. They bring us all the nice little cheap stuff from all over the world, allowing producers to exploit huge economies of scale (which, in the long run, might well benefit the environment, too). I don't think we will be able to live without them any time soon.

Re:We're doing it wrong

[maxume]

The cargo tanker leg almost invariably consumes less energy than the SUV to the store leg. The shipping industry isn't some giant problem.

Re:We're doing it wrong

[dintech]

Developing technologies that save the shipping company $1600/day is a waste of time and effort.

The goal should be, 20 years from now, that we don't need oil tankers anymore.

Which option do you think the shipping company (and backer) would prefer?

Re:We're doing it wrong

[gstoddart]

Also, ships don't only carry oil. They bring us all the nice little cheap stuff from all over the world, allowing producers to exploit huge economies of scale (which, in the long run, might well benefit the environment, too).

Eh? What's that you say? Ships don't carry oil? What the hell was the Exxon Valdez carrying? Crude oil definitely travels by ship -- big, honking tanker ships carrying huge amounts of oil are criss-crossing the globe as we speak.

I don't think we will be able to live without them any time soon.

Absolutely true -- we sure as heck can't fly the vast quantities of stuff which travels by ship throughout a year. There's just way too much of it.

Cheers

Re:We're doing it wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

We need to learn how to extract most of our energy from renewable resources

In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics.

Re:We're doing it wrong

[AndersOSU]

The trick is to research gunpowder first, so you can see the saltpeter on the map before your opponents can. If you don't have any in your territory, attack and acquire it before they can use it to make musketmen.

Re:We're doing it wrong

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Prophesying the end of the modern world is something so old that you can find contemporaries of Plato and Aristotle who also did the very same thing. This isn't really all that new.

While this is true, the fact that alarmists lived before me in no way speaks to whether I am right or wrong. Besides, the unspoken point you are making, without backing it up with evidence, is that those prophesies were somehow mere hysteria. However, sometimes societies changed because of the predictions, and sometimes circumstances changed in non-sustainable ways (discover a new contenient or two).

Re:We're doing it wrong

[dfenstrate]

Strapping kites onto oil tankers will only help perpetuate the outdated, unsustainable economies we rely on today. Developing technologies that save the shipping company $1600/day is a waste of time and effort

Hey, I'd like it if nuclear power took off in commercial vessels. Considering how much fuel those guys burn it would be worth it.

Your thought process precludes incremental improvements, and denigrating this while promoting windpower in the same comment is silly. It is windpower, and some windpower is better than no windpower, isn't it?

Or are you of the opinion that we should hold off on buidling more windmills until we can power THE ENTIRE NATION from windpower?

Progress is progress. The five steps foward this represents isn't the leap you want, but we've still moved forward.

Re:We're doing it wrong

[OwnedByTwoCats]

Huh? I don't get your objection.

A kite is a clean and reusable local power generation method. Power is generated on the ship, and delivered to the ship in the form of tension on the kite string.

Re:We're doing it wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

"Ships don't carry only oil." Since you missed it the first time.

Re:We're doing it wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, what we need are nuclear-powered oil tankers. I'd prefer a nuclear-powered car, actually, if I must have a personal vehicle instead of a PRT two blocks away.

Re:We're doing it wrong

[virmaior]

Well, okay, you're hysterical.

does that make you feel better?

and the nebulously-worded claim to the effect that "sometimes something happens" does not compensate for the suggestion that we abandon our infrastructure and kill much of the world's population. And that's not just prediction; it's reality. If you want to end a dependence on carbon fuel sources, i suggest that you move to the boonies and produce crops in such a way that they don't need fertilizer trucked in or a pumped water supply.

Re:We're doing it wrong

[Chris Burke]

The goal should be, 20 years from now, that we don't need oil tankers anymore.

And apparently developing practical, working examples of alternate forms of propulsion using renewable energy for the ships that we will need in 20 years has no part of that?

GTFO. You're talking about some completely insane timeline to completely change our energy infrastructure -- even if fusion power was perfected today, it would take more than 20 years for us to replace every coal plant on earth, and that still doesn't give us any magic solutions for transportation. And these guys come up with a way to right now make it both feasible and economical* to reduce the dependency on fossil fuels in commercial shipping by 20%, even as much as 50% soon, and that's not good enough?

Come on. It's perfectly obvious who has the better idea of how to actually attain your utopian future. And a "drop everything right now, pray we can replace it before our infrastructure collapses" isn't it. Practical, step-wise solutions that actually work are. Kudos to these guys, boo to "if it isn't a magic 100% solution it's nothing".

* And you had better not underestimate the importance of this. Unless you intend on imposing your plan using martial force (and i'd love to see your fossil-fuel-less army) then it's going to have to make sense for everyone to drop what they're using and switch to something cleaner. The rising price of fuel costs is doing a great job of creating the economic motivation, but it's guys like these who have to come up with the actual practical alternatives.

Re:We're doing it wrong

[Ralph Spoilsport]

You are so deeply in denial, with your head shoved so far up your butt, you think it looks like daylight.

EVERY SINGLE point you bring up is completely refuted here:

DIEOFF.ORG

RS

Re:We're doing it wrong

[dfenstrate]

I like your post overall, but this gave me pause:

FYI, did you know that when you throw a gallon of gasoline into your automobile, that at the refinery more energy was consumed in the processing of the gasoline than is available for you when you burn that fuel?

I know that's true for the entire process for certain kinds of sources- tar sands, for example, take a great deal of energy to make a useful fuel- but I was under the impression that it wasn't the case for the majority of fuel.

Even if it is the case, there are other byproducts of crude oil that can be burned for the heat required for the process- I have a hard time imagining it all comes from power plants.

Do you have a good source for your original statement?

Re:We're doing it wrong

[DougWebb]

...we don't want every merchant ship in the world to have a nuclear reactor on board, for obvious reasons.

Those reasons are...? You can't just throw a potential solution away and say that the reasons for rejection are obvious, without saying what they are.

I'll give you a start: it's probably too expensive right now. However, that'll change as diesel gets more scarce and expensive, and it will change as nuclear power, and the industry around it, gets more efficient. (Remember, there was a time when steam and oil engines were rarely used because they were more expensive and problematic than their predecessors.)

I don't think we'll ever see full-scale nuclear reactors of the type we have on naval ships in cargo and passenger ships. You need too many highly-trained crew members to maintain the things, and they probably generate far more power than cargo and passenger ships need. I also don't think we'll see current RTG technology on ships; a hunk of radioactive material might generate enough heat to generate electricity for a satellite, but it's not going to be able to move a ship.

What I do think we might someday see on ships is the new breed of miniature self-contained nuclear reactors that are currently under development. These things are small enough to fit on a railroad car or tractor trailer, supposedly need little or no maintenance, and can generate enough power for a few thousand / tens of thousands of homes. That should be enough to drive a big ship at 20-30 knots and provide electrical power for the whole ship.

Re:We're doing it wrong

[Firethorn]

I agree that strapping a kite onto an ocean ship is a silly thing to do

If it's silly but it works, is it really silly?

This company developed something that, while it might seem silly, has the potential to save $$$ in fuel costs, and therefore reduce the demand for oil by at least a bit.

Per the article: a kite costs $775k, and can save $1.6k per day, 'under favorable wind conditions'. Figure that's 100 days a year, that's $160k saved per year, or about a 5 year payoff. An easy sell, in financial markets(as long as the kite can be expected to last 10-15).

In other words, every little bit helps. And this stands to help more per $ spent than putting solar panels on homes today.

Re:We're doing it wrong

[Firethorn]

From the article: They(shipping) emit 800 million tonnes of CO2 each year -- 5 percent of the world's total. They emit high levels of sulphur dioxide.

I'd say that, while not huge in proportion, 5% of the world's emmisions certainly deserves a hard look - and if larger kites can cut fuel usage by 40% as the article states, it'd be significant.

Re:We're doing it wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

To some degree you're right, but you're also thinking far too shallowly. First of all, assuming those non-renewables will be used up eventually, technology like this allows us to accomplish more with them, not only easing human life, but buying us more time (and with $1600/day savings from a single small ship, more money) to address the extremely challenging issue of providing our energy needs.

Secondly, resources will always be imbalanced to a degree, meaning transportation will be required. Of course, if Al Gore's worst fear-mongering does materialize, then perhaps we won't need to ship grain to icy Greenland. You might also have noticed if you read the article that the ship in question is not an oil tanker; it's a small heavy lift ship for carrying oversized cargoes. The renderings they show are of it carrying wind turbine pieces, a poetic example of its utility. Sometimes it's more efficient to transport things than to support the ability to build them at the location they are demanded. For the record, shipping is a very efficient way per ton mile to move stuff.

Third, the way forward for energy sustainability is not so clearcut that we can just stop spending on everything else and throw all our money into one or two solutions. Everything is a tradeoff of costs, limitations, and benefits.

Sure there's a bigger picture, but arguing against the individual pieces is pure foley, and your argument doesn't really fit in to the discussion. Would you also suggest that oil delivery trucks not be subject to emissions regulations because that too perpetuates an unsustainable mode of transport? Of course not.

Re:We're doing it wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you can google the manufacturer and read about the technology and their analysis. You're pretty close for such a simple estimate. They figure 255 days of ship operation per year, with the kite being utilized 55% of the time. Their utilization is based on analysis of prevailing winds and kite performance. Payoff is just under 5 years and expected kite life is 15 years. Presumably at that point you can replace the kite and do an overhaul of the mechanical systems for much less than the original purchase price.

It definitely does more per dollar spent than putting solar on homes today, because putting solar on homes, except in a few lucky areas, increases the energy cost in exchange for environmental or independence benefits, whereas this kite decreases the energy cost (which is its real selling point), and as an added bonus, reduces environmental impact. Of course, spending money on sails is not exclusive of spending it on solar panels. Do both if you want.

Re:We're doing it wrong

[DancesWithBlowTorch]

Those reasons are...? You can't just throw a potential solution away and say that the reasons for rejection are obvious, without saying what they are.

Okay, I see I expected a bit too much there. Let me put it this way: The current nuclear powers that be see naval nuclear technology as a weapon technology. If we wanted to run every merchant ship in the world (such was my initial remark) to run on nuclear energy, this technology would have to be freely available to every country, every shipmaker in the world. I'm not sure it would go down well with, e.g. the American public to hear about Saudi Arabian, Afghan, Iranian and Iraquian merchant ships (all manned by Philippino crews) carrying nuclear devices right into American ports.[1]

I realise you will come up with all sorts of ideas on how to contain the radioactive material and make sure nobody can do anything bad with it, it can not accidentally leak, come into contact with sea water, or be expelled into the air during fires. You might even come up with the one ingenious idea that actually solves all these problems. Still, I'm sure we will all be getting our electricity from photovoltaic farms in Africa by the time you manage to sell this to the mainstream public.

It's hard enough to explain the necessity of land-based Nuclear Power Plants to the public right now. I think it's counterproductive to start phantasizing about container ships running on Uranium.

[1] It'll be 5 minutes before someone will label me a racist. I love the internet.

Re:We're doing it wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

>>Also, ships don't only carry oil. They bring us all the nice little cheap stuff from all over the world, allowing producers to exploit huge economies of scale (which, in the long run, might well benefit the environment, too).

>Eh? What's that you say? Ships don't carry oil? What the hell was the Exxon Valdez carrying? Crude oil definitely travels by ship -- big, honking tanker ships carrying huge amounts of oil are criss-crossing the globe as we speak.

Wow, I bet you feel like a real dickwad after that mistake.

Re:We're doing it wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

No way. Have you ever owned a boat? The personal types get about a gallon to the mile. A 10k ton freighter must have even worse mileage. This all points to the fact that fuel is relatively cheap. But if pollution solving is your game (and not politics), then ships, trucks and the giant factories that feed them are low the hanging fruit. Not SUV's.

Re:We're doing it wrong

[maxume]

Pound miles per gallon. The freighter moves so much that it ends up being quite efficient. Trucks aren't as good, but they are still often full. Cars drive around mostly empty.

Re:We're doing it wrong

[DougWebb]

I guess I'm an optimist. I do agree that both the public and the government would resist the idea at first, but I'm hopeful that these mini-reactors will someday become commonplace as municipal power generation systems. Once every small city and large town has one, which will only happen if they're proven to be safe, then they might start being deployed on ships.

I live in a town which has one of the highest per-capita property taxes in the country: services are expensive in this area, and we have too few homes and nearly no businesses for the tax base. One of my ideas for fixing the situation would be to lease one of these new reactors. My understanding is that only a small locked-down facility would be needed, and it would generate far more power than my town would need, so we could sell the excess to the power company and use the profits from that to cover the lease and pay for most/all of the town's budget.

Re:We're doing it wrong

[MightyYar]

Before you jump all over him, he said "ships don't ONLY carry oil". He would have to be too retarded to type to claim that ships don't carry oil.

There is a crew here claiming that any shipping at all is bad. I have to disagree - you would have to abandon the island of Japan if you couldn't ship in raw materials. Even giant countries like the US and China require "shipping" to occur - even if it is by truck or rail rather than boat. I don't know of many places on earth that have all of the natural resources that they need PLUS land for agriculture all in one place.

Re:We're doing it wrong

[Teancum]

Replying belatedly here, but I would like to know something?

What is your alternative here?

I'm not saying that we can't find some reasonable alternatives, but I don't see the huge need to be an alarmist and force me and others to make drastic changes in our lifestyles for what appears to me to be a political motivation, not something that has a sound scientific basis.

BTW, I was dead on about what would happen if we reverted back to a hunter/gatherer lifestyle... unless you can prove to me how this world can sustain itself with a population of over 10 billion people from a nearly pure agrarian lifestyle or even just "living off of the land". Sure, mankind did that for millions of years, but with a population that numbered in the low millions of people, and didn't even get to major regions of the world like America until about 20,000 years ago. If we abandon petroleum without replacing it with an even higher density storage medium, how far back in technological development do you really want to go? Middle ages? Roman technology? Even further? I don't even think a Middle-age (meaning c. 1000 A.D. Europe) level of technology is possible without at least some fossil fuel source... and even then it would mean a huge reduction in the population of mankind... simply because we couldn't possibly feed that many people with even that level of technology.

You are taking far too much for granted, and ignoring the very hard labors of your ancestors that got you to where you are today. I do have pity upon you for forgetting the lessons of history, and therefore are doomed to repeat them.

Re:We're doing it wrong

[Teancum]

This issue came up on the Tesla Motors (see http://teslamotors.com/) blog where a petrochemical engineer was trying to demonstrate what the MPG rating of the Tesla Roadster really could be compared to in terms of a more conventional automobile. All sorts of issues were addressed, including the assumption that 100% of the electricity was produced from burning carbon-based fuels such as fuel oil (or other from crude common extracts), tars, and coal. These operate at a pretty high efficiency rate in part because of the huge industrial size of these facilities, and the fact that most utility companies want to extract as much energy out of those fuels as possible. Face it, you can't possibly meet the energy extraction capability of a 500 MW generating plant in your backyard. Certainly not in a moving vehicle like your automobile.

Other issues came up, and even addressed the raw energy that is released from burning a gallon of gasoline. He also had at hand some figures in terms of how much electricity that his plant was consuming for producing the gasoline, and did a simple division of the number of gallons of gasoline his company produced vs. how much electricity that they were using, even independent of overhead like lighting the offices of the plant or other issues. Mind you, this was light, sweet crude oil he was processing here and wasn't even dealing with extraction costs. At the refinery he discovered that he was actually consuming far more energy than was possibly being produced in consumer-grade gasoline. That also sold him completely on the subject of buying an electric automobile, and made a purchase immediately with Tesla.

I do wish I could get some figures from a more reliable source than a blog, but for myself, this is sufficient. I will say that for now you can consider this to be merely a conjecture, but something that has some real weight behind it and may be worth a formal study... if you are in the market for something like this. For those who are pushing for alternative fuels, this is one sort of figure that certainly would prove a killer app for trying to select alternative fuels.

I also wish that the petroleum companies would elaborate on the fact that petroleum is really not an energy source but rather an energy storage medium, as it would really frame the whole debate over where investment really needs to take place, and kill the ethanol industry for once and for all (except in the case of perhaps Jack Daniels, but I digress here). Ethanol producers are attempting to get into the energy storage game as well, but it is incredibly expensive and they are masking the true costs of their efforts, including how it is significantly affecting the price of food due to diverting food production from grocery stores to fuel plants.

Obviously other alternative fuels/energy storage devices have their place, but energy legislation is dumping far more effort into areas that may in the long run prove to be dubious on their return. It also makes solar energy sources appear much more attractive if you can demonstrate that they are true energy sources and not just energy storage mediums, not to mention that solar energy can be transformed into storage media in one form or another.

Keel?

[melonman]

Why don't you need one? In the photo on the last /. article the kite isn't dead ahead of the ship, and you'd expect that to be the case most of the time. If that tends to pull the ship off course, don't you end up using the rudder like a rather poor keel, effectively dragging the ship through the sea sideways, and thus wasting a load of energy, not to mention the stress on various parts of the ship?

Military usage

[aapold]

I think this technology has obvious military applications.

When fighting enemy warships, a kite ship can get close enough to fire a shot, then the kite kicks in and they move away, out of range of the pursuing enemy ship, all the while firing shots at them. Using this tactic they could easily draw an enemy warship far from their lines and away from possible assistance to an area of the sea where additional friendly warships can be brought to bear upon it.

Re:Military usage

[radarsat1]

ah, where did i put my 'funny' mod points... :)

Re:Military usage

[MightyYar]

Or, oooooo, imagine a kite ship used to launch kite-assisted airplanes which could clearly outpace the non-kite-assisted airplanes. And they could fire kite-assisted missiles.

Of course, we'd probably just start a kite-arms-race culminating in kite-destroying lasers mounted to kite-assisted satellites.

What next? The Trireme and Galley Slaves?

[gelfling]

Big Oar is waiting.

Re:What next? The Trireme and Galley Slaves?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, we DO have an overpopulated planet! Besides, some parts of it is inhabited by predominantly obese people, who would improve their health doing some workout.

We could also make them more humane and high-tech then in the olden days.

Imagine: large, comfy (toilet-capable, with additional "skirts" for privacy) seats inside air-conditioned lower decks with large HD screens above heads, playing movies and sitcoms (or music videos, for better mood and row sync) around the clock, padded oar handles, composite-material-made lightweight oars, sub woofer rhythm pacers, individual water and soup feeders (with optional anti-seasickness medicine addition), narrow beam, individual-addressing non-damaging microwave whips... the tech of today enables making so MUCH better Galleys!

Hello Dad, I'm in Jail

[Anonymous Coward]

PWEI Reference?
Loved that one.......

Yes, and your thinking is wrong too

[rprins]

The information technology revolution of the past few decades (at the expense of the environment) is what will have made all of that possible. Nonsense, sure it helps, but the most important part is awareness. People should care about sustainability, if consumers would choose their products weighing in sustainability, that will make change possible. Citizens electing representitives that prioritize sustainability, that will make change possible. ICT is just a tool that helps.

You need to be more realistic, 'regulating the atmosphere' is not realistic. Everything is a matter of compromise, you need to ship cargo and 'exploit' cheap labor, because you don't want to pay $500 dollars for shoes. War is one of the biggest polluters imaginable, yet apparantly it needs to be done. Change can not come just by giving a billion dollars to researchers, public awareness needs to change, priorities need to change.

Reinventing the row boat?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you want a bunch of Jews rowing your ship? It's not like they are stereotyped as being overly strong. I wonder if they have better stamina.

Ohhh!!! Wait . . . sorry, my bad . . . it says Kite-Powered Ship Launched.

Re:Reinventing the row boat?!?

[bennomatic]

Oh, that's funny. Not.

What I'd like to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

What I'd like to know is where I can get a kike-powered ship. Afterall, they did build the pyramids...

Not sure how much real use this will be.

[Viol8]

Can't use it in a storm.
Can't use it when heading into the wind - can't tack with a kite.
Can't use it when theres no wind.

Also in the video it seemed to be moving around a lot on its mounting pole when furled up even in the slight breeze. How you'd unfurl it in a strong wind without damage to it or its cables I shudder to think.

Re:Not sure how much real use this will be.

[slim]

can't tack with a kite. Try telling that to the kitesurfers who come ashore upwind from where they started.

Re:Not sure how much real use this will be.

[gomoX]

Not going to happen with a cargo ship. There is no keel equivalent in it, just a big fat hull.

Re:Not sure how much real use this will be.

[redxxx]

You are mistaken. You can tack with a kite, in fact the available window is greater than that of most fixed sails, because the apparent wind speed of the kite is not tied to that of the ship.

You can tack with pretty much any kite you can steer, a lot of toy shops sell small steerable kites for about $5. They are garbage, but will totally demonstate the idea.

You could also look up any of the thousands of hours of kite surfing footage on youtube.

Re:Not sure how much real use this will be.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't use it in a storm. (you haven't sailed in storms have you?)
Use a smaller kite, if the storm is too much for that, man the lifeboats. You're sunk.

Can't use it when heading into the wind - can't tack with a kite.
Thousands of kite-boarders will rightfully disagree with you. Kite-wings can and do tack. Very efficiently, since they are fully out of surface effects.
This is also why you want the attach point to be roughly amidships. So you can use that long keel when tacking. Putting the attach point at the bow limits you to using winds aft. A simple rigging setup will let you do both.

Re:Not sure how much real use this will be.

[Viol8]

As someone else has pointed out , how can you tack without a keel? The kite will just pull the ship sideways.

Re:Not sure how much real use this will be.

[MightyYar]

You can tack with a kite - it's much like a sail.

That moving around is intended - you move the kite around in roughly figure-8s to move upwind.

Make a small investment in a stunt kite and play with it a bit and you'll see what I mean. You can "pump" the kite.

Totally uneconomic

[PerMolestiasEruditio]

Three Problems: 1. Commercial ships have to keep to schedules to keep customers and ports happy. They also have lots of crew to feed and carry large quantities of money onboard (in the form of the ship and the commodities it carries) that cost a lot of money when doing anything other than going as quickly as possible (20-25knots) to the next port. Anything that compromises this speed and schedulability is a non-starter. 2. Ships have massive aero-drag (try pushing something 30m high, 30m wide and 200m long upwind), which totally dominates the kite-ship system and means that unlike efficient yachts that can sail in most directions at greater than wind speed (and in some cases up to 3 times wind speed) this baby will never be able to exceed wind speed on any course unless it uses a kite at least an order of magnitude bigger than what they are proposing and a huge fin on the ship. 3 Fabric doesn't last. Highly loaded sail fabric lasts even less. A very lightly loaded commercial paraglider might get 2000 hours. Heavy fabric is not much of a solution either as heavy kites have terrible performance, stall easily and won't stay up in light winds. It is going to be very expensive replacing the kite several times a year. Put these things together and the kite will only be of use when the vector component of the wind in the direction you want to travel is say 5-10knots greater than the required ship speed of 20-25knots. At which point screw the kite, just use a huge drag device like a spinnaker (the other kind of 'kite') or parachute on a balloon. But even this is pointless as in the real world (depending on location and course) 30-35knot tail winds would be lucky to occur more than 5% of the time. So who are the credulous idiots putting money into this? Devils Advocate: The only possible application I can see is bulk carriers where delivery may not be as time critical as it sits around in stores for extended periods anyway and you may be able to afford to sail a lot slower.

Re:Totally uneconomic

[Anonymous Coward]

I suggest you and all the other people posting similar concerns send your criticisms to the manufacturers of the kite; After all, it seems clear that when they invested huge amounts of time and money and engineering expertise developping this system, they foolishly neglected to consult a random slashdot pundit who could have doubtlessly steered them away from this blatantly doomed project with nothing more than some half-assed, uninformed, back-of-a-beermat guesstimations.

Do you really think this project would have reached the stage it has if it DIDN'T ACTUALLY WORK? Do you really think that a little detail like that could slip unnoticed past all of the professional engineers, experienced and knowledgable in the appropriate fields, temployed by the kite's manufacturers? Do you really think you know better than people who do this for a living, and have now proved themselves by designing, building, testing, selling, delivering and launching a functional system?

Dumbass.

(capcha: damning)

Re:Totally uneconomic

[Retric]

It's an assist system targeting a 20% average reduction in fuel costs a peak savings of around 50%.

So:
1. At no point would the ship ever slow down more than it would with current tech.

2. Ships already need to expend energy based on drag so if the path and speed is unchanged so is this effect.

3. With a savings of 1600$ per day the cost of replacing a kite is probably trivial after a few months. The kite is not the primary cost Instillation costs are dominated the cost to retrofit the ship, control software etc.

PS: Kites tack in a different manor than traditional sailing craft because the can move around much faster so it's their average position that's important not the instantaneous force vector.

Aaargh!

[PinkyDead]

Trim the Mainsail lads! And fetch me me Parrot and a tot of rum.

We're back my hearties! Yo ho ho! Aaargh!

Boatswain, plot a course for treasure island - or Venezuela or somewhere.

And someone turn off them damnable engines, I can hardly hear meself think. Aargh...

Economics look not so good, like awful

[Ancient_Hacker]

I assume the 20% savings ($1,600/day) is when the wind is blowing good, and in the right direction.

Just on general principles, that's going to happen about 1/3 the time times maybe 1/2 the time. So actual savings are going to be around 3% ($266/day) That's about $78,000 per year. Barely enough to pay for one employee to manage the kite. Nothing left over to pay the interest ($60,000), or pay off the principal (another $75K over 10 years).

Re:Economics look not so good, like awful

[CmdrGravy]

Gosh yes, this does appear to be a fatal flaw in their plan. Here's what I suggest you do. First of all you need to send the beermat or envelope with your calculations and these general principles of wind dynamics off to the company and include a written warning in the strongest possible terms outlining why their years of planning, development, testing and implementation have been in vain. Doubtless initally they may horrorstruck with your revelations but eventually you'll almost certainly be called in for some well paid and top level consultancy where you can use your years of expertise to get this failing project back on the rails. Why, I imagine you could do this in your spare time without even breaking a sweat. You're so wonderful.

Re:Economics look not so good, like awful

[Ancient_Hacker]

Touching, that in this cynical era there are still some hardy Pollyannas with indominable faith-- that think big bizness makes rational decisions based on facts. Never mind the $4 trillion Internet Bubble, AOL/Time Warner, Enron, Edsel, Segway, etc... I'm going all gooey and verklempt, I swear.

Re:Economics look not so good, like awful

[Anonymous Coward]

The articles linked seem to indicate that your assumption is incorrect, with the more optimal case being a roughly 50% drop in fuel usage and the 20% figure being an overall average.

Re:Economics look not so good, like awful

[Firethorn]

That's odd, elsewhere I figured it'd be useful only 100 days out of a year(less than a third) and got $160k savings in a year.

Any particular reason you divided by 6 rather than 2 or 3 for your figure?

Re:Economics look not so good, like awful

[Retric]

RTFA: 20% is average savings not peak. (which is 50%).

PS: Math is useless when your information is wrong.

Re:Economics look not so good, like awful

[Ancient_Hacker]

If the ship travels as is mentioned, it's traveling in a triangle. I'm assuming the winds don't follow the ship's path, so it's only likely to have the wind blowing in roughly the right direction about 1/3 of the time. So that's a factor of 3.

Then winds do not always blow at top speed. In fact, to be useful at all with this kite/sail, the wind has to average considerably faster than the forward speed of the ship!

I'm being somewhat generous in estimating that only HALF of the time can you expect the wind to be not only blowing int he right direction, but also blowing considerably faster than the ship.

So that's another factor of 2.

Re:Economics look not so good, like awful

[jeephistorian]

Awesome. Simply.....awesome. Thank you....

For what its worth, the captcha is boatload. These things rock!

Re:Economics look not so good, like awful

[BeanThere]

You do realise that some routes have pretty reliable prevailing wind patterns, and that these have even been used historically for shipping channels back in the day when sails were the main form of powering ships? Google for example 'roaring forties' and 'clipper route'. There are others.

Re:Economics look not so good, like awful

[BeanThere]

I assume the 20% savings ($1,600/day) is when the wind is blowing good, and in the right direction

That's an amazingly wild assumption. After watching the video, I have the definite impression that that $1600/day estimate has arleady taken this into account and is estimated based on the typical average prevailing winds on their routes.

Re:Economics look not so good, like awful

[deek]

I assume the 20% savings ($1,600/day) is when the wind is blowing good, and in the right direction. Just on general principles, that's going to happen about 1/3 the time times maybe 1/2 the time. Just on general principles, that's going to happen about 1/3 the time times maybe 1/2 the time. So actual savings are going to be around 3% ($266/day) That's about $78,000 per year. Barely enough to pay for one employee to manage the kite. Nothing left over to pay the interest ($60,000), or pay off the principal (another $75K over 10 years).

You're making some heavy assumptions, all of which I believe are incorrect.

The 20% itself is an average value, not a peak value. This isn't obvious from the article, but if you go to the Skysails website, you'll find the data. If the wind is blowing good, and in the right direction, according to the website, you can actually save up to 50% (peak value I assume).

There are established shipping routes where the wind will blow in the right direction for much more than half the time. I can appreciate your assumption here, but it doesn't actually match up to real world conditions for many ships.

Lastly, the system is completely automated and computer controlled. There is no need to hire anyone to manage the kite.

In any case, if it was so obvious that the economics were shot, then surely the product would have failed to be developed from the start. There's obviously more to it than some simple economic deconstruction can calculate.

Re:Economics look not so good, like awful

[Firethorn]

Seeing as how the company is moving forward, and has actually sold a system after having a number of smaller test ships, the data isn't necessarily in your factor.

As the other poster stated - trade winds are such that they'll be very constant. Remember, the higher you go the more powerful and steady the wind is.

I for one welcome

[DarkOx]

our return to the age of sail. Even if it is a little higher tech then first time around.

Please tag this article

[Daimanta]

reinventingthekite

Kite powered ship?

[thousandinone]

So basically they are using a high altitude Spinnaker?

Blimp for the doldrums

[flyingfsck]

They should add a blimp to that, to keep the sail aloft on bad days.

Germany never was a great sailing nation. So if the Dutch, Spanish, English or French dont want to bite, then there must be a problem with the technology.

Tall ships - spinakers and auto furling sails

[flyingfsck]

The problem with sails is labour. If they have to add crew to handle the sails, then they dont save anything. A 15m mast with a kite is not much different from flying a spinaker and simpler sail systems can be furled automatically, so there is room for improvement and automation.

Why not use sails?

[MaWeiTao]

Am I missing here? What kind of advantage does a kite provide over sails which I'd say are a proven technology. To me it seems that 500 year old technology is superior to what this company has developed.

I can think of a few distinct advantages over the kite. First, the sails are attached to the ship. There isn't this thing blowing around in the sky which might change direction unpredictably when the winds change. Or worse, make a dive for the ocean. Second, the kite is completely useless in headwinds. One advantage the caravel had over other sailing vessels of the time was it's ability to sail into headwinds. It had to zig zag across the ocean to make forward progress, but it wasn't left at the mercy of the weather to the extent older ships had been.

I'll concede sails would require added weight and complexity to accommodate the masts and all the rigging, but I'm convinced it would be more beneficial than a stupid kite.

By no means do I suggest they shouldn't offer the technology. It would be nice if this spurred some other companies to offer something more compelling.

Re:Why not use sails?

[trongey]

Am I missing here? What kind of advantage does a kite provide over sails which I'd say are a proven technology. To me it seems that 500 year old technology [wikipedia.org] is superior to what this company has developed.

I can think of a few distinct advantages over the kite. First, the sails are attached to the ship. There isn't this thing blowing around in the sky which might change direction unpredictably when the winds change. Or worse, make a dive for the ocean. Second, the kite is completely useless in headwinds. One advantage the caravel had over other sailing vessels of the time was it's ability to sail into headwinds. It had to zig zag across the ocean to make forward progress, but it wasn't left at the mercy of the weather to the extent older ships had been. ...

Yes, you're missing several things, some of which are mentioned in TFA.
Winds aloft are typically much more stable than surface winds. Flying the kite at 300m is a huge advantage for this reason.
The kite is highly automated and computer controlled so that it maintains optimum pull.
There's no reason why the kite can't reach and tack just like a normal sail. It's working on the same principles. In fact the kite, which is really more of a parasail, could conceivably do the zig-zagging while the ship maintains a steady course.

Re:Why not use sails?

[Chris Burke]

There's no reason why the kite can't reach and tack just like a normal sail. It's working on the same principles. In fact the kite, which is really more of a parasail, could conceivably do the zig-zagging while the ship maintains a steady course.

Zig-zagging the sail wouldn't change the fact that the force from the wind would be pointed in the opposite direction the ship wants to go.

The ship has to be the thing that zig-zags, because the way tacking works is the keel of the ship prevents sideways motion, and then you direct the ship so that the dot product of the wind vector and the line of the keel is in the forward direction. You can't get that same effect using just a sail or kite.

The question I can't answer is whether modern vessels have anything like a keel, or whether their hulls work as keels. If they don't, then they'd have to be modified before tacking would be possible.

Nuclear power

[WindBourne]

The US and Russian navy have been running nuclear ships for decades. The last incident in the US was in the 60's. All in all, we have a number of well developed nuclear power plants. While I do not know the Russian situation, I assume that they have some very stable and safe designs. Now is the time to re-start up the program with nuclear freighters. In particular, for ships in the Atlantic would be very useful (the Pacific would be better served with a bridge going between Alaska and Russia). The kite can be used in conjunction with either a nuclear or diesel ship.

Re:Nuclear power

[geekoid]

I agree with you, but... ... I think we need to remember the level and expense of care of these power source.

If these ships engines were constantly monitor by a government team of experts, on the ship. Then I would like to see more of a push towards nuclear freighters.

I don't think the costs would pan out at this time.

Re:Nuclear power

[WindBourne]

First, it would not require a gov. team, but even if so, it would be a small team and no doubt be far cheaper than the current situation with increasing diesel costs. In fact, according to the US navy, it is cheaper to run the nukes than diseal. A big part of that is because the reactors are pretty standardized. They really are nuclear batteries.

Re:Nuclear power

[JeanBaptiste]

If they were nuclear powered they really would have no need for a kite whatsoever.

Advantage of kite over sail

[wmorrow]

If you watched the video, did you notice they sweep the kite back and forth across the wind to increase the pull? The economic analysis would be interesting, key factors being: - size of kite - optimal flying altitude - lifetime of fabric One thing I'd do is make the weakest part of the tether right next to the mast, so when it breaks it does _not_ whiplash the admiring crew!

This has solved Global Warming!

[LynnwoodRooster]

I mean, now that pirates will make a comeback, global warming will go away!

This is largely crap

[Scareduck]

Hauling vast quantities of cargo around the world simply to exploit cheaper labor elsewhere, while consuming vast quantities of nonrenewable resources, is not sustainable.

This is straight-up BS. Trade is going to pull the world's poor out of poverty, nothing else. Proof enough of that can be seen in the huge drains on world commodity supplies lately; the former undeveloped world is developing, fast, and they've got the money to do it. That didn't come through some five-year plan from the fever dream of a Comintern big shot, but because they finally figured out how to take advantage of the one thing the Chinese (and Indians, etc.) had in spades: cheap labor. What we really need is cheap energy (ultimately, fusion), and while we're waiting for that, ways to stretch what we've got so we're more efficient. Shutting down global trade is just not going to happen.

Not the same as a masted sail

[Coop]

One reason the kite is better than a masted sail is that it doesn't force the deck into a tilt when the wind is from the side, or push the nose down when the wind is from the back. The kites will change the preferred route to get the optimal benefit from prevailing winds so there's plenty of technology in the routing software alone.

The end time is nigh

[Molochi]

Now we're getting our ideas from Waterworld. Just go to 2:00minutes in. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1kIXMr6440&feature=related

Why not?

[WindBourne]

The kite lowers the costs since it is basically free to use. Nukes do cost money to burn. If you can set it on a lower setting and use less fuel, I see no reason to not be efficient.

Looks sort of funny

[heroine]

Sort of funny seeing them going through all that trouble to wrestle a little $300,000 parachute "kite" to pull a huge ship. Couldn't they just enlist a bunch of Chinese to row the thing and save $300,000?