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Solar-Powered Boat Carries 8.5 Tons of Lithium-Ion Batteries
bshell writes "The Verge has a great photo-essay about Tûranor PlanetSolar, the first boat to circle the globe with solar power. 'The 89,000 kg (nearly 100 ton) ship needs a massive solar array to capture enough energy to push itself through the ocean. An impressive 512 square meters (roughly 5,500 square feet) of photovoltaic cells, to be exact, charge the 8.5 tons of lithium-ion batteries that are stored in the ship's two hulls.' The boat is currently in NYC. Among other remarkable facts, the captain (Gérard d'Aboville) is one of those rare individuals who solo-rowed across both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, journeys that took 71 and 134 days, respectively. The piece has a lot of detail about control systems and design."
Ferdinant Magellan did it in 1520.
No, Magellan only made it as far as the Philippines and then he was killed. It was Juan Sebastian Elcano who completed the voyage.
A Hindenburg that floats.
Um, airships do float.
Striking that in a community of self-identified "geeks" and "techies" that the notion of "proof of concept" would be so difficult to grasp.
"Big deal, they walked around on the moon, but they had to wear big heavy protective suits to do it, so clearly, we shouldn't have a space program. And so what that the Mars Rover is tooling around on the surface of Mars. It moves really slowly so we shouldn't do any more Mars exploration until we can bring a Ford Explorer and get around like Jesus intended, with internal combustion engines burning refined oil."
Here's a group that will embrace any new technology, stand in line to buy an Apple iWristwatch, but the mere mention of anything having to do with research into energy from any source besides Big Oil, Big Coal and Big Nukes and they dig in their heels like somebody's trying to take away their binkie.
Sometimes I'm surprised they're not holding out until their laptops can run on a two-stroke engine.
You are welcome on my lawn.
No. Cheating would be poking a hole in the back of the battery packs, waiting for the seawater to hit the lithium and taking off like a rocket.
Have gnu, will travel.
We should be investigating the use of wind energy for moving ships. Perhaps there is some way (probably very complicated!) in which we could avoid converting the wind energy to electrical energy before converting it into propulsion. I have a feeling we might be able to create some zero emission ships that way.