[HN Gopher] How to design a sailing ship for the 21st century? (...
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How to design a sailing ship for the 21st century? (2021)
Author : weird_user
Score : 109 points
Date : 2023-02-14 13:27 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lowtechmagazine.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lowtechmagazine.com)
| nickdothutton wrote:
| I think it's high time these cargo ships were fully automated. At
| least as far as the point after which the local pilot comes
| onboard.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| > For example, if 60 people on board the ship would take a daily
| hot shower - which requires on average 2.1 kilowatt-hours of
| energy and 76.5 litres of water on land - total electricity use
| per day would be 126 kWh, more than double the energy the ship
| produces at a speed of 7.5 knots.
|
| I'll note that those figures are for a Hollywood shower, not a
| Navy shower. A Navy shower uses about 11 liters of water, and I
| assume energy use is proportional to water use.
| arh68 wrote:
| > _Two rowing machines could provide roughly 400 watts of power.
| If they are operated around the clock in shifts, they could
| supply the ship with an extra 9.6 kWh of energy per day_
|
| Rowing 200 watts is not exactly easy. That's like 2:00/- splits,
| "ramming speed" type power. Half that seems more reasonable.
|
| I do like the idea, though, of a sailing ship with ad hoc
| erg/rowing power.
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| More precisely, how to replicate designs from the 19th century.
|
| A shame, because modern materials should allow more radical
| designs - for example as used in the Americas's Cup competition
| nowadays.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| Carrying cargo is very, very different. America's Cup racers
| are very light. It's a mistake to apply that technology in a
| 1-to-1 fashion for large sailing vessels.
|
| The boat the America's Cup is named after--"America," natch--
| crossed the Atlantic for her race. The current America's Cup
| boats are no good for ocean crossing. For one, there's no room.
| But the real problems are that the materials are so specific,
| so complicated, any kind of problem and you're stuck. A canvas
| sail can be repaired at sea. The weird composite stuff used in
| AC sails are not quite so resilient.
|
| I appreciate the enthusiasm of the modern AC teams (hi Larry!),
| but these are not good boats. A good boat takes care of her
| crew. An AC racer will hurt or kill you in a heartbeat if you
| are not 100% on the ball.
|
| That said, some of the wing sail designs may be adaptable with
| the right materials.
| blitzar wrote:
| > I appreciate the enthusiasm of the modern AC teams (hi
| Larry!), but these are not good boats.
|
| I liked the AC class more when it was designers + crews +
| conditions fighting it out not just programmers.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| The rules-lawyering really hurt the sport. It was always a
| rich man's playground, but now it's gotten ridiculous.
|
| Watching a bunch of 15-year-olds compete in Optimist
| dinghies at your local lake or reservoir is way more fun
| and entertaining than today's AC, IMO. You just can't shake
| the feeling that whoever spent the most money wins at the
| AC, which is boring.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| I'm currently reading a book about US submarine operations in
| WW2. By 1945 the Japanese had lost so many cargo ships that they
| started using sailing ships again.
| 11001100 wrote:
| I enjoyed watching the Netflix documentary "Untold - The Race of
| the Century" - but of course it shaped sailing ships in the 20th
| century: https://www.netflix.com/title/81026435
| WelcomeShorty wrote:
| Oh that was a blast! Thanks for pointing that out.
|
| Besides a great story, it is such a nice icon of the time. What
| stood out most to me is the "Australia, that little, unknown
| country" :)
| automatic6131 wrote:
| > it's more likely that a switch to sailing ships is accompanied
| by a decrease in cargo and passenger traffic, and this has
| everything to do with scale and speed. A lot of freight and
| passengers would not be travelling if it were not for the high
| speeds and low costs of today's airplanes and container ships.
|
| >It would make little sense to transport iPhones parts, Amazon
| wares, sweatshop clothes, or citytrippers with sailing ships. A
| sailing ship is more than a technical means of transportation: it
| implies another view on consumption, production, time, space,
| leisure, and travel.
|
| Yes, of course they beat around the bush with weasel words like
| "another view on consumption".
|
| Let's translate this for what it is: "poor people, you can no
| longer have luxury goods". The "rethinking" is always telling us
| that the wealth we've enjoyed as a high energy species should go,
| only to be given to our "betters" - because they can always
| afford it. But they rarely ever say this out loud because it's an
| impossible sell, so they use mealy mouthed euphemisms.
|
| Fuck these people, honestly. I don't want to live in a world
| where, in the name of equality, we take progress from those who
| have it. Give it to more people.
| StockHuman wrote:
| Somewhat unrelated, but I adore their 'solar' subdomain mirror
| that runs on solar power alone. It's fun to see compelling
| commitment to the ethics espoused by the articles in the very
| site itself.
| blitzar wrote:
| There should be a browser extension, similar in principle to
| the old "https everywhere", that attempts the solar page first,
| falling back to the coal powered one if the solar one is down.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| These newly built traditional ships are simply insignificant in
| the face of the volume of goods transported globally. They are
| passenger vessels for people who want to experience forgotten
| time while also delivering some feel-good. Definitely a viable
| business, but it does not replace global logistics.
|
| The EcoClipper in the article is said to take 500 tons of cargo,
| that is 23 TEUs (Twenty-foot equivalent unit) [1] by weight. Ever
| Given the ship that got stuck in the Suez canal carries 20 000
| TEUs. That is by volume. Not all can be fully loaded by weight,
| but still. There is a factor of about 1000 between them. Add on
| the reduced speed for the EcoClipper, and you need ~4 000 sail
| ships to replace it.
|
| Now we haven't even gotten into cargo handling since the
| EcoClipper can not easily be unloaded directly by crane.
|
| Simply, it is too low scale.
|
| What is truly interesting is, for example, the Oceanbird program
| by Wallenius and Alfa Laval [2]. That is making Ro-Ro vessels
| aided by the wind, ensuring that you get the efficiency gains and
| hit the slot times in port. The Ro-Ro, Roll-on, Roll-off, part is
| important since that means you do not clash with unloading
| requirements coming from cranes.
|
| The shipping industry is also looking into synthetic fuels and
| hydrogen since the infrastructure is relatively centralized, and
| they rely on the energetic density of chemical fuels. Where the
| trips are measured in hours rather than days or weeks batteries
| are being deployed.
|
| A nice short film from the latter parts of the era of sail is
| "Around Cape Horn" from 1929, when the narrator worked on one of
| the large four-masted barques. [3]
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-foot_equivalent_unit
|
| [2]: https://www.theoceanbird.com/blog/orcelle-horizon/
|
| [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tuTKhqWZso
| qikInNdOutReply wrote:
| There is also drag reduction via airbubles blown beneath the
| ship and keeping them distributed via ultrasound. Its pretty
| cool.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| There's hi tech options here, which also split the large
| vessels into many smaller vessels.
|
| The benefits include being able to deliver to smaller ports
| that are close to the final destination and smaller batches for
| continual delivery and faster end to end time when something is
| an expedited.
|
| The large size is partly a factor of fuel costs so cheap future
| fuels might rebalance away from that design aspect.
|
| Automation is another force that works towards smaller vessels.
| detourdog wrote:
| You are right trade routes could have exchanges at the most
| efficient waypoints. These vessels could meet smaller vessels
| for the final destination delivery. These waypoints could be
| accessible to any form of transportation causing another
| distortion in the time efficiency of goods delivery.
| hef19898 wrote:
| So, like today?
| detourdog wrote:
| yes but in the middle of the ocean.
|
| Oh yeah and on the blockchain:)
| hef19898 wrote:
| Thiel's artificial ocean island nation needs to be
| supplied, right?
| detourdog wrote:
| Quite a world we live in. I would be happy if he had his
| own ocean nation and he left the rest of us in the US
| alone.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| If you take the people off them, 4000 little self-sailing ships
| seems actually much better for logistics than one big tub that
| will clog up Suez if there is one pilot screwup. Send your
| stuff when it rolls off the line, no need to wait until you
| have 20,000 of them lined up.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| We could also get rid of a lot of global logistics by going
| back to local manufacturing. There's absolutely _nothing_ that
| dictates that iPhones can be built only in China, or that every
| grocery store needs to keep strawberries or other agricultural
| products all year round (which have to be sometimes _flown_
| around the world [1]).
|
| The key problem is that CO2 emissions _still_ aren 't priced
| anywhere near to true externality cost, and so no one has
| incentives for local, low emissions production - instead,
| everyone goes to the lowest bidder by employment costs (and
| sometimes, environmental regulations as well).
|
| [1] https://lufthansa-cargo.com/industries-agriculture-food
| nradov wrote:
| That's no "going back" to local manufacturing. Most places
| never had any real manufacturing in the first place, and the
| notion of replicating manufacturing infrastructure for
| consumer goods in every area is absurd. That idea is based on
| a complete lack of understanding over how supply chains work.
|
| The CO2 emissions for transporting an iPhone from Asia are
| insignificant. The real emissions cost is in the
| manufacturing, not the transport.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > That idea is based on a complete lack of understanding
| over how supply chains work.
|
| Before extremely cheap overseas shipping was made possible
| by the standard shipping container and giant container
| ships to match, almost all production _was_ local (i.e.
| actually regional or at least continental) by necessity.
| Silicon Valley is named after all the semiconductor
| fabrication ffs, and a ton of that has migrated off to
| Taiwan. And a lot of regions in Western countries got
| absolutely wrecked as they couldn 't compete with cheap,
| environmentally destructive manufacturing or mining in
| China / India any more.
|
| It's high time to reverse that, not just because China is
| an increasingly hostile dictatorship, Taiwan is under
| constant threat of a military invasion and India is going
| off the deep end as well under Modi, but also because we
| need the jobs back domestically to prevent even more people
| falling to far-right scapegoat bullshit.
| mojomark wrote:
| As someone in the maritime industry (ship design), I tend to
| agree that local manufacturing is an important component.
| However, there is still the distribution of raw materials -
| from concentraded locations where materials are
| mined/recycled, to points of manufacture, then to points of
| end use.
|
| In an ideal world, we'd have universal star trek 3D printers
| that can build any imagined product, from food to cars, from
| some the atom up, that is used and recycled in situ. Until
| then, I'm afraid there will be a growing need for cargo
| transport.
|
| That said, I am a proponent of scalable/distributed vice
| monolithic transport modes. To me, that is where we need to
| head in terms of ship/rail/etc. systems. This revolution in
| design is already starting to emerge.
| caycep wrote:
| Wasn't there some effort to design sail, or sail-augmented
| supertanker/freighter/container ships? I vaguely remember
| seeing renderings w/ hi tech airfoils mounted on the deck of
| the ship....
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| There's been a few different efforts along those lines.
|
| Free standing wing sails are surprisingly practical. They can
| be designed to be self trimming: that is you set a control
| surface once and then it tracks the wind so long as the ship
| doesn't make a 180.
|
| But as cool as that technology is, it simply isn't economic
| vs burning the cheapest oil available.
|
| Because international waters are a no man's land pollution
| wise, most freighters burn extremely dirty but cheap oil, ie
| bunker oil. This stuff is so thick it often needs heaters to
| liquify it to get it into the engine.
|
| So long as that externality is unpriced, sail augmentation
| simply won't be interesting to ship owners financially.
| nradov wrote:
| Just because a fuel is thick doesn't necessarily mean it is
| dirty. The IMO has required ships in international waters
| to use low-sulphur fuel or exhaust scrubbers since 2020.
| Some smaller ships occasionally break the law but the large
| shipping companies are fairly good about compliance now.
|
| CO2 emissions remain an issue, but large diesel engine
| merchant ships are still the most energy efficient mode of
| transportation ever invented.
|
| There are a few large wind-assisted cargo ships in
| commercial service today. This trend will probably continue
| as sail technology gets cheaper and fuel gets more
| expensive. But it only improves efficiency by something
| like 5-10%.
|
| https://splash247.com/mols-wind-assisted-bulk-carrier-
| enters...
| gvb wrote:
| At the end of the article, after the picture "The mizzen of the
| 'Grace Harwar'; view aft from the main crosstrees", is the
| calculation:
|
| _The amount of cargo that was traded across the oceans in 2019
| equals the freight capacity of 22.4 million EcoClippers.
| Assuming the EcoClipper500 can make 2-3 trips per year, we
| would need to build and operate at least 7.5 million ships,
| with a total crew of at least 90 million people._
| skyfaller wrote:
| Good news, 40% of all shipping is fossil fuels, so if we
| abandon fossil fuels, the shipping problem gets significantly
| smaller: https://qz.com/2113243/forty-percent-of-all-
| shipping-cargo-c...
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| You've got a really interesting point here... my son and I
| got stopped for 15 minutes yesterday by an absolutely
| monster train. So we started researching on our phones and
| realized that it was coal headed for the coast, headed for
| China. I know the Chinese need energy, the train needs the
| shipping business, and the coal people want a market for
| their coal, but if the world were able to transition to
| other forms of energy, it would definitely shift the
| shipping too
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Could be met coal for steelmaking.
| hammock wrote:
| >if we abandon fossil fuels
|
| In favor of what? Surely shipping demand does not fall by
| 40%. The resources required for renewable replacements are
| distributed and processed all over the globe.
| dahart wrote:
| So 39.87%? In favor of supplies for renewables that are
| significantly lower volume & frequency?
|
| The number 39.87 is what you might get replacing coal
| with wind turbines, based on Googled stats for avg
| turbine weight (165 tons), avg lifetime (20 years) avg
| achieved efficiency (42%) avg capacity (1.5MW) coal
| weight per MW (1100 lbs) ... If my calculations are right
| this means turbines are 300x more efficient per pound of
| resources than coal, which directly translates into 300x
| less shipping for those resources.
| hammock wrote:
| > renewables that are significantly lower volume &
| frequency
|
| What is the volume difference of LNG versus nickel ore or
| copper ore (which are less than 1% nickel or copper, and
| are mostly rock), which is extracted with diesel-powered
| mining equipment before being shipped halfway around the
| globe to be smelted - at great energy cost, which is only
| sometimes renewable - and then shipped halfway around the
| globe again to begin manufacturing?
| nradov wrote:
| Much of that isn't fuel but rather chemical feedstock.
| There is a plausible path to significantly reduce fossil
| fuel use for transportation and energy. But finding another
| economically viable way to manufacture fertilizers,
| asphalt, and plastics is a much harder problem.
| AngryData wrote:
| If we had the energy generation capacity it isn't that
| hard to replace most chemical feed stocks. The problem
| has always been that fossil fuel as a reagent is
| significantly cheaper than the equivalent energy cost to
| synthesize replacement reagents from other sources.
| Fertilizer for example can be produced from atmospheric
| air, the problem is fertilizer already uses 1% of global
| electricity production, and not using fossil fuels to do
| it will increase that energy requirement 10 fold, so 10%
| of global energy production. Another reason we probably
| should of invested more heavily in nuclear in the past so
| we could be in a much better place today.
| skyfaller wrote:
| I think we can/should greatly reduce use of plastics by
| eliminating single-use plastic wherever possible. This
| mostly requires political will / habit changes. Although
| creating circular systems for e.g. food containers has
| its challenges, it's not moon shot difficult, we have
| these systems on small scales and we just need more
| people to use them.
|
| I agree that fertilizer is a very difficult problem, it's
| possibly the hardest problem related to fossil fuels.
| Low-Tech Mag has covered this to some degree, and I'm in
| awe of the scale of the issue, as well as the dire
| effects of not figuring it out (people starving).
| https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2021/03/urban-fish-
| ponds-l... To some degree, I figure we'll just have to
| accept fertilizer as the last legitimate use of fossil
| fuels until we completely rebuild our farms / food
| production and sewage systems to be circular.
| hammock wrote:
| >reduce use of plastics by eliminating single-use plastic
| wherever possible
|
| In favor of what? Paper or bamboo fiber? Europe has no
| trees, where will they get it from? How do you suppose it
| will be transported?
| thomasjb wrote:
| There's plenty of natural fibre based alternatives for a
| significant portion of plastic usage, otherwise reusable
| glass, ceramic, metal and wooden containers can fill a
| need, and be locally produced.
|
| Trees can be farmed, and I would like to see pollarding
| and coppicing used for paper manufacture
| hgomersall wrote:
| How about in favour of people getting their fruit and veg
| not wrapped in superfluous anything. You're really asking
| the wrong question here. And yes, most of our copious
| quantities of fruit and veg comes without wrapping.
| detourdog wrote:
| Doesn't sound beyond human capability and I would rather work
| on a EcoClipper than Amazon.
| leesalminen wrote:
| At 2-3 trips per year that means spending 4-6 months at sea
| per trip. That's a lot of time away from family.
|
| I would definitely rather work for Amazon and see my family
| every night.
| Infernal wrote:
| Folks who do this sort of thing tend to only work half
| the year. So you make one of those trips, and spend the
| other half of the year at home w/ your family full time.
| detourdog wrote:
| Sounds like there are plenty of workers for everyone.
| nradov wrote:
| Would you still rather work on a EcoClipper if they pay you
| less that $11 a day? That's about the starting wage for
| entry-level seamen on foreign registered merchant ships.
| Sailing ships would have to pay even less than that in
| order to be cost competitive. Outside of maybe a few twee
| luxury goods, shippers aren't willing to pay more for the
| privilege of having their goods moved by sail.
| detourdog wrote:
| I think the ramp up between now and when a EcoClipper job
| becomes available it's really hard to judge the tradeoffs
| you present.
|
| If one extrapolates that ramp-up and time and applies it
| to the future quality of a job at Amazon... maybe it will
| be a job at Amazon.
| adolph wrote:
| EcoClipper500 appears to be 40m long. If 7.5mm are operated
| the total length is 300,000,000 meters, or 300,000
| kilometers. In perspective, the distance from Long Beach to
| Hawaii is 4,100 km, and Hawaii to Shanghai is 8,000 km. So
| the number of EcoClipper500s needed would stretch across the
| Pacific 25 times.
| mcnrny wrote:
| Does the author not make the same point at the end of the
| article?
|
| > Of course, none of this would ever happen.
|
| > We should not be fooled by abstract relative measurements,
| which only serve to keep the focus on growth and efficiency.
|
| It seems unreasonable to try to fix the myriad issues with
| global supply chain without adjusting the expectations and
| consumption habits.
| [deleted]
| stevenally wrote:
| Nobody is claiming that sailing ships will solve the
| environmental crisis.
|
| But neither will minor improvements to Ro-Ro fuel efficiency.
| jlg23 wrote:
| The "12 crew and 12 passengers" would, as far as I remember,
| require one doctor on board. The number of passengers a cargo
| ship may take without dedicated medical staff was ridiculously
| low and explains why it is so much harder/expensive to travel on
| board as a passenger than one would expect. (8 years ago it was
| $200/day and up)
| speed_spread wrote:
| > How to design a sailing ship for the 21st century?
|
| Late 21st century? Put wheels on the bottom of it...
| lelag wrote:
| Off-topic but that first picture circa 1920 of the 4 sailors up
| on the mast is such a storm is amazing. It commands respect to
| the work and life of those men.
| gns24 wrote:
| I can recommend this film from one of the last commercial sail
| ships rounding Cape Horn in 1928 during some big storms,
| narrated by an experienced captain.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLzBDhilDL0
| matthewmcg wrote:
| Many have called the sailing ship era the time of wooden ships
| and iron men. I'm not sure where this phrase was first used,
| but this website attributes it to a 1930 poem:
|
| https://www.madisonhistory.org/madisons-iron-men/
| V__ wrote:
| > then the EcoClipper500 would have a carbon footprint of about 2
| grammes of CO2 per tonne-kilometre of cargo [...] This is roughly
| five times less than the carbon footprint of a container ship (10
| grammes CO2/tonne-km) and three times less than the carbon
| footprint of a bulk-carrier (6 grammes CO2/tonne-km).
|
| Sadly, this doesn't seem like a lot, to be honest. Especially,
| for all the downsides a smaller ship has,
| ragebol wrote:
| And assumes a 50 year life time. That sounds optimistically
| long, although I have no idea how long a conventional container
| ship lasts.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I think 50 years is at the longer side of ship lifetime but
| not especially an outlier. The big commissioning fleets sell
| them after a couple decades and replace them with new. The
| secondhand owner refits for a different purpose or partially
| overhaul then runs it for another couple decades. Sometimes a
| third owner gets some use out of it. They normally go at
| least 35 years before total decommissioning though, usually
| longer.
| mechhacker wrote:
| One thing they don't seem to have mentioned was hydrofoils.
|
| It would be more for time critical shipments, but hydrofoils can
| greatly increase the speed of sailing vessels, but would need
| proper design for the sea state (such as routes to avoid larger
| waves, different hydrofoil designs less for speed and more for
| safety/reliability, etc.).
|
| The Olympic windsurf race in 2024 will be the first one with
| hydrofoils. America's Cup racers with the AC75 class are already
| on foils, with very high speed (~60mph), sometimes over triple
| the windspeed. Windsurfers on foils now can triple or quadruple
| windspeed in light winds.
|
| This tech is much more common now, and has exploded in the last
| 10 years in various different water sports. It would just need to
| be adapted to a different need than just racing.
|
| AC-75 racing class: https://youtu.be/OQsXDdGxk3U
|
| IQFoil racing class: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAKfbk_kB_4
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| The AC and similar foiling boats are very cool but not even
| remotely practical as a cargo technology. There's a reason
| those boats are carbon fiber and insanely expensive.
|
| There is no "routes to avoid larger waves." That simply is not
| a thing. Even in dead calm there's rogue waves that come along.
|
| Speed is not the constraint for ocean shipping.
| nradov wrote:
| It is physically impossible to build a hydrofoil sailing vessel
| that can carry cargo across oceans. Those racing boats are tiny
| with zero cargo capacity, require relatively large crews for
| the size, and take huge amounts of maintenance. The designs do
| not scale, not are they capable of safely handling the same
| weather conditions as large merchant ships.
|
| Y Combinator portfolio company Boundary Layer Technologies
| tried to build a diesel powered hydrofoil cargo vessel to
| target the market niche between air cargo and slow displacement
| hull cargo ships. The basic technology probably could have
| worked but they failed due to lack of any real customer demand.
| ianburrell wrote:
| I am not sure regular hydrofoil cargo ships are practical. My
| understanding is that hydrofoils don't do well in high seas.
| All the passenger ferries I know about are in coastal waters.
| It may not be possible to have one that can cross ocean and
| deal with storms.
|
| The Boundary Layer proposal is pretty small, 200 tons and 20
| TEU capacity. It would have the same scaling problems as the
| sailboat in article.
|
| Is there a market for slightly faster shipping? The hydrofoil
| is 40 knots which is 6 days from China, container ships are
| 20 knots and 11 days. If there was a market for faster
| shipping, would expect to see 30 knot ships. I bet the really
| urgent needs air and current cargo aircraft are sufficient.
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