[HN Gopher] Launch HN: OutSail (YC W23) - Wingsails to reduce ca...
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Launch HN: OutSail (YC W23) - Wingsails to reduce cargo ship fuel
consumption
Hi HN! I'm Joseph, and along with Arpan and Bailey we are the
founders of OutSail Shipping (https://outsailshipping.com/). We're
building a sail the size of a 747 that rolls up into a shipping
container. When deployed, it will generate thrust from the wind to
reduce the fuel consumption of a cargo ship. An array of these
devices will reduce fuel consumption on ships by up to 20%. These
sails are easily stowed and removed to cause no interference with
cargo operations. Here's a short video showing our prototype:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUpVqzpym54. Sails powered ships
for millennia; but then the convenience of energy-dense fuels
displaced sails. As ship speeds eventually exceeded wind speeds,
the consensus became that sails had no place in shipping and were
relegated to hobbyists and sport. Fast forward a century and a
half, and maritime shipping, like all other industries, is facing a
reckoning to mitigate the greenhouse gasses produced by their
activities. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has
introduced new regulations which use a vessel's Carbon Intensity
Indicator (CII) to grade ships. This grading scale becomes more
aggressive over time, and any ship with a poor grade must take
corrective action. The corrective actions can be as non-invasive as
reducing speed (aka: slow steaming) or as extreme as a retrofit to
use a different, cleaner fuel source. This costs millions and takes
a ship out of commission for months, and it's difficult to ensure
your (now more expensive) fuel is available at every port of call.
Ship owners are hedging their bets that slow steaming will dominate
their future, with ship order books full to reflect the increased
capacity needed when containers take 20% longer to cross the ocean.
Or option three. There is sufficient wind on the ocean to power the
entire shipping industry, if you're willing to grab it. Wind
Assisted Ship Propulsion (WASP) devices can be used as a corrective
action to improve a vessel's CII rating, without reducing ship
speed or changing the route. In other words, a return of sails. We
are hardware engineers with over two decades of experience between
us, working at Tesla, SpaceX, JPL, Relativity, and some startups.
The idea for OutSail came from Arpan and Joseph getting coffee
after work one day. When we asked each other "What would you do if
you weren't building satellites?" maritime cargo came up from both
sides; Arpan from having studied the industry for opportunities to
reduce emissions, and Joseph from a love of hydrodynamics and maybe
too many sea-shanties. Bailey and Arpan, meanwhile, had been
looking at working on bicycling infrastructure. What brought the
three of us together was actually a Dungeons & Dragons game where
we realized we made a good team! We settled on OutSail as a good
fit for our hardware hacking mentality, trading in our druids
staffs for spanners. Aerodynamically, sails are simply vertical
wings. Wind blowing across the vessel causes the sail to generate
lift and drag, and the resultant vector has some forward component
to pull the ship through the water. However, if the wind comes from
an angle too close to the direction of travel, there is no thrust.
As an added complication, the sail only sees the _relative_ wind.
If the ship travels faster, the wind will appear to come from
closer and closer to the direction of travel, even if the true wind
is coming from perpendicular to your course! Despite this, standard
sails can still produce forward thrust as long as the wind is at
least 20 degrees off from directly in front of the vessel. This is
how our sails can still save power, even on a fast moving vessel.
There are many sail technologies out there. A common question we
get asked is "Are you going to use flettner rotors/suction
airfoils?". Both of these technologies use power supplied by the
ship to increase the lift produced by a surface; rotor-sails spin,
and suction airfoils...suck? Each of these have a place, especially
at low vessel speeds. But our customers ask us for a solution that
works for container ships cruising at the relatively high speed of
22kt. At these speeds, the relative wind is almost always ahead of
you, so lift/drag becomes more important. Powered sails suffer from
poor lift/drag, both from the high induced drag from very high lift
coefficients, and system losses from drawing on ship's power. So no
we are not going with flettner rotors/suction airfoils. While they
are the new exciting technology on the block, if you factor in
their power usage and high drag ratio, they are just not as
practical as a simple sail. So now that we've given a general
summary of sailing, it's time to explain how a 747 wing will ever
fit inside a 9ft tall cargo container. It's simple really: imagine
a tape measure. In a tape measure a thin, flexible strip of metal
is wound into a spiral. Then, when the metal is uncoiled, it
naturally returns to its original shape. That's exactly how we plan
to make our sails. The skin of our sail or the inner spars (we
haven't finalized our design) will be made of tape measure like
material (2mm thick steel) and the wing will be able to extend out
of the cargo container. The video in the first paragraph explains
this in a bit more detail. By fitting our sail into a cargo
container we allow for our device to be installed on any cargo ship
right at port. Remember how we mentioned that some shippers are
ordering a lot more ships and some ships are getting retrofitted
with new fuel? Well, shipyards are backed up for the next 5 years.
By making a device that requires no shipyard to install, not only
will we drastically outcompete other retrofit WASP companies in
terms of deployment cost, but we will be the only company with a
product shippers can put on their ship without a multiple year wait
time. Do you have any interesting stories around sailing or wind
tech? We would love to hear your ideas, experiences, and feedback
on any and all of the above!
Author : jmoorebeek
Score : 293 points
Date : 2023-04-03 16:18 UTC (6 hours ago)
| revscat wrote:
| How are they powered?
| Rorando wrote:
| I would assume the same way reefer containers are, hooked up to
| the ships onboard power distribution. Electrically rigged sail
| of this magnitude does not impose any significant loads on the
| grid onboard
| jmoorebeek wrote:
| We actually plan to go a step further, and power these
| containers from an internal battery pack. We can then
| recharge the pack passively when deployed (small wind turbine
| or solar). Of course we can optionally hook up to ship power
| if it's available, but we're planning for the case where it
| is not. As you say, the power to operate these devices should
| not impose a large electrical load.
| Rorando wrote:
| Sounds like step further indeed. Considering all the
| equipment and ideas raised so far, would be amazing to have
| a look at how you would arrange all this inside the
| oversized container. Must be quite an intricate puzzle
| inside.
| quirkot wrote:
| questions:
|
| 1) what size container ship are you targeting?
|
| 2) how many container sails are needed in an array to achieve 20%
| fuel cost reduction?
|
| 3) what scale of retrofitting is required to install this onto
| existing fleets?
|
| 4) what sort of training is required for existing staff to
| properly trim the sails / will this impact headcount requirements
| per ship?
| bksdacosta wrote:
| 1.We are talking to ship owners with Panamax vessels (3000 -
| 4500 TEU). Therefore, many of our estimates are based on a
| vessel of that size. Nevertheless, our product will work with
| any sized container ship.
|
| 2.We will need 15 sails to save 20% fuel on a 4000 TEU vessel
| travelling transpacific or transatlantic.
|
| 3.We will install an override panel on the bridge of the ship,
| a lidar system to sense wind gusts and some extra lashings will
| be tied from the sail's container to the containers below it -
| that's it! None of those additions will require permanent
| changes to the ship.
|
| 4.No extra staff will be needed, our sails will be controlled
| autonomously. However, the captain will be given controls in
| the bridge if they ever want to force the sails to retract.
| trillic wrote:
| Awesome to see this on Hacker News, I love whenever we get
| sailors on here. I have tons of questions.
|
| Why steel? Durability I assume? Have you modeled using a textile?
|
| Do you have load sensors throughout the wing? Anemometors?
|
| How active is the trimming? Is it just a single axis of rotation
| or do you have the ability to adjust the leech and luff shape? If
| so do you have the ability to adjust both the leeward and
| windward skins? Or just the windward? 2mm steel seems like it has
| a decent amount of play at that scale? Have you built any bigger
| scale models with steel? Feels to me like iteration time would
| take a significant hit playing with steel instead of cloth?
|
| As consistent as these ships are with their speed under motor,
| the apparent wind will be all over the place. Could see apparent
| from 50+ on the nose to 5 knots from dead astern. Do you intend
| to have a fixed set of optimal wind velocities and trim settings?
| Or want to make something that is usable and automatic in
| anything but the most violent of breezes?
|
| How much of the bill-of-materials is custom and how much is off-
| the-shelf type components and structural bits? Any custom
| composite parts or fairly off the shelf steel tubing, bar, and
| such?
|
| Also are you hiring?
| jmoorebeek wrote:
| We're looking at steel partly for durability, but also if we're
| going to be rolling up the sails a lot then fatigue limits
| become a lot more important. Cost is key too - I'd love to make
| this from CF, but price goes way up.
|
| For load sensors, we're thinking strain gauges and pressure
| sensors to measure wing surface pressure and use that for live
| feedback. Anemometers might be mounted on the top of the wing,
| but more likely we'll use a master anemometer at the bridge to
| send info to the entire array.
|
| For the wing shape, we're currently looking at a symmetric
| airfoil with fixed ribs inside for strength, so not able to
| actively change the camber, but we are looking at the ability
| to do wing warping to change the overall shape of the wing. We
| are still working to get our first data from on the water, so
| no good answers on the trim other than we want to make this as
| automatic and turnkey for the ship master as possible. We're
| quite early in the design still, though, so don't yet know
| where the limits of the technology are. Likewise, no answers on
| BOM and sourcing for you. However, we do plan to start hiring
| after our seed raise, so feel free to contact us through our
| website!
| sailfast wrote:
| +1 to seeing sailing on here :)
|
| I'd imagine the last 1-2 generations of America's Cup boats
| would have a lot to glean in terms of wing sail camber
| changes and how they operate. Pretty neat to watch how they
| use flaps vertically, but there's a lot of hydraulics and
| carbon at play there as well.
|
| Maybe the competition is these guys? (Inflatable sails)
| https://www.michelin.com/en/press-releases/michelin-
| continue...
|
| And something a bit more conventional off the bow when winds
| are favorable? https://skysails-marine.com/
| trillic wrote:
| The most recent completed America's Cup uses a boomless
| dual skinned mainsail held up by a fairly traditional mast.
| The Cats and Tris between the IACC and the AC75 (2010,
| 2013, 2017) are more something to take inspiration from I'd
| think with their more complex internal construction.
| SailGP's wings, have proven to be quite versatile and
| durable, albeit with significant maintenance. I'd assume a
| cargo wingsail would be a bit beefier than a foiling
| raceboat's.
|
| Despite the switch from wings back to "normal sails" In my
| view, this latest generation of America's Cup is especially
| awesome from a follower's perspective for two distinct
| reasons.
|
| 1. The rule is similar to last gen, a foiling 75 foot
| monohull. A number of the initial engineering work and
| sorta figuring out how to design and build the various
| systems has already been done, a team wanting to join in on
| the fun doesn't have to reinvent the wheel with everything
| unless they believe they can have an edge by doing so.
| There are old boats for sale as well as a 40-foot model for
| training the athletes on their controls.
|
| 2. There's a centralized repository for reconnaissance.
| Meaning, every team, and some of the media have access to
| sailing, launching, and training footage of every team.
| What has for over a century required each team employ their
| own multi-national team of spies to surveil each
| competitor. It was unnecessarily costly and the fans get
| the added benefit of being to watch much more of each
| team's boats as their systems morph throughout the design
| process. I have a friend on the recon team and as well have
| been exposed through a yt channel, "Mozzy Sails"[1], who
| does a great assessment on the various teams systems
| developments.
|
| If you're a fan of F1 for the engineering bits, you'll
| likely feel right at home following some of the America's
| Cup coverage. Even the technical documents like the Class
| Rule and super interesting to me. [2]
|
| [1]
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK0h2Yj6jcyeXGeITonYnOA
| [2] https://www.americascup.com/files/m5498_AC75-Class-
| Rule-v20....
| stwr wrote:
| Small world! I head up the IT systems at Alinghi Red Bull
| Racing. Agree with your final paragraph that it is
| extremely close to F1 in terms of engineering bits. Good
| fun!
| roflyear wrote:
| Skysails seems like it would just be too much for boats to
| manage. I can't imagine the amount of time you can run that
| is a large percentage of the trip.
| trillic wrote:
| Don't like the potential of the kite going under the boat
| and getting wrapped up / destroyed in the prop.
| cjlars wrote:
| Why is a retracting mast preferable to a freestanding rig with,
| e.g. a roller furling main or a nonsuch style wishbone boom? Is
| there a physics reason or is this a pragmatic trade-off to fit
| under bridges and stay out of the way during loading?
| wongarsu wrote:
| Typically attempts to fit sails on moderns ships (like the
| rotor sails that have been installed on some ships in recent
| years) are targeted at ferries or tankers, exactly because of
| the loading/unloading topic. Putting large structures on a
| container ship will interfere with the cranes. And the SC
| Connector launched in 2021 can tilt the rotor to fit under
| bridges, with sails half as high as what OutSail tries to do
| [1]
|
| 1: https://www.rivieramm.com/news-content-hub/sea-cargo-ro-
| ro-w...
| ArpanRau wrote:
| Retraction is pragmatic: Air draft and loading/unloading
| concerns. Wings because they perform much better than
| traditional sails when installed on ships that are already
| powering forward at speed.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > use a vessel's Carbon Intensity Indicator (CII) to grade ships
|
| Oh criminy. We have fuel economy regulations, carbon offsets,
| carbon footprint mandates, ICE regulations, natural gas bans, all
| sorts of daft proposals to avoid doing the simple, obvious, easy,
| efficient, and effective obvious:
|
| Tax the carbon atoms in the fuels.
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| Taxation may help in reducing the attractiveness of carbon
| fuels, but essentially we need to stop carbon atoms getting
| into the atmosphere (as CO2). It doesn't matter how much tax is
| collected, there is not (currently) much that can be done about
| the CO2 released.
|
| Simplest solution is to _leave it in the ground_. Just reduce
| the amount of oil /coal/gas dug up and burnt - we (or the
| corporations) know exactly how much is being dug up, so stop
| the digging.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Increasing the cost of burning carbon will, in a market
| economy, drive less use of burning carbon without need of
| regulation, bans, mandates, etc.
| go_elmo wrote:
| A general shift in mentality and therefore law has started and
| needs to be pushed through in the next years:
|
| Price externalized costs.
|
| The world was treates like an infinite resource that it isnt.
| Emit carbon? It has its price to emit that that someone needs
| to pay. Same should go with noise etc. Reving that Car at
| midnight waking up hundrets of people? That does an economic
| health damage of thousands of dollars too.
| mousetree wrote:
| How do you price the externalities?
| tfourb wrote:
| There are thousands of quite intelligent people studying
| this and they are writing studies and reports which can be
| googled. CO2 for example should probably cost in the high
| double/low three figures, depending on your assumptions on
| economic growth, the time frame, etc.: https://www.cen.uni-
| hamburg.de/en/about-cen/news/09-news-202...
| ThomPete wrote:
| The problem is that none of those intelligent people
| factor in the positive externalities.
| lazide wrote:
| Aka no one currently knows, let alone has any sort of
| defensible formula right now?
| soVeryTired wrote:
| As an externality, the price of emitting 1kg of carbon
| should be a little greater than the cost of capturing and
| storing 1kg of carbon.
|
| That's too expensive a target to be realistic right now, so
| the real question is what's a level of taxation that won't
| cause social unrest, but that will change behaviour?
| francoi8 wrote:
| For CO2 at least the average price that it costs to pump
| the CO2 out of the atmosphere.
| ThomPete wrote:
| Are you going to discount it up against externalized
| benefits? Cause if that's how we want to think about it, you
| need to make an actual P&L analysis not just take one side.
| (And no the positive externalities are not priced in or they
| wouldn't be externalities)
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| Relevant Context: Shipping contributes about 3% of anthropogenic
| carbon emissions:
|
| https://www.imo.org/en/OurWork/Environment/Pages/Fourth-IMO-...
|
| "The share of shipping emissions in global anthropogenic
| emissions has increased from 2.76% in 2012 to 2.89% in 2018."
| roter wrote:
| I know zero about how containers are tied down but the gust
| forces on the sails that I saw in the video are going to be
| enormous. Have there been some simple checks on the righting
| moments on the container and how it transmitted to the containers
| below and finally to the deck? One benefit of the design is that
| you can "reef" in bad conditions (hopefully really, really
| quickly) and perhaps still get some benefit.
|
| Have you done any weather routing calcs to see what the angle of
| attack for the big ship lanes? Perhaps an integrated trip cost-
| benefit?
|
| Also, you might not want to use the WASP acronym and stick with
| just "wind-assisted propulsion". The wind industry will
| immediately think of the WAsP software [0].
|
| [0] https://www.wasp.dk/
| polar8 wrote:
| If you go with WAP you can hire Cardi B as your celebrity
| spokesperson!
| jmoorebeek wrote:
| I agree, the roll moments are a huge design challenge! We're
| looking at multiple avenues to bring those loads down to the
| deck: - The double wide container already has a longer lever
| arm to provide righting moment - We plan to incorporate load
| spreaders (similar to a crane) which can further extend the
| footprint to the adjacent container stacks - We are designing
| in tethers which automatically drop down to the deck level and
| get lashed down by a deckhand during installation, which
| provide additional tension support.
|
| Bailey has written a routing software which we use to send
| virtual ships on crossings (for instance Trans Pacific),
| incorporating historical weather data. Even with no change in
| route or vessel speed, we can see benefits.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ArpanRau wrote:
| Appreciate the acronym check! That's a great point.
|
| Our design evolved out of a routing/performance analysis
| software that we run on historical weather data. Angle of
| attack and trip cost-benefit varies per lane. In general
| transpacific and transatlantic have amazing winds, with other
| routes performing well but not at well.
|
| We've done the excel-level analyses on container loads and wing
| buckling forces. It all checks out. There is a combined-load
| case at 15deg of roll with heavy containers and heavy winds
| that's zero-margin, but as you said we can reef when required.
| Reefing will likely be single-digit minutes, but we can also
| feather (0 angle of attack) much more quickly.
| idealism wrote:
| Though it may not matter much, "WASZP" is also the naming of
| a popular foiling dinghy sailboat.
| octo123 wrote:
| Few things, Maybe get some actual riggers or yacht builders as
| consultants.
|
| Who do you plan to sell to ? Foreign flagged vessels ? Foreign
| ports? This will have a big impact on the crew running the ship.
|
| Who is going to run maintenance on your sail/ device ? Do you
| expect the ships engineers to be trained on your systems and run
| routine maintenance?
|
| Finally, I think you need to learn a tremendous amount about
| stevedores and expectations on your container being placed in the
| correct place everytime.
| jandrese wrote:
| This is super cool. I hope it pans out this time. I've seen a
| number of attempts to add sails to cargo ships in the past, and
| generally they have not been a success because it involves adding
| a skilled person to the crew to manage the sails and cargo
| companies are allergic to paying extra salaries, even if they
| manage to make more than their salary back in fuel costs.
| jmoorebeek wrote:
| This is definitely a place where we think we can leverage
| modern automation processes. No need to add additional crew to
| manage the rigging, and the system should be able to manage
| itself safely.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > The idea for OutSail came from
|
| Proposals for adding sails to cargo ships goes back decades.
| While I wish you guys success, it's going to be tough sailing.
| wisaacj wrote:
| This is an awesome idea! Whilst I know nothing about containers,
| I find myself wondering if the connections between containers
| would be able to support the massive moments of force from these
| sails. Also, would you have to ensure that all the wings are
| based at the same height on deck for stability or can that be
| effectively managed through extending and contracting individual
| wings? Finally, suppose you need the sail containers to be as
| close to the deck as possible (anticipating one response to my
| previous thoughts), how much shipping volume would be sacrificed
| by being unable to place any containers directly above?
| josh_carterPDX wrote:
| As someone who runs an accelerator focused on the maritime
| industry (maritimeblue.org) this is awesome! I've seen some of
| this technology being tried in the nordic countries and it's nice
| to see it being built here in the US.
|
| If I can be of help, please let me know. My email is
| josh.carter@maritimeblue.org.
| dpflan wrote:
| Do you have a full-size working prototype? Have you tried this on
| a real shipping container ship? And can't Maersk just copy this
| concept?
| jmoorebeek wrote:
| Our current prototype is a 1/50 bench model using off-the-shelf
| tape measures. We're working on rapidly scaling that up to test
| on our Lido-14. I'm sure others will try to copy the concept,
| but as the comments have shown there will be quite a few
| engineering difficulties getting this from a bench prototype to
| production. As a startup rather than a legacy company, we are
| well situated to take on that difficult engineering task,
| whereas a larger company may shy away from it. We'd of course
| be happy to work with them to get this on a ship and de-risk
| the rest of the operations!
| girthbrooks wrote:
| Really interesting concept, will follow your success on LI, very
| excited to see this grow.
|
| I think innovative solutions like these for pre-existing
| industries are fantastic. Really stoked someone is focused on
| this topic, even though 5 minutes ago I was uninformed.
| nickff wrote:
| There have been, and continue to be many companies focused on
| harnessing wind power for reducing cargo ship emissions.
| OutSail's (proposed) innovation is putting the sail into a
| standard inter-modal container form-factor.
| swyx wrote:
| but like what other form factors exist for container ships?
| nobody thought to put the sails into containers on a
| _container_ ship before these guys?
| nickff wrote:
| I'm not sure what other options have been considered (by
| would-be market entrants), but OutSail appears to be the
| first company that is attempting to package a sail into a
| 'box'. Some other companies have made devices like kites
| which were relatively vessel-type agnostic.
| brianbreslin wrote:
| This is neat, have lots of questions about how sturdy the
| connections are between TEUs. Also How difficult is it for the
| captains and crew to pilot a ship like this? How much cargo
| capacity has to be forsaken for these to be installed? 20 TEUs?
|
| This feels like something that the govt should be subsidizing
| through grants.
| wpietri wrote:
| As the maintainer of a cargo ship tracker [1] and as somebody
| whose sailing career started and ended with sinking [2] a J/22
| sailboat [3], I can only salute you. This is clever, bold, and
| ambitious. How do we keep track of your progress? I looked for a
| blog or mailing list, but I didn't see one.
|
| [1] now at https://sfba.social/@sfships; formerly at
| https://twitter.com/sfships
|
| [2] They said it was unsinkable, but as a software developer
| clearly I'm more talented than the norm.
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J/22
| ArpanRau wrote:
| Follow our linkedin! I'll post there when I can :)
|
| https://www.linkedin.com/company/OutSail-Shipping/
| wpietri wrote:
| Done. Thanks!
| trillic wrote:
| What happened? Long knock down and a hatch glass failure? Or a
| failure to secure the hatch glass entirely?
| wpietri wrote:
| It was a rental, so I'm not totally sure. I think they told
| me that there was a compartment that wasn't properly sealed?
|
| Once you took sailing classes at the place, you could take
| one out. My first time out on my own I backwinded the jib,
| which knocked it down. Then my non-sailor friends grabbed for
| the top rail, turtling the boat. Eventually we got it back up
| and started bailing, but it kept getting lower in the water,
| so we all jumped out again. The back then pretty rapidly
| sank, leaving a foot of the mast and a foot of the bow above
| the water. That left us treading water two miles offshore on
| a quiet Wednesday afternoon.
|
| As you might imagine, I haven't done a lot of sailing since.
| p-o wrote:
| This is the kind of story that is amazing to read and even
| more amazing to hear in person. Since you're telling it
| today, I assume that even though it was probably a pretty
| stressful event when it occurred, you now have the
| perspective to enjoy telling the story and see everyone's
| face when you tell it.
|
| Thank you for the laughter.
| skanga wrote:
| Great idea! The world needs this - if it works.
|
| Just like some strong pressure will bend a tape measure - will a
| strong wind gust damage your sails?
| jmoorebeek wrote:
| Of course, there will be limits on the wind speed the structure
| can handle. Flexing of the structure will be designed in,
| similar to how a 787 wing flexes by design under load. For
| stronger gusts, aside from design margin, we are also looking
| at technologies that can help us see gusts coming, for instance
| LIDAR systems which are already used on ships which can detect
| windspeeds for kilometers around the vessel. We can then reef
| or feather the sails when we see a gust coming and remain
| within structural limits.
| skanga wrote:
| Thanks @jmoorebeek. I wish you tremendous success.
| candyman wrote:
| I have been learning more about this industry and the need for
| efficiency since I had to do research for an article on Heidmar
| (https://www.spacvest.com/heidmar-shipping) since a part of what
| they do is help shippers understand and optimize their projected
| energy consumptions. I guess it will also spur an upgrade of the
| fleet to more efficient units. Installing units like these could
| be one of the value added services they might get into. I'd like
| to see more figures and backup on the website about the cost and
| potential savings. It's hard to get people to do something new
| unless the economics are very compelling.
| yesbabyyes wrote:
| Neat! I love seeing this type of technology,
| offloading/optimizing using a fairly simple idea; though I doubt
| it's realization was easy!
|
| Nitpick: you seem to have a typo under "Safe": it says "safely
| and secularly" which I'm fairly sure should be "securely".
|
| Godspeed!
| bksdacosta wrote:
| Hahaha, thank you - just fixed! Our website was drafted up
| quickly to show off our marketing video - can you tell?!
| DMell wrote:
| Does this have any impact on the stability of the ship in rolling
| seas? Is this an issue that is countered with ballasts or would
| there need to be thought into a more traditional sailing keel?
|
| Also, what is the maintenance like on these? When I was in the
| Navy we had huge crews to conduct routine maintenance but on
| cargo ships, there tend to be small numbers.
|
| Love this - what a cool idea!
| jmoorebeek wrote:
| From our early investigations, many cargo ships already
| maintain sufficient moveable ballast (ie: water tanks) in order
| to handle dock operations, that they can also handle the roll
| moment from the sails. Maintenance is on our mind too. The
| possibility with a containerized solution is as easy as "ship
| it back to the manufacturer by putting a shipping label on it"
| for maintenance, and we can make sure to have spares dockside
| for our customers while their main device is being serviced.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| This seems like a really good idea on the face of it, yet sails
| have obviously been around since the first cargo ships were
| built. What are the drawbacks and why is this not more common
| already?
| twic wrote:
| Can existing cranes lift double-width containers?
| bksdacosta wrote:
| Cranes can lift double wides, the bigger limitation is the
| maximum weight a crane can carry. Luckily, a Panama sized crane
| can lift 40 - 50 tons and our current weight estimate is fairly
| below that.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| I would be cautious about the twisting loads on containers. The
| side forces will be huge, especially in a swell. Then add
| mechanical parts that must work in an incredibly hostile
| environment, and lastly, add on the north Atlantic in the winter,
| and you are in for a bad time. Ships losing containers due to
| stacks collapsing happens very frequently, without any extra
| forces.
|
| https://alsum.co/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Perdida-de-conte...
|
| Look at a purpose-built sailship from the age of sail in a north
| Atlantic storm. It is a rough ride.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7RABaByP_8
|
| Another attempt in a similar fashion is the Oceanbird concept by
| Wallenius Wilhelmsen, but that means building the vessel from the
| ground to handle the forces and that over-head loading and
| unloading is not possible, thus the aim at RO-RO ships.
|
| https://www.theoceanbird.com/
|
| With one vessel already ordered:
|
| https://www.walleniuswilhelmsen.com/news-and-insights/highli...
|
| Personally, as a commercial sailor and software engineer, this
| container approach screams of VCs throwing money at commercial
| shipping without understanding the industry. Profit margins are
| non-existent and are already hugely optimized with possibilities
| for specialized solutions. This wing sail will have to compete
| with synthetic fuels without increasing the cost due to crewing
| requirements.
| carabiner wrote:
| Everyone's forgetting that this is just like a jetliner wing.
| Huge forces, harsh environments, long lifespan... this is how
| commercial airplanes are designed, and one of the founders is a
| professional aerospace engineer who worked at Tesla.
| roflyear wrote:
| > professional aerospace engineer who worked at Tesla.
|
| Being fair, this is really broad and doesn't mean much at
| all.
| Someone wrote:
| > Everyone's forgetting that this is just like a jetliner
| wing.
|
| Just like a jetliner wing that can be folded up. On the plus
| side, jetliners regularly hit speeds relative to the air that
| are ten times as fast
| jpm_sd wrote:
| Agreed on all counts. "Mirage" is the perfect name for this
| product.
| L_226 wrote:
| I'm sure it's implied the container itself will be fixed to
| the hull to meet those requirements
| robin_reala wrote:
| It's really not: look at the first video on
| https://www.outsailshipping.com/
| RhodesianHunter wrote:
| This is clearly intended to supplement, not replace, the ship's
| existing power source.
|
| You would fold these down rather than trying to ride out a
| swell with them up. They go out of they way to clarify how
| easily these can be furled and unfurled.
| goosinmouse wrote:
| Im no engineer but this is what i thought too. Just
| automatically fold the sails when gusts reach above a certain
| threshold. Shouldn't be too hard, right?
| nickff wrote:
| This may be more challenging than you think; depending on
| how you 'fold' the sails, you may end up with enough
| 'windage' 'aloft' to over-stress the connections anyway.
| They'll likely be forced to bring the wing down completely,
| which will either make the wings small or expensive.
| [deleted]
| ArpanRau wrote:
| Yep, supporting the moment from the wing via containers is the
| biggest structural concern. The containers are strong enough in
| most sea states, with reefing/feathering required in heavier
| winds and seas. We will stow the sail long before it encounters
| conditions like the ones shown in your video.
|
| Oceanbird is awesome! The trouble is that overhauling the
| entire industry with new-built ships would take too long to
| make a meaningful climate impact, and be extremely expensive
| (not to mention that their approach only works for ro-ros).
|
| Synthetic fuels will compete with aviation for the green
| hydrogen supply (needed to make methanol/ammonia/green
| hydrocarbons) and are expected to cost 2-3x what current fuels
| cost. This net makes our fuel cost savings case even stronger.
|
| Industry insiders generally already know that there's really no
| good cost-saving decarbonization solution, and that
| decarbonizing fast is a hair-on-fire problem for
| owner/operators. The barriers standing in the way of most wind-
| assist devices are: poor ROI, shipyard availability for
| retrofits, risk to shipwoner (capital upfront), and that they
| don't package on containerships. We solve all these problems by
| using a large, efficient wing and depending on the container
| load path. There are technical problems to solve, but the
| fundamental physics works.
| julosflb wrote:
| What is the order of magnitude of the wind load generated on
| one single wing?
| ArpanRau wrote:
| 10s of Kn . It's <10% the wingloading of a 747.
| roflyear wrote:
| Well, you don't have to run it in those conditions.
| nickff wrote:
| Most of the popular shipping lanes traverse hostile
| conditions for at least one season of the year.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| You should be advertising on your wings. That's too much space to
| leave blank. Good luck!
| carabiner wrote:
| Yeah for a sec I wasn't sure those were the actual product. I
| thought those were support pylons that would connect the sails,
| turns out those _are_ the sails. I 'm guessing they're just
| like high aspect ratio wings, long and skinny to minimize
| drags.
| davewood wrote:
| why do we need to plaster every available surface with ads when
| their purpose is mostly to increase consum even more?
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Advertising your company on your product is a great way for
| others to notice your brand. I'm sure the manufacturer of
| your laptop and phone have done the same.
| blitzo wrote:
| I like wingsail. I learnt a lot about it when i do some digging
| about catamaran few years back. There's some of them equipped
| with combination of wingsail and solar-battery which is neat.
| Really hope it becomes big in shipping industry. Have smooth
| journey you guys!
| logicallee wrote:
| since the oceans are mostly empty and in international waters,
| i.e. lots of available area, why don't ships pull enormous solar
| arrays behind them for energy?
| anonymous344 wrote:
| how is this better than the computer guided kite?
| bksdacosta wrote:
| Kites are incredible for sailing downwind; however, they don't
| produce sufficient thrust when sailing upwind. The vast
| majority of container ships travel faster than 15 knots causing
| most of the wind they experience to be upwind.
| tdy721 wrote:
| This is neat, but I wonder about applying thrust through the
| container?
|
| I also was kind of expecting a kite TBH. I wonder if the extra
| work of a kite is a good trade off, I feel like the tying off the
| thrust issue is easier with a kite than a mast.
|
| Edit: I see wingsail in the title and I think it's slightly
| ambiguous. I want to say this is "mast" based? Not a tech issue
| but
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| Kite systems for cargo ships already exist
|
| https://www.airseas.com/seawing
|
| And they seem to make more sense than sails.
| olejorgenb wrote:
| SkySails which is the company knew tried kites seems to have
| given up ships and changed focus to land-based power:
|
| > SkySails is the pioneer of wind-assisted ship propulsion
| systems based on kites. The technology was successfully
| proven on board of sea-going vessels between 2004 and 2012.
| However, in order to make the biggest possible impact on the
| ongoing energy transition, SkySails decided to focus on the
| dynamic energy sector with its SkySails airborne wind energy
| systems for power production for the time being.
|
| > The SkySails propulsion system for vessels is therefore
| currently not marketed anymore.
|
| https://skysails-marine.com/ | https://skysails-power.com
|
| Back in the days they even had some commercial orders:
| https://www.surfertoday.com/kiteboarding/norwegian-ship-
| orde...
|
| Not sure I buy their reasoning of discontinuing the shipping
| angle. Seems likely it was a hard sell.
|
| I always though it seems like a cool idea, given that the
| automatic controls were robust enough. Hope airseas have more
| luck.
| usrusr wrote:
| Yeah, I'd say that kites would be far more practical
| considering that automatic piloting should be easily solved
| (trivial compared to e.g. driving cars or landing rockets) and
| structural changes to the ship would be so much smaller.
|
| But https://skysails.com have completely given up on ships
| (full focus on stationary electricity generation), and they had
| already been at the point of operating an installation on a
| real life freighter. But at least it's not clear that their
| goodbye to ships was due to technological challenges: it
| _might_ be because of unrelated business events, e.g. the
| shipping company they partnered with was already on the course
| to failure (chances are from their perspective the kite project
| has been a desperate hail mary from the start), and are some
| point the not-electricity part had mostly pivoted to shopping
| management software and that part was eventually completely
| separated from anything kite related.
| jmoorebeek wrote:
| From our first analysis, applying the thrust through the
| container seems doable; the containers are secured to each-
| other and the ship via mechanical "twistlocks", which are
| designed to handle not just ship loads, but also trucking loads
| (such as a 2g hard braking from a semi). The roll loads are
| actually the more difficult design challenge.
|
| Regarding kites, we looked at those quite a bit. The challenge
| with those is that kites tend to be best for when the wind is
| coming from behind you or crosswind. For a container ship
| traveling at high speed, the kites would act more as a
| parachute and slow you down (even if you were extracting energy
| from them).
| Rorando wrote:
| Master Mariner here with bridge experience from sail assisted
| vessels both conventional and through magnus effect
| equipment. Also a lifelong sailing competitor.
|
| Have you considered the effect your design has on the drift
| and drift angle of a vessel yet? Looks like your aiming to
| benefit from conventional sail assisted lift but there is a
| thin line between lift and drift. The negative effect of
| drift induces increased consumption so some kind of trimming
| needs to be done quite fast to maintain lift effect. To
| maintain an optimal angle of attack to get the maximum lift
| requires quite fast adjustments which on sailboats can be
| done in two ways, either by trimming sails or adjusting
| course. Adjusting course on large cargo vessels takes quite a
| while so i don't see that as an option unless the sail is
| hooked up to a fast acting autopilot.
| macmac wrote:
| Do you have plans for how to get the effect of the sail into
| the loading computer? Would be surprised if any of the
| current software is capable of handling a dynamic input like
| that. Seems like an interesting problem, but tough.
| latchkey wrote:
| https://www.cargo-partner.com/trendletter/issue-10/sails-
| and...
| [deleted]
| davidw wrote:
| You probably need to commission a sea shanty to sell this
| product.
|
| Joking aside, it looks interesting and cool.
| swyx wrote:
| OP, unironically, please do this, as someone who works in
| marketing this will be a hit
| jmoorebeek wrote:
| I'm practicing my fiddle skills, maybe by Series A I'll be
| ready for my soundcloud debut.
| joshuabaker2 wrote:
| This looks amazing! Wind power is totally underutilized in the
| shipping industry, I've been waiting for something like this for
| ages.
|
| I used to be part of a team back in university making autonomous
| sailboats [1] and one of the things that I was surprised by when
| working on this was that there are a TON of hurricanes out in the
| middle of the ocean (we were working to build it to cross the
| Atlantic). We built a system to take in weather prediction data
| to try to avoid hurricanes, but we were building a relatively
| tiny boat--do large shipping vessels do this as well? I'd assume
| they can sail through pretty bad weather. If so, do you have ways
| to lower the sails easily to protect them?
|
| Additionally, do you have any software to help inform the vessel
| operators how to best sail into the wind or are the net savings
| not worth it considering most of the propulsion is still coming
| from fuel-based sources?
|
| Overall, this is super exciting and best of luck!
|
| [1] Now at (https://www.ubcsailbot.org/)
| jmoorebeek wrote:
| Lowering the sails will be critical to safe operation in bad
| weather. The deployment process will be easily reversible, so
| that within a few minutes you can go from full sail to fully
| stowed (or any place in between), likely with emergency
| settings to bring the sail down faster. We don't want to limit
| the weather a ship would sail in without diversion, but instead
| just make use of reasonable winds when they are present. We
| certainly will want to make future software for route planning
| assistance, but our first step will not require the ship to
| change course or speed to see benefits of the sails. It's
| certainly worth it over all to follow the wind, but for ease of
| adoption that can come later.
| BWStearns wrote:
| This seems really awesome. Just out of curiosity, why not take
| advantage of the stacking nature of containers to make the wing
| sheath 1xN? It seems like having a deeper sheath you could get
| more flexibility in wing construction just by virtue of more
| room. Also, to echo @roter: how does the stack below the sail
| container handle the extra force from the sail? Are there extra
| stays from the bottom of the sail container to the deck/gunwales
| to keep it from toppling the stack?
| jmoorebeek wrote:
| I like the deeper sheath idea, but we moved away from that
| early on for a few reasons. A major one is cargo-handling,
| because you rapidly hit limits on how high the cranes can lift
| containers away from the deck. They can't start moving sideways
| until the entire container is free and clear, and if your
| container is too tall you may not even clear the stack before
| the crane reaches its upper limit. From a load management
| perspective, if you have the choice to go taller or wider, it's
| generally better to go wider. This also plays into the idea of
| using tape-spring rollers to store the sail material - it lends
| itself to being wider, rather than narrower. You can look in a
| few of our other comments below for more of a description, but
| yes, we plan to have load spreaders to reduce the compression
| load on any one stack, and tethers deployed to the main deck to
| provide additional tension restraints.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Awesome idea. Would the potential savings in fuel not warrant
| this as part of a more permanent fixture onboard rather than from
| shipping containers?
|
| (Assuming a fuel price of $550 per metric ton, the cost of fuel
| for a trip from China to USA would be around $1,485,000 (2,700
| metric tons * $550))
| jmoorebeek wrote:
| We agree that a permanent installation would be awesome, but we
| came across some difficulties with that idea in customer
| conversations. First is the number of containers you
| permanently displace might mean you never recover your
| investment. Having a removable solution allows you to access
| the containers under the sail without any difficulty at the
| port. A permanent solution also requires time in a shipyard to
| install the foundations and mechanisms. There are thousands of
| ships out there which will need retrofits, and shipyards are
| already struggling with capacity, so a solution which you can
| build inland, then ship to and rapidly install at a dock makes
| sense to us.
| changoplatanero wrote:
| did you put your prototype on a small boat and test it out in the
| water?
| jmoorebeek wrote:
| Not yet. Our first prototype is a bench model without the
| necessary structure to handle full loads. We're working on the
| detailed design to get on the water now.
| Rorando wrote:
| To calculate roll effects of your equipment while under
| pressure, I would try to make the bench model a digital twin
| in a stability software like NAPA.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| The promo video claims a 60m Mirage sail can provide 400kW of
| power.
|
| Accounting for weather, berthing, and efficiency, let's assume
| the sail can provide that power for 4 hours of every 24 hour
| period - that's 1,460 hours/year .
|
| Each Mirage sail might therefore provide 584,000 kWh per year of
| useable power.
|
| A gallon of bunker fuel is worth 11.0 kWh/kg [1]
|
| So, a Mirage sail can compensate 53,090 kg of bunker fuel per
| year.
|
| Bunker fuel is priced around $600 USD / metric ton. [2]
|
| Therefore - the expected value of each Mirage sail may approach
| $31,850 per year. Assume a 10 year service life. Each Mirage must
| have an installed cost of $318,500.
|
| If you triple the assumption of 4 hrs/day to 12 hrs/day
| efficiency, the value scales linearly to $955,500.
|
| [1] http://www.cmar.hk/contoil_flow_rate.pdf [2]
| https://shipandbunker.com/prices
|
| -------
|
| Edit: Outsail's website lists the fuel offest to be 2,000 metric
| tons per year. Let's assume fuel is converted at 50% efficiency,
| we can say that they're looking for the sail to return 11,000,000
| kWh per year. That's 27,500 hours of sailing per year. There are
| only 8,760 hours per year... oops.
|
| -------
|
| Perhaps, let's look at it another way.
|
| 24 hours x 400 kW x 365 = 3,504,000 kWh
|
| 2,000 ton x 1,000 kg/t = 2,000,000 kg
|
| 3,504,000 kWh / 2,000,000 kg = 1.752 kWh/kg assumed fuel value
|
| Oops again...
| bksdacosta wrote:
| We couldn't fully explain that 400kW number in the video, but
| our video says "average power" and it was based on a standard
| transpacific route. The 400kW already takes into account the
| times the Mirage is not being used, both for bad weather and
| time at port. Depending on the wind speed and direction we can
| provide a lot more than 400kW. Using 24 hrs/day we get an
| maximum install cost of 1.9 million!
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Thanks for the reply :)
|
| Wish you luck!
|
| So if 400kW average, on 21 day journey, we get 201,600 kWh
| which is 18,300 kg of bunker fuel, which costs approx.
| $11,000
|
| If you are directly offsetting fuel consumption and helping
| shippers meet their efficiency goals, you have a break even
| at approximately $11,000 per Mirage per journey, or $523 per
| day.
|
| Assuming 100% bookings, each Mirage has an annual revenue
| floor of $190,895
|
| Sounds like you're in business!
| [deleted]
| dokem wrote:
| I have a better idea. Bring some manufacturing back to the US.
| Container ships are already 2x as efficient as trains. You're
| going to get a lot of green-blinded yes-men in here so I'll chime
| in to say I don't believe in this. Really, something with the
| footprint of a container is going to move a container ship? This
| is a joke. Are we supposed to be dazzled that you worked on
| satellites? I worked on satellites - that doesn't mean you
| automatically know about everything especially after 10 years of
| experience. The maritime industry isn't filled with a bunch of
| idiots that don't care about efficiency and haven't heard of a
| sail boat before. If it was practical they would have sails
| already. We have sail boats. It's already a thing. They're not on
| 1000+ ton vessles for a reason. You are wasting your time and
| money. I'm only trying to help.
| julosflb wrote:
| Although I don't necessarily share your tone, I share some of
| your ideas.
|
| https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2021/05/how-to-design-a-sail...
| is worth reading. Basically container ships are incredibly
| energy efficient. If we want to go back to sailing ships for
| cargo, then we need to massively scale down global exchanges.
|
| Now on a positive note, if we find some devices, easy to
| operate, low cost and that can save few percent of fuel (being
| fossile or green), then that could still be useful.
| swyx wrote:
| F** yeah, YC startups doing things in the real world. loving this
| trend, i know nothing about your field but you inspire me. lets
| go green and make green.
| polar8 wrote:
| russ hanneman is that you?
| UberFly wrote:
| I picture you dancing on stage with Ballmer.
| dang wrote:
| No personal attacks please.
| swyx wrote:
| except instead of developers^5 i'm chanting containers
| fourseventy wrote:
| With the relative wind angle mostly being dead ahead because of
| the engines, this means that the vessel will effectively be
| sailing a close hauled course. When sails are trimmed for this
| heading, most of the force generated by the sail is perpendicular
| to the direction of the vessel. In normal sailing vessels this
| perpendicular force is converted into forward velocity with a
| keel. Without a keel your sailing ship will just drift sideways
| when attempting to sail a close hauled course. I'm assuming that
| giant shipping container ships don't have a keel, so how will
| these sails generate effective forward velocity for the ship and
| not just drag the ship horizontally off course?
| jmoorebeek wrote:
| While a container ship doesn't have a keel per-se, it _does_
| have about 200m of flat plate length sticking into the water.
| At small angles, that flat plate can actually have a decent
| lift to drag ratio. Historic sailing vessels also made do
| without a modern wing-keel, so our current plan is that the
| container ship can crab into the wind by less than a degree to
| produce all of the side force required to maintain a steady
| course.
| Rorando wrote:
| Yeah a classic keel is not needed for bigger vessels as long
| as GM is low enough. One big difference between sail ships
| and modern ones is the increased air draft which effects the
| lift to drag ratio. Looking at your answers so far, I assume
| you've considered this already.
| jmoorebeek wrote:
| Yes, I can't say that we have absolutely everything figured
| out so far, but we have a decently complete model. Windage,
| changes to draught, and GM are already factored into our
| models at the root level, and while we may need to still
| tweak things we aren't waiting to be surprised by their
| effects.
| usrusr wrote:
| My favorite green energy miracle fantasy these days it's wind-
| powered autonomous ships, cruising cross-wind wherever the
| weather is best suited, going nowhere as far as they can. With an
| appropriately sized underwater fan driving a generator which
| drives a hydrolyzer, and when the hydrogen storage that fills the
| bulk of its hull is approaching maximum capacity it sets home to
| the homeport (or wherever prices are favorable for selling the
| harvest and buying maintenance?). That would solve both mooring
| and transmission for _true_ offshore wind harvesting, and if
| someone found a way to build that thing cheap enough for making a
| profit from the hydrogen, that miracle of market economy which so
| often causes tragic outcomes would cause more to be built until
| whatever demand for hydrogen we might create is saturated.
|
| (Buy I'd expect the winning designs to be kite-based, and
| according to jmoorebeek's dismissals of kites for _transport_
| they should do well for this use case of mostly stationary criss-
| crossing. Hulls could be of the semi-submersible type, for
| stability, where only a narrow tower for sensors /comms/sails
| protrudes to the surface, because no cranes would be involved in
| operation)
| julosflb wrote:
| Did you check https://farwind-energy.com/fr/ ? That's exactly
| what they are trying to do !
|
| I would really like to see numbers; as elegant as it appears, I
| don't really think it can be very efficient.
| usrusr wrote:
| Oh, nice! I'm really surprised that they go the flettner way,
| but I'm sure they did more calculations than me (i.e. > 0).
|
| This entire approach is really just a matter of sufficiently
| cheap implementation I think. (and perhaps a bit of judicial
| modernization when it comes to unmanned units on
| international waters?)
|
| When you can build a unit cheap enough to recoup manufacture
| and maintenance from the fuel harvested, it would be no less
| meaningful than crossing the break-even in fusion. I guess
| unattended hydrolyzation would be the main open todo?
| mkehrt wrote:
| This seems extremely cool. Howeever, I'm not sure I believe the
| attachment to the container beneath the sail is structurally
| sound enough to hold the wing, especially with wind blowing. Do
| you know that this will work? (I'm just curious; I know very
| little about shipping containers.)
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Questions for the maritime folks in the group: What would it take
| to re-start the shipbuilding industry in the U.S.? In a world of
| potentially more contested waters, is there a need for smaller
| more nimble cargo ships or will the unit economics of large ones
| always outcompete them? Any innovations you're surprised don't
| exist in the industry yet?
|
| Yes, I am fishing for ideas!
| tablatom wrote:
| Probably not the idea you were fishing for but
|
| https://www.realclearscience.com/quick_and_clear_science/201...
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Still awesome, I've thought about this actually, especially
| for transporting high value goods inland from difficult
| environments to ports (I'm thinking deep in the DRC or in
| West Africa during the rainy season when the roads are
| basically unusable) but hadn't considered the overall
| replacement of cargo ships with them.
|
| I thought this was a fun article:
| https://www.elidourado.com/p/cargo-airships
| macmac wrote:
| A practical collapsible container still has not been made. If
| you could stack 3 collapsed containers in one slot, that could
| be a game changer for repositioning.
| ck2 wrote:
| This is awesome because everyone needs to read about how cargo
| and cruise ships burn disgusting, super nasty "bunker fuel" and
| make the world even more toxic.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_oil#Health_impacts
|
| https://www.cruiselawnews.com/2010/05/articles/pollution/rea...
| Gwypaas wrote:
| New rules more stringent rules have been in effect since 2020.
| Now the limit is 0.5% sulfur globally, with harder restrictions
| in many places around North America and Europe.
|
| https://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/PressBriefings/pages/03-1...
| latchkey wrote:
| https://www.fastcompany.com/90850262/why-cargo-ships-are-bri...
| bobsmooth wrote:
| I wish you the best in hoodwinking some ignorant investor to give
| you money for such a ridiculous idea.
| sails wrote:
| Definitely very excited by this, sails, boats, trade winds,
| hardware. Cool project!
| musesum wrote:
| My old boss invested in Kiteship. The Oracle Americas Cup team
| deployed one for a day -- but, not during competition. I suspect
| it messed with the competition's head for a brief moment. He did
| mention container ships. Feel free to reach out and I'll
| introduce.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| Or you could just build a nuclear powered cargo ship. No
| refuelling, no pollution, constant power.
|
| The one form of transport where a nuclear engine is both viable
| and already proven. Why are you messing about with sails?
| pstuart wrote:
| I'm guessing the economics of nuclear are not as good as wind.
| UberFly wrote:
| Plus they'd be a target for pirates. Imagine the score a
| nuclear-powered wessel would fetch.
| swyx wrote:
| i mean what are you going to do with the 55,000 existing cargo
| ships out there? throw them all out to build your 500 nuclear
| ones? this is a legacy business
| felixg3 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Hahn_(ship)
| nradov wrote:
| Nuclear powered cargo ships are generally not viable outside of
| a few niche roles. Trained operators are too expensive and in
| limited supply. Many nations won't allow such vessels into port
| due to concerns over security and accidents. There is an
| obvious risk of terrorist attacks to steal nuclear material or
| just cause a radiological incident. And several large merchant
| ships sink every year; no one wants a sunken reactor
| contaminating their coastal waters.
|
| Even navies make very little use of nuclear power. It is mostly
| only for aircraft carriers and submarines. Experiments with
| nuclear powered surface combatants were mostly failures.
|
| A more viable approach would be to locate the nuclear reactors
| on land where they can be operated more safely and
| economically. Then use the generated heat and power to
| manufacture carbon neutral synthetic fuels to power ships.
| Stevvo wrote:
| Masts have rigging for a reason. You can't just fold one up in a
| box; the physics doesn't work, mast will be torn off by the first
| big gust.
| Rorando wrote:
| Sails can be deployed without conventional rigging. I have
| experience of these so called free standing rigs myself.
| Dynaspar rigs is one real life example.
| wffurr wrote:
| There are many designs of unstayed masts throughout history
| including modern designs with aluminum and carbon fiber:
| https://www.google.com/?q=unstayed+mast&tbm=isch
|
| America's Cup AC55 yachts come to mind with an unstayed carbon
| fiber wing. As do friendship sloop two masters.
| mdtusz wrote:
| Freestanding rigs do exist, but as you're likely aware, they
| transfer all their loading and stresses through their mast
| step - most often being stepped through the deck so you
| essentially have the full hull height worth of support. Not
| sure which AC class you're referring to either - all the wing
| based boats absolutely have standing rigging, they just don't
| have spreaders since they're rotating masts.
|
| Even if this proposed mast is stepped through the entire
| container, the forces on it will be plenty to cause issues
| since the containers are only held down by neighbouring
| containers and the 4 anchoring twistlocks. This proposed
| design will 100% require standing rigging to support it - the
| claim that the rig will only experience 10s of kn of loading
| is almost certainly incorrect as well - 30ft racing sailboats
| will experience loads exceeding that at the chainplates
| regularly. The moments about a mast are huge, even on
| relatively small rigs.
| hooverd wrote:
| How are the Mirage containers powered and controlled? You have a
| very interesting product and I wish y'all the best of luck!
|
| Also, there's something about the animations in your demo video
| that reminds me of a Dahir Insaat video.
| bksdacosta wrote:
| The Mirage will be controlled autonomously and the Captain will
| have an override panel in the bridge. It will be powered with
| batteries, which will be recharged with solar panels or a wind
| turbine.
|
| Also, hahaha, just looked up Dahir Insaat, thank you I guess?!
| mabbo wrote:
| I wonder how navigation changes if your ship has a set of these.
|
| You've got one movement source - sails - whose power is based on
| the relative wind speed and direction and has near-zero variable
| cost. You have a second movement source - your engine - with
| fewer limitations but a higher variable cost (fuel cost + CO2
| emission costs). You have a whole ocean with at least a week of
| predicted wind speeds and directions.
|
| You've got a schedule to keep, but maybe not one that requires
| you to be there as quick as possible- after all, ships are slow-
| steaming now, right?
|
| All together, a straight line often won't be the most economical
| route anymore. Tacking a little bit to get better wind could make
| the investment in these sails pay off faster.
| jmoorebeek wrote:
| I totally agree that route optimization takes on a whole
| different dimension now! For our early models and numbers,
| we're just benchmarking no change in route of speed, to really
| highlight the baseline benefits of sails. However, there are
| tremendous knock-on effects that would give you an advantage to
| follow the wind. We can make use of not only improved
| forecasting, but better satellite weather data and connectivity
| to ships to provide updates in real time. Altogether, there
| will be a lot of performance on the table that ships can take
| advantage of in the future.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| This is amazing and a great panacea for the pain caused by the ai
| copycat products I have been seeing flooding YC.
|
| New breakthroughs in transportation is the need of the hour.
|
| One of the reasons the world is teetering on a recession right
| now is there has been not a lot of physical changes to the world
| around us to create new worlds which software can then eat again.
|
| Projects like this then, give me a lot of hope.
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