"sailing" ship using kites

Capt'n Midnight

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/20/business/ship.php

"The number of shipping lines reducing speed to cut fuel costs has been growing steadily," Klein, whose organization runs safety surveys on over 6,000 ships worldwide, said in an interview.

"Slowing down by 10 percent can lead to a 25 percent reduction in fuel use. Just last week a big Japanese container liner gave notice of its intention to slow down," he added.

Shipping was excluded from the Kyoto Protocol, and many nations want the industry to be made accountable for its impact on the climate in the successor to Kyoto, which runs to 2012.

In Hamburg, the shipping company Hapag-Lloyd is not waiting for 2012. It reacted to rising fuel prices by cutting the throttle on its 140 container ships traveling the world's oceans, ordering its captains to slow down.
...
Slowing down has not involved a decrease in capacity for the company. For container ships carrying mainly consumer goods from Hamburg to ports in the Far East, the round-trip at 20 knots now takes 63 days instead of 56, but to make up for this it added a vessel to the route to bring the total to nine.

A Hapag-Lloyd board member, Adolf Adrion, said that speeds are now being cut further, to 16 knots from 20, for journeys across the Atlantic. "It makes sense environmentally and economically," he said.

breadmond

its a good idea but i can see it being very hard to impliment as flying these kites would require several trained crewmembers which could be expensive.
Also, they would only work if the wind was blowing from behind or from the side of the ship

Capt'n Midnight

i think the idea is to get a boost from the kite when the wind is in the right direction and ignore it otherwise so a fairly low level of skill would be needed , maybe it's got a automated winch and two buttons, Up and Down ?


63 days from Far East to Hamburg !
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Siberian_Railway With perfect coordination of the participating countries' railway authorities, a trainload of containers can be taken from Beijing to Hamburg, via the Transmongolian and Transsiberian lines in as little as 15 days, but typical cargo travel times are usually significantly longer[10] - e.g., typical cargo travel time from Japan to major destinations in European Russia was reported as around 25 days.[11]

Cookie_Monster

It been in development for a while now.

Site: http://www.skysails.info

Last I heard there was a ship test running it from Germany to South America, US and onwards IIRC

Cookie_Monster

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

63 days from Far East to Hamburg !
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Siberian_Railway With perfect coordination of the participating countries' railway authorities, a trainload of containers can be taken from Beijing to Hamburg, via the Transmongolian and Transsiberian lines in as little as 15 days, but typical cargo travel times are usually significantly longer[10] - e.g., typical cargo travel time from Japan to major destinations in European Russia was reported as around 25 days.[11]

How many trains would you need to equal the capacity of a large container ship though? Surely the eco impact/cost of the large number of trains req would be greater than the ship.

Capt'n Midnight

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

How many trains would you need to equal the capacity of a large container ship though?

Just one.
With an extra locomotive every few hundred meters.


While ships are more efficient over the same distance the train journey is more direct and you can split the load instead of having the ship stop in several ports en route. Also the train is electric so you could have it run on renewables.

Cookie_Monster

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Just one.
With an extra locomotive every few hundred meters.

7,000 average containers say on a large ship. 7000 * 20ft (+2ft for space in between carriages, locos, etc) = 154,000 ft or 46.9 Km.

Thats one long train:D:D:D

Capt'n Midnight

Ok you could use slightly smaller trains

In the US they use double decker trains so the containers are stacked on top of each other so the train could only be 24Km long

http://cprr.org/CPRR_Discussion_Group/2006/06/longest-train.html

The longest train ever was 7.353 km (4.568 miles) long, and consisted of 682 ore cars pushed by 8 powerful diesel-electric locomotives. Assembled by BHP Iron Ore, the train travelled 275 km (171 miles) from the company's Newman and Yandi mines to Port Hedland, Western Australia, on June 21st, 2001."
...
Yes, the iron ore trains of the three principle roads in "the Pilbara" of NW, state of Western Australia might well be the longest frts. in the world, certainly the heaviest. To exchange information, the mangers of these roads attend the periodic "Heavy Haul" conferences held at various worldwide locations. I have not done a car count but 45,000 tons is the heaviest revenue tonnage that I know of.

main thing they need is to upgrade the track to double line

Tunnels to Japan via Sakhalin would be nice too