holy shit, a wind powered ship. what a marvel of modern tech

This is fascinating, the sails look quite different from what I would have imagined given the name. Looks more like those ships with the rotating cylinders on them visually, even though of course those operated on a very different principle.

Excited to see how well this works. Would be amazing if they could slash fuel usage significantly, I remember reading even those oversized kites already did a fair bit.

Amazing, I was reading about the idea of them doing this a while ago. Makes me wonder if the future of shipping will see a return to some of the old trade routes that are more favourable for the winds.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The Pyxis Ocean’s maiden journey, from China to Brazil, will provide the first real-world test of the WindWings - and an opportunity to assess whether a return to the traditional way of propelling ships could be the way forward for moving cargo at sea.

Enabling a vessel to be blown along by the wind, rather than rely solely on its engine, could hopefully eventually reduce a cargo ship’s lifetime emissions by 30%.

It was developed by UK firm BAR Technologies, which was spun out of Sir Ben Ainslie’s 2017 America’s Cup team, a competition sometimes called the ‘Formula One of the seas’.

“This is one of the most slow-moving projects we’ve done, but without doubt with the biggest impact for the planet,” its head John Cooper - who used to work for Formula One team McLaren - told the BBC.

“Wind power can make a big difference,” says Dr Simon Bullock, shipping researcher at the Tyndall Centre, at the University of Manchester.

He said new cleaner fuels will take time to emerge “so we have to throw everything at operational measures on existing ships - like retrofitting vessels with sails, kites and rotors”.

The original article contains 881 words, the summary contains 193 words. Saved 78%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

This is pretty incredible! I hope more industries adopt this mindset and begin to find ways to combat climate change. It’s going to take all industries exerting this level of change!

Okay, some explanation, this is not exclusively wind powered but wind assisted. Sail is meant to aid in reducing fuel consumption. Design of the sail, which is what most people are finding odd, is as such to require very little management, since it’s using Mesner effect it only requires adjusting speed and direction of rotation. At the same time design is such as to not hinder loading and unloading process. Also claimed 30% is grossly exaggerated.

Why hasn’t this caught on yet you might ask? Well ship owners don’t give a shit. Simple. The cost of fuel is calculated in transport cost and since no one else is doing it, why would anyone do it. Cargo ships have multiple fuel tanks and they will burn pretty clean fuel while they are in controlled areas (EU/USA). The moment they leave those areas they burn the dirtiest and also the cheapest fuel possible. Why wouldn’t they when their engine’s piston is so big human can lie in it. I mean just look at the crankshaft

So all in all, this could have been done ages ago. The sail is called Flettner rotor and has been invented in 1920s. Image on site shows a bit different design, but probably based on same physics just slightly more optimized. The reason why it wasn’t done ages ago… well, simply fuel was too cheap and paid for by another.

30% fuel increase is pretty impressive. Now I want to see a cargo ship tack.

This is not the fabled rotational sails. They look more traditional.