French company Airseas has developed the Seawing, a kite to help propel cargo ships, which it says could cut their carbon emissions by an average of 20%.
The trouble is that it takes decades to create an effective sail captain and crew, and it’s insanely hard dangerous work. Read some accounts of how sails were actually managed back in the day, and it’s terrifying (at least for people without a head for heights, gaaah).
Maybe read the article? It’s talking about a new kind of sail that’s literally a giant kite attached at the end of a line and kept flying hundreds of feet in the air above the ship by computer control. Not a spinnaker or kite sail; something closer to a parafoil.
That’s why this is different and they aren’t talking about going back to fully-rigged sailing ships.
(Actually, who are we kidding? They couldn’t care less how hard and dangerous the work was. The real reason they like this new design because it doesn’t have masts to get in the way of loading cargo.)
The trouble is that it takes decades to create an effective sail captain and crew, and it’s insanely hard dangerous work. Read some accounts of how sails were actually managed back in the day, and it’s terrifying (at least for people without a head for heights, gaaah).
The good part is you can program a computer to manage the whole system, with human in the loop.
Depends on the kind of sail. If they’re using any kind of spinnaker or kite sail, it requires human hands.
Maybe read the article? It’s talking about a new kind of sail that’s literally a giant kite attached at the end of a line and kept flying hundreds of feet in the air above the ship by computer control. Not a spinnaker or kite sail; something closer to a parafoil.
That’s why this is different and they aren’t talking about going back to fully-rigged sailing ships.
(Actually, who are we kidding? They couldn’t care less how hard and dangerous the work was. The real reason they like this new design because it doesn’t have masts to get in the way of loading cargo.)
To be fair, a lot of the work can be automated or remote controlled with today’s technology