| ▲ | jeffbee a day ago |
| 20 years ago I read this magazine article about putting kites on container ships for efficiency. This gadget seems to have durable appeal to entrepreneurs and/or suckers. https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2005/09/17/sa... The company recently went bankrupt, by the way. It turns out that gigantic container ships are already incredibly efficient. |
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| ▲ | meristohm a day ago | parent | next [-] |
| Incredibly efficient, but if they're burning hydrocarbons to move, at scale they are incredibly damaging to earth's atmosphere, and to animals disrupted by engine and propeller noise. International trade is wonderful, all this new tech we're drowning in is amazing, and- understand that every one of us will eventually die, hopefully passing on some positive influence to others along the way, and that it turns out opting for the new car, the big climate-controlled house, the weekly/monthly/annual/still-too-frequent long-distance flights/drives, the new pocket computer every few years, the fancy unnecessarily-powerful laptop, the hours spent on all the man-child hobbies because we haven't outgrown our childhood insecurities, all this is an incredible waste compared to the meaning derived from healthy relationships with people within walking distance, tending the land we get our food from. |
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| ▲ | jeffbee a day ago | parent [-] | | Shipping uses so little energy that switching it to synthetic liquid fuels while we figure out something else is plausible. More plausible than reverting the fleet to 2000x more sailing vessels. |
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| ▲ | WorkerBee28474 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Another version of the idea is still around: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_ship |
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| ▲ | mmooss a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > This gadget seems to have durable appeal to entrepreneurs and/or suckers. Or most research and technological development requires years or generations of experimentation and failure before success. And every time, the creators and innovators are told they are wasting their time, suckers, look how many failures came before you, ... |
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| ▲ | eesmith a day ago | parent [-] | | Consider the steam powered airplane. It required decades of experimentation and failure before success, and that technical success was a dead-end. | | |
| ▲ | mmooss a day ago | parent [-] | | Consider the airplane. | | |
| ▲ | eesmith 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes, the steam powered airplane is a dead-end branch in the development of the airplane. Unlike most of the dead-end branches, it actually worked, in a limited technical sense. Most research and technological development fail, and most of those which succeed in a technical sense end up being worse in a practical sense than other alternatives. There are a lot of gadgets where "the creators and innovators are told they are wasting their time, suckers, look how many failures came before you" -- and the detractors were right. The screw-propelled vehicle, after over a century of development, has slightly more success than the steam airplane because there is a niche use as amphirols. But for nearly every case it was designed for, caterpillar tracks, half-tracks, or even tires are better. No matter how much R&D you put into it, it seems impossible that a roller ship like the Ernest Bazin will have commercial success. Ditto the gimbaled cabin design of the SS Bessemer, meant to stave off seasickness in the passengers. Various gadgets lie on the border where they seem tantalizingly commercially realizable, like kites on container ships. That's where kooks and hucksters thrive. | | |
| ▲ | mmooss 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | > That doesn't change the face that most research and technological development fail I agree. So what? If you have a better way, you will no doubt be very, very successful and your name will be in history books. But so far nobody has a better way. It follows that we cannot predict which R&D will fail to be developed or fail to be useful - otherwise we wouldn't have so many failures. And therefore the claim upthread, that they know now the future outcome of this research, is false. | | |
| ▲ | eesmith 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | Your comment "Or most research and technological development requires years or generations ..." has an implicit but important missing qualifier. "Or most SUCCCESSFUL research and technological development requires years or generations of experimentation and failure before success." Most research and technological development fail, which is why creators and innovators may be told they are wasting their time by looking at well-traversed, almost certain dead ends in hopes of finding a new, long-overlooked path, rather than putting their efforts into R&D more likely to succeed. We can absolutely predict that some R&D will fail to be useful - I mentioned a few. Here's another - a radium-powered reading lamp. |
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