Kites are back

[Jolanta Zofia Nowak]

Not the Red variety this time but an interesting development:

Huge kite fitted on container ship - Green Machines - MSNBC.com

[nightshade]

I fly Kites and am amazed that this apparently serious attempt to use wind power in this way,I would have though that sail technology would have been more applicable.Anyhoo, have you ever tried to pick up a kite that has landed in a lake?
The serious side is they expect to save 20% on bunker oil for each trip

[m1.carson]

Hi,

A fair few years ago Tomorrows World showed a tanker with metal sails, I remember them being horizontally slatted, never heard anymore about it, gone to join the Marie Celeste perhaps.

They also showed a tanker with a rotating leading edge to it's rudder so that the ship could turn almost in it's own length, that seems to have vanished as well.

Max.
Not the ship the rotating rudder

[Jolanta Zofia Nowak]

Originally Posted by nightshade

I fly Kites and am amazed that this apparently serious attempt to use wind power in this way,I would have though that sail technology would have been more applicable.Anyhoo, have you ever tried to pick up a kite that has landed in a lake?
The serious side is they expect to save 20% on bunker oil for each trip

What amazes me is the comment at the end of the article.

It's as if the idea of money saving as opposed to money making (which in 99% of instances yields the same result) hardly ever occurs to these hard-bitten and hard-headed business types.

If I were a leading shareholder in any shipping company at the moment I'd be asking some searching questions. But then it's one of the gobsmackingly obvious weaknesses of the shareholding capitalist system that management can get away with next to no scrutiny providing some profit is being generated. The institutional shareholders couldn't care less.