Omg but imagine if we burnt coal to power a steam piston to make it faster. Then we wouldn't even need kites!
Only if they don't realize that kites are actually a real propulsion method distinct from sails. Kite propelled ships look nothing like sailing ships.
Nonsense, they clearly mean to leash giant birds of prey to the ship and have it pulled by a team of them.
For once the article title is quite accurate, when they say "giant kite" they means something like that:
I misread the news headline and for a moment I thought it said "giant kitties could pull cargo ships", and my brain delivered a very different picture than the article did ...
These are arguably commercial Windjammers still in service:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Cloud
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Clipper
TOWT is buildimg new sailing cargo ships now: https://maritime-executive.com/article/french-wind-powered-cargo-ship-refines-design-with-rigid-sails
No Quercus necessary, you have my attention.
And is that a hydrogen fuel cell? Cool!
Does that say "salt sugar deionizer"?
Shrug, they been talking about this since the 90's...
If it was feasible and economically viable. It would have happened already.
The reason is because the company that operates a shipping vessel often doesn't own the ship--they charter it. It would be the owner that pays for the fancy wind propulsion systems but only the charterer would benefit from the reduced fuel costs. Owner-operators of shipping vessels sometimes do have a supplemental wind propulsion system.
I know people working on that. It works great. The one problem they still have is the recovery and folding of the sail.
If only they could attach the sail to some kind of pole connected to the ship, so that this isn't an issue. Ridiculous, I know.
I know some people will suggest to just let it go fly away into the ocean because a new kite is cheaper than recovering the kite.
Perhaps we could consider equipping them with emission cannons that blast particulates into the air to keep the temps down. 🫡👍
I've seen these kite-based attempts, but I kinda wonder what a 21st century tall ship would look like? Start talking about dacron or kevlar sails with carbon fiber yards and amsteel lines all run by winches by computer control.
kevlar sales
This is going to show up in some prepper's search results and he's gonna be so confused.
There's a French company that is doing this, they've settled on a pair of rigid sails for their first ship. I saw an article saying that they've started construction, but the only images of the ship itself are all rendered so I guess it's not operational yet.