It’s kind of interesting that sail-powered cargo ships remained commercially viable up until the start of WWII (at least for non-time-sensitive cargoes like coal and grain etc.). Eric Newby wrote a book called The Last Grain Race about sailing from Britain to Australia and back on the Moshulu in 1938/1939. Moshulu ended up with an acting role in The Godfather Part II (as the ship that carried young Vito Corleone to the US) and is now of all things a floating restaurant in Philadelphia.
“giant kites” mfs really just forgot the word for sails
It’s actually proper kites, at least the pioneering tech is kites. They’re computer-controlled, deploying and retracting on the push of a button and navigating themselves into and out of winds to complement the main drive and controls. It’s been on the market since the early 2000s and has always made economical sense, but:
There’s a structural problem slowing down the process: ship owners (who have to make the investment) often don’t pay for the fuel – that’s the charterer’s duty. The charterer on the other side doesn’t charter the ship for long enough a period to make low-carbon technologies pay back.
Billionaires reinventing the train is out, billionaires reinventing the sailboat is in
From what I’ve seen it’s kites acting as sails so you aren’t bound to using a mast which takes a lot of space and limits your sail area
I think they are actually proper kites flying rather high (at least compared to regular sails) in approximate 300 m AGL.
The big difference is that at this hight there is significantly stronger wind.
