Everything old is new again.
An article on slashdot.org the other day got me thinking about the past. This particular article concerns the SkySails company’s plans to retrofit a ship owned by partner company Beluga with a kite. Well, not just any old kite, but a 320m2 sail-like kite connected to a 15 meter tall mast on the bow. With the kite flying about 300 meters in the air, the company figures that under favorable conditions, fuel costs could be reduced by about 20% ($1600/day is what’s quoted in the article). The company also claims that later versions of the kite (basically bigger models) will save even more (perhaps as high as 50%). So basically what we have here is a return to the days of sailing. Sure the technology’s been updated, and the application is somewhat different, but all in all, the idea is to take what nature gives for free and make use of it.
Sail power was eliminated back in the day when steam/diesel/gasoline/whatever power became cheap. If it takes a couple of dozen people to work the sails, but only a half-dozen to run the engines, and oil is dirt cheap to boot, it makes good economic sense to ditch the sails and just power your way through the waves. But now fuel costs are rising and computers can control things faster and more easily than people. Now, suddenly, the free power of the wind makes economic sense again.
This then reminded me of the German company Cargolifter (original company currently in bankruptcy, new version just starting to get off the ground but hampered by that old bankruptcy snafu). Basically they want to build a dirigible capable of carrying 160 tons of cargo. Filled with helium, this massive airship would float over rivers, mountains, and what have you and be able to deliver large and combersome deliveries to precisely where they are needed. Hydrogen would be even better, but the tragedy of the Hindenburg won’t die in people’s minds, even though we now know it wasn’t the hydrogen that was the problem. Moving at a speed of about 50 miles/hour, they wouldn’t be fast, but it could still cross the U.S. from coast to coast in about three days. And since trains run at roughly the same speed (slower inside of cities), they show great potential. The problem is that everyone “knows” that dirigibles are dangerous, and expensive, and just plain won’t work. That tends to make funding them difficult and, since they are expensive, cash flow issues tend to lead to bankruptcy for anyone trying to bring them back (see the first sentence in this paragraph). I think one of the most dangerous things to true progress in this world is all the facts that are “known”, but are not actually true.
While reading up on both these concepts, the thing that struck me most about the objections were things like: What if the wind isn’t blowing? Everyone is quick to jump up and list reasons why things won’t work, but most of them are specific objections for specific circumstances. The answer to that particular questions is: You use the engines. Are there problems with these technologies? Sure. But what happens when your car breaks down? What happens if you run out of gas? These are problems we face every day, but somehow we’ve learned to deal with them. New technologies will also have problems and we’ll just learn to deal with them too.
Perhaps the past still has something to offer the future, provided we’re willing to stop looking down our noses at it and accept the possibilities.