Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by wongarsu 1327 days ago
Traditional sails are very labor intensive, I doubt they will ever make economic sense again. They also take a lot of space that most ships don't have.

The two variations that might go somewhere are kites to save maybe 10% of fuel [1], or some variation of rotor sails [2] on tankers or bulk carriers that have the unobstructed deck space.

1: https://future.hamburg/index.php/en/artikel/skysails-marine-...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_ship

1 comments

It might happen when rich countries start imposing tariffs on cargo ships using bunker fuel. Burning that stuff is utterly terrible but it's cheap so hey.