OK here’s the thing, Pierre: Going back to Makani, and all these proposed energy storage schemes, whacky windmills, etc., when companies raise millions and millions of dollars by selling “shares”, all the while bragging about their incredible technical acumen, those shareholders have the expectation that modern technology and computer-power is being used to properly analyze the current technology, and the proposed new technology, and to definitively ascertain reasons why the new technology ism in fact, better. Meanwhile the whole time, behind the curtain, it is nothing but one more “Professor Crackpot” with half-baked ideas, not fully even thought through by simple elementary- or junior-high-school math, let alone modern computation, with no real basis to even be modestly optimistic that it can be successfully developed.
Nope, it’s just a bunch of bumper-sticker-level talking points with no solid reasoning behind it. So these “co-flow jet”-powered “sails” may look interesting and make for nice renderings and check a lot of politically-expedient talking-point boxes, but is there any solid numbers to back up why their cost, weight, service requirements, added danger, operational demands on personnel, possibly lack of utility in many situations, and impediments to normal operation, loading, unloading clearance under bridges, etc. can fit in with the job the ship is tasked with efficiently performing.
So while these ideas can so easily pique the interest and curiosity, leading to excitement in the minds of so many of us excited about technology and gadgets of all kinds, there is a huge difference between an idea that truly “has legs” and the many that do not.
The really sad thing is when they raise so many millions of “other peoples’ money” when there was never anything behind the idea in the forst place. Goning back to Makani as a great example for us AWE people, with all their stated aero-expertise and engineering talent, with their calculative abilities so far beyond mere slide-rules and pencils, there is no excuse for them not knowing ahead of time how poorly their idea would actually operate. They obviously did not do their homework, and just wasted a lot of money and effort on stuff that could have been predicted to not work out.
Same with Skysails and kites pulling ships. That was one of my early inventive ideas way back in the 1980’s - my first CAD drawing was a kite pulling a ship. But I’m no0t dumb enough to think that just because the idea “sounds good” and “feels good”, that it “has legs” - in other words, a nice dream doesn’t always “pencil out” when the numbers are actually looked at. So when Skysails spends many years convincing the world that it is “onto something” and their concept is “a great kdea” that will “reduce fuel use”, "save the planet’ etc., then suddenly in what was it, 2022, sell of the whole idea and “pivot” to generating electricity on land using these same kites. one should be appropriately skeptical at that point of ANYTHING further Skysails says, about pretty much ANYTHING. At that point, to me, they are disproven as truthtellers, as accurate predictors of success, and of really knowing what the heck they are even really doing.
This is why I bring up so many “press-release breakthrough” announcements, complete with impressive renderings, to you guys. I hope people will pay attention long enough to watch the companies fail, and get clue. But doesn;t work. I can sit here and point out Company A is making promise B about technology C, and it is nothing but false reasoning, based on no experience, and they will fail. Then the company fails, and so does the next one, and the next one, etc., and yet you guys all just go on believing every new “press-release breakthrough” as though none of these endless failures ever happened, never recognizing the pattern.
We are all most obligated to debunk our own ideas first, knowing how easily it is for us humans to fool ourselves and others, by avoidance of actually getting up to speed on a technology, and running the numbers, before making false promises over unwarranted raw enthusiasm based on mere emotions.
So, co-flow jets, and related ideas, have been around for a long time now - many decades, right? And pretty much nobody is using the technology for obvious use-cases like STOL aircraft, or pretty much anything else, right? So why are they suddenly "a great idea’ when it comes to sails on giant steel ships? Because of some renderings and a press-release?
After all, weren’t “kites” offering the same magical solution for the past decade? How many ships are powered by kites today? Zero? Even the king, SKYSAILS, is no longer even interested. Are sails of ANY kind for giant steel ships even a good idea? iI so, could regular, old-fashioned cloth sails n answer, or would it be too hard to raise money for what might be more easily calculated to be a bad idea in the first place?
Last I knew, shipping is responsible for about 3% of global “emissions”, so if you could reduce that a little bit by minimally helping to power a small fraction of ships with heavy, expensive, resource-intensive, cumbersome, possibly-dangerous, energy-using “sails”, how much difference would it really make to the world?
Are we all suffering from “Global Warming Derangement Syndrome” (GWDS) ? 