https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Ship_1 http://www.enercon.de/en-en/2381.htm
It was built a few years ago, but has been out of commission for most of that time due to what sounds like a legal battle with the generator manufacturer. I've never seen any information on what sort of efficiency it gets, or even if they use the rotors at all in operation. Which is a pity as sail assisted shipping was what my masters thesis was based on!
There is a cargo concept based on the Maltese Falcon: http://www.gizmag.com/b9-shipping-cargo-sailing-ships/23059/ They were planned to be used for shipping wood pellets from the baltic to Newcastle or Middlesborough for a planned biomass power plant here, but the whole thing never really went anywhere. The economics of these never work when stacked up against slow speed diesels, which are so so cheap for long range transport.
The dyna-rig is amazing, but they had a lot of problems with the sailcloth stretching and jamming the furling mechanisms, so about a quarter of the furling and unfurling operations involved sending someone up the mast to unjam it. (i knew a guy on board and had a tour a few years back. it is shiny)
]]>I read it back then, and don't remember much apart from the drones used emoji. Due to the rights for the New Adventures being stuck in a black hole, it's quite difficult to get hold of.
]]>Strong Female Protagonist is fucking fantastic, and the Feral storyline is heartbreaking, and complicated and wonderful. It shows how good and interesting superhero fiction can be when it's not tied to a soap-opera universe monthly publishing model.
]]>They seem to have quite a comprehensive version of don't care: http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/ed.html
The environment is only mentioned in three of the 265 points.
]]>The stories there fall into the 3. Fun and Experimentation category.
Also Vice is publishing a load of short near future sci-fi: http://motherboard.vice.com/terraform
]]>Kim Stanley Robinson seems to be a big fan of that style, as most of his novels seem to be written that way.
]]>However, it's likely to be something that gets produced by an author early in their career, as i'm not sure you'd get a decent advance for something like that, rather than a more traditional single narrative novel, but you would get it out once your first novel or two was a success and people suddenly want more of you quick.
]]>Are there any books films or comics we should read before this comes out to fully appreciate it? Equoid was partially a satire of cold comfort farm, which i totally missed, never having read it, so id loke to be better prepared this time!
]]>http://makezine.com/2014/09/24/smoothing-out-your-3d-prints-with-acetone-vapor/
At work this week I designed some clamps for joining some linear potentiometers to a gear shift linkage to calculate which gear the car was in using a microcontroller. The design only took a few minutes, but would have cost at least £100 to get machined in aluminium, and pennies in plastic. (I ended up doing it differently in the end).
]]>i;ve designed a replacement for a tripod top plate i lost, i just need to get round to printing it down my local makerspace.
as for things that would be difficult to produce in any other way, i've seen someone print out water filters using a very specific set of hot end temperatures and control software settings. Also replacement motorcycle parts, for intricate, not structural plastic bits.
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