[Political Junkie Too]

How useful are those sails going to be when the deck is loaded with stacks of containers -- if there is even room after the sails are deployed?

-PJ

[Red Badger]

I think those are tankers.

Ironic as hell....................

[GenXPolymath]

You do of course realize the ship you show is not a container ship but a bulk carrier as is evident by the hatches on the deck to load and unload the bulk cargo...right...right? From the looks of it there would be a few thousand square meters of wind capture area. Humans for 50,000+ years moved across the water by wind power alone. Every corner of this planet had humans carried by water and sails with our cargo in tow.

This group improved on Magnus sails by removing the rotation and using flowing air along the cylinder surface instead. Added benefit is you can reverse the flow.direction and move the injection point in a full 360 range this means you can use the Magnus effect from any wind angle including dead ahead just by changing the angle of the injection air jets. These are lift devices not drag soaks they have a lift coefficient which means they can have 3 to 10 times as much force as a sail of equal sq meters lift is always better than drag.