High-Speed Sailing

Thought I'd add a bit to some of the ideas in my last post. While I'm very much a sailor, I view a sailboat primarily as useful for recreation and/or a mobile home. Prior to the 20th Century, sailboats provided the best transportation when a waterway was available. However, motorized vessels have eliminated sail power for commercial use because of greater speed, schedule reliability, etc. Due to rising fuel costs though, some are advocating using wind power once again.

Should we return to wind power in the form of sailboats for shipping? Absolutely not! To do so would be a giant step backwards. While I have long been an advocate of "Alternative Energy" and I believe we should be using it when appropriate, I do not see solar, wind, geothermal, wave, tide, etc. generation of power as being anything more than a limited and even relatively short term way to generate power. I am also not an advocate of nuclear power in the form that we are using it.

Hey Bob, what are you suggesting? That we ride bicycles and use candles? No way! We need to be able to easily and cheaply generate huge amounts of power and this can be done, if we understand the real problem. In an earlier post I mentioned that when we solve a problem, the solution itself can become a new problem, but if we really understand the problem, the problem just sort of dissolves.

Using sail (wind) to power a boat for shipping is a solution to the problems of high fuel cost and pollution caused by burning that fuel. However, if there was an unlimited supply of free, readily available, non-polluting fuel, which would power the ship's engine, no one would consider using sail power. Well, that fuel exists, and you're sitting on it.

We have been told that we're running out of energy, that we must conserve it, that the developed nations are energy pigs, while other countries suffer for lack of reliable, plentiful power. This is just a PR lie designed to drive up the price of fuel and energy production. The truth is; it is impossible to ever run out of energy, no matter how much is used.

The physical universe is composed of matter, energy, space and time (I recommend studying L Ron Hubbard's works for a real education on this). We all know about Einstein's famous equation E=MC squared; all that means is that there is a lot of energy packed into that mass. In other words matter and energy are interchangeable, and we won't run out of the physical universe, so we won't run out of energy. At some point in the near future we will learn how to derive energy directly from matter, without burning it and without radioactive hazards. I believe we already have the technology base to do this; it's just that our understanding of how to manipulate things at the atomic level is incomplete.

Bob