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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   793 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 17, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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Oddball future predictions, anyone?

Kilts become A Thing in at least some blue tribe cities by 2050. Sneered at by minorities and the red tribe.

More hippos in South America than Africa in 2100. Trophy hunters shooting them are a notable thing; periodic rumblings about introducing lions, saltwater crocodiles, tigers, bears to try to control their population have enthusiastic support from the dwindling number of locals but are opposed by everyone else.

Sailing returns as a low-value bulk cargo shipping mechanism.

Someone, probably China, introduces affirmative action for mothers in the workforce, 2040, and the idea spreads like wildfire. It is promptly used mostly for fraud, both on a corporate and individual level.

Sailing returns as a low-value bulk cargo shipping mechanism.

There are already a number of corporations working on adding wingsails to cargo ships for fuel savings, some of which have seen actual use. This article, for instance, gives figures like the following:

On one of its latest transatlantic voyages, Canopée recorded even higher fuel savings of 2.2 tons per day per wingsail. This corresponds to about 510 kW of equivalent engine power saved per wingsail, or 2 megawatt (MW) in total engine power equivalent. The ship even clocked a speed of 13.7 knots under sail power alone, a figure that underscores just how far wind propulsion technology has come.

Now, I haven’t looked into this enough to know whether this translates into actual cost savings or if it’s just an elaborate scheme to collect subsidies for being green. But I see it as evidence for the prediction coming true, and relatively soon at that.

Bunker fuel seems to be something like $500/MT -- so 6 tonnes saved per day is ~$3k I guess?

Not nothing, but the NPV might be a bit tough; not sure how much these sails cost?

I know on repositioning cruises (where the goal is to keep costs low) they travel at about 16 to 18 knots so 13 under sail power would be a pretty substantial portion of the propulsion fuel needs.

Similar to this, I'm always surprised more US goods aren't long hauled by trains, too. It seems crazy that it's worth 50 people to haul two containers each rather than one train to hail 100 cars but the busy interstates suggest I must be missing something.

USA actually uses way more freight rail than comparable countries. It's just mostly a different basket of goods getting hauled that way- and partly to different places, the rail system was built when population distribution was way different.

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