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Solar Ship takes to the skies powered by good deeds and sunshine (video)
The Solar Ship is a little bit airplane, a little bit blimp and all good intentions. The hybrid dirigible combines the cockpit and landing gear of a plane with the top of a blimp, the latter of which is lined with solar panels. The green vehicle can take off from and land on short runways, an ideal feature in a craft designed to deliver supplies to areas hit by natural disasters or with otherwise rough terrains. The ship will come in three sizes, and the company will be offering up more public demonstrations next year. If you can't wait that long, however, you can check out a test run after the jump.
First partially-solar-powered cargo ship launches in Japan
We'd heard that Nippon Oil and Nippon Yusen were working on a million-dollar solar upgrade for a car freighter called the Auriga Leader back in August, and it looks like things have gone as planned -- the cargo ship launched today from Kobe, Japan. The $1.68m project involved the installation of 328 solar panels, which produce 40 kilowatts of power -- a measly 0.3 percent of the engine power required to move the 656-foot, 60,000-ton ship when fully loaded with 6,400 cars, but enough for seven percent of the juice required for lighting and other systems. That's a slow start, but we'll take what we can get, we suppose -- now let's bolt on some of those new record-high efficiency panels and see what happens.[Thanks, Yossi]
Solar-powered ferry could be headed to San Francisco
A DIY nuke detector won't be the only oddity out in the San Francisco Bay before too long, as we're hearing that Hornblower Yachts is currently lobbying for Coast Guard approval to operate a solar-powered ferry in the area by 2009. The sails (but not the actual vessel) would be created by Australia's Solar Sailor, which already has a sun-lovin' boat that cruises around the sunny Sydney Harbor and utilizes eight solar sails to dramatically decrease its consumption of diesel. Furthermore, the firm is planning to deliver a set of sails to a ginormous passenger boat in Shanghai and could be close to landing a contract for four 100-person ferries in Hong Kong. If you're wondering just how much coin you'd have to cough up to snag a few solar sails for personal use, we're told that $1.5 million of the estimated $8.5 million reserved for the San Fran boat will be headed straight to Solar Sailor, so yeah, only the affluent need apply.[Image courtesy of Solar Sailor]
