Hacker News Reader

Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

Use it for luxury goods! "Why _my_ iphone arrived in Baltimore on a clean cargo ship, so yeah, ..."

I am only half joking. Anything luxury of vanity related, just add the fact they've gotten to the consumer on a clean ship and you'll find some people to pay extra for it. The more expensive the better. They can brag about it to each other.

View on HN

I can recall an 'artisinal' chocolate brand in Brooklyn doing this about fifteen years ago, taking cocoa from the Dominican Republic to Brooklyn via sailboat.

https://ediblebrooklyn.com/2011/the-mast-brothers-live-up-to...

Aha! That's exactly the idea.

My observation is that prople interested in luxury stuff are usually those that have the least interest on their carbon footprint.

It's rather more interesting to them if luxury stuff is made out of the rarest and most undangered species possible. Also diamonds mined by kids are more popular and expensive than fabricated ones.

> My observation is that prople interested in luxury stuff are usually those that have the least interest on their carbon footprint.

That's probably right. I guess I was thinking of the smaller segment who are more publicly visible and want to at least look virtuous while still bragging to their peers.

Bottom line: impressive optics, zero impact for this technology on global warming, it's a distraction.

Or an experiment? Maybe eventually finding its niche, even if it doesn't solve climate change, but why would the impact be zero? If it does not use oil, then this is CO2 not released.

Well it does use oil.

> The 136-metre-long vessel had to rely partly on its auxiliary motor and its remaining sail after the aft sail was damaged in a storm shortly after departure.

Used the motor "shortly after departure".

Yes. Experiments have a tendency to show where problems are.

Sails are not a new experiment.

Hundreds of years of progress and known limitations.

They failed immediately because of a storm.

Last summer we motored ~10% of the miles.That includes full day leg when there was practically no wind and few hours occasionally with combined powering. Working towards less or fractional oil based power can have significant benefits.

You always start small.

I expect that it's much worse than zero impact. Don't forget that they've got to build and maintain the ship, feed the crew, and so forth. It seems likely that what they're not using in the actual propulsion of the ship, they're expending anyway - and then some - because they've lost the economies of scale of giant cargo ships.

Conspicuous nonconsumption of fossil fuels... Hmmmm.

I doubt Apple is lunging to do this tbh.

luxury goods are shipped by air

But that's burning fuel and pollutes the air! It's not good if they want to show off how conscious they are about the climate, and also how much they are willing to spend just for that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com