And Sean, just to say that I'm not always so negative on subjects, but want to present some positive ideas, I'll include this posting I made on another forum....and it is boat related!!
Ship Propulsion & Energy Supply/Management
Looking for more efficient ship propulsion concepts is all well and good, but one should realize that modern commerical container ships are really pretty efficient with their super big slow turning diesels and hulls operating at or below hull speed. Fast navy ships are very likely not nearly as efficent. Some of the big diesels also burn relatively lowly refined fuels.
But in the scheme of things the total fuel burn by commerical ships is probably miniscule in comparision to our vehicle usage, and particularly that of the USA. If we really want to effect the conservation of our world's oil based energy supplies, this is the technology we really need to concentrate on in the short term. If we did nothing more than demand an increase of only 10% better fuel economy of our US vehicles, we could effect the supply-demand equation in a VERY substantial manner. And we could easily do this 10% without even decreasing the overall size of our vehicles....just decrease the cubic-inches a little.
It's unbelievable that our Congress had the balls to pat themselves on the back when they passed the "comprehensive energy bill" a short while ago, that included practically no conservation, and only minimal acknowledgement of alternative research. I've preached for years now that we should divert a very small percentage of our budget and brain power devoted to building WMD into a national effort like our moon space program and really attack this alternative fuel vehicle question. Not only would it work to conserve our world's petroleum resources, but would result in some significant number of new technologies that we could likely export around the world.
One big solution to our energy equation has to be 'storing energy'. We just don't have a lot of good storage capabilities, particularly as related to electrical energy. Many times we are forced to use as we generate it. Think of the possiblities if we could really efficiently store electrical energy. Our sun is a fantastic source of energy as it bombards us with it every day. But our collectors (solar cells) just don't have the capacity to give us the energy density we need to power up a lot of our energy consuming items. And we need better storage methods than our current crop of batteries.
I have always had an interest in 'super flyweels' as a storage method ever since I learned of their original development by Johns Hopkins Labs years ago doing my college days. Hopkins wanted to put BIG flywheels (at the time low-tech weighted wheels) in underground chambers at power plants and have the excess energy available at night from these plants spin up the wheels so they could be called upon the next day during peak periods rather than turning on a 'peaking turbine'. And I began to follow their re-development in the late 90's as several parties sought to re-invent them for auto use. I was real excided when Chrysler sought to enter La Mans with a flywheel powered car.
I still have a lot of old material stored away on this subject (before my computer days). But I believe if you simply 'google' "super flyweels" you will get a lot of info, for instance:
http://www.answers.com/topic/flywheel-energy-storage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage http://www.n-t.ru/tpe/ts/hpu.htm http://www.ntu.edu.sg/home5/PG01898441/flywheel.htm http://www.inc.com/magazine/19980601/939.html http://www.allpar.com/model/patriot.html http://www.rqriley.com/sld010.htm