U.S. Navy's New MMO Wants Your Energy-Saving Solutions

[asherdeus]

U.S. Navy's New MMO Wants Your Energy-Saving Solutions

The Navy uses a lot of oil, and it needs your ideas to break the addiction.

While consumers are always worried about the rising cost of oil, the US Navy is far more concerned than the average penny-pincher. For years, the US Navy has been pushing new initiatives to reduce dependence on fuels, of which it uses some 33,000 gallons every ten minutes [http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2010-06/our-lethal-dependence-oil], according to Lt. Douglas Marsh of the U.S. Naval Institute. The Navy sees this as not only costly (even the smallest price increases are astronomical when scale is considered), but it also sees the finite nature of our primary fuels as a threat to its ability to operate at a moment's notice.

The Navy is so serious about this initiative that it's taking ideas from anyone, including you. As a means of crowd-sourcing interesting proposals, it's developed energyMMOWGLI, a title as descriptive as it is pronounceable. Built by the Office of Naval Research, the Institute For The Future and the Naval Postgraduate School, "MMOWGLI" is an acronym for "Massive Multiplayer Online Wargame Leveraging the Internet." The Navy has used MMOWGLI before in an anti-piracy initiative launched last year. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/109954-US-Navy-Creates-Anti-Piracy-Training-MMO]

energyMMOWGLI tasks players with considering both sides of the energy-use coin: efficiency and consumption. Players propose ideas in 140 characters or less. That idea is then sourced by players, who can expand, counter, or adapt it to a new situation. When an idea reaches a certain threshold, the creator and selected participants will be invited to develop action plans to see the idea implemented. To keep players hooked on the game, which will be running from May 22 to May 24, the developers have added leaderboards and achievements.

As ideas become more popular, players score points and their ideas become more visible. The ideas so far are wide-ranging, with people offering suggestions to use chemicals found in seawater, raise fish on-board to reduce the need to port for food, and use computers to plot the most efficient routes possible. Personally, I think the Navy can realize huge fuel savings by dumping the fleet altogether and replacing it with an army of rocket-equipped manatees. Some ideas are better than others, of course, but the value is in the conversation, right?

Source: Scientific American [http://portal.mmowgli.nps.edu/]

Permalink

 

[DarkRyter]

Anyone else start thinking about the Jungle Book for some reason?

 

[Vuliev]

Just make smaller nuclear reactors for the other ships. Or repurpose submarine reactors. IT's a proven safe tech, we've only been powering subs and carriers with them for 40 or 50 years now, and they cost sooo much less to operate.

See, I thought that a large portion of our fleet was already nuclear, but I guess not.

 

[Andronicus]

use computers to plot the most efficient routes possible

What?
Doesn't the navy do this already? I mean, if they have enough money to buy fuel at a consumption rate of 3300 gallons/min, surely they'd have already decked their ships out with GPS and automated navigational systems.

OT: have they considered hamster power?

 

[asherdeus]

use computers to plot the most efficient routes possible

What?
Doesn't the navy do this already? I mean, if they have enough money to buy fuel at a consumption rate of 3300 gallons/min, surely they'd have already decked their ships out with GPS and automated navigational systems.

OT: have they considered hamster power?

I wondered this too. I imagine that on a ship-by-ship basis they probably do, but perhaps they can realize more savings by looking at the entire fleet and seeing how each ship might be able to assist other ships (one ship fresh out of port might be able to drop off food to another ship it'll pass near). I imagine there are some pretty serious logistics to consider: noting the accurate inventories of every ship, communicating that information back to a central command, analyzing the data and then realizing it into action.

 

[getoffmycloud]

Personally, I think the Navy can realize huge fuel savings by dumping the fleet altogether and replacing it with an army of rocket-equipped manatees. Some ideas are better than others, of course, but the value is in the conversation, right?

Surely you would want sharks with friggin laser beams attached to their heads

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

Just make smaller nuclear reactors for the other ships. Or repurpose submarine reactors. IT's a proven safe tech, we've only been powering subs and carriers with them for 40 or 50 years now, and they cost sooo much less to operate.

NO! That idea is to logical! D:

We must power our ships by firing off NUKES behind them!

The shockwave will carry off our finest to where ever they need to go!

OT: I wonder if what people will come up with. In many cases, the masses guesses are actually better than the things experts come up with.

 

[Gormech]

Start converting to hydrogen cells. You'll get more bang for your buck and lower emissions. Also, the militarization of it will make it profitable for the general masses, lowering your costs further.

 

[Kenjitsuka]

Hmm, if I had a Navy I'd equip all my big ships with Uranium reactors.
That way they can run for a looong time without fear of running out of steam.

The little ones... well, let's stick some solar panels on those.
I'm a crazy dictator, do I even need a Navy?

 

[Teddy Roosevelt]

Just make smaller nuclear reactors for the other ships. Or repurpose submarine reactors. IT's a proven safe tech, we've only been powering subs and carriers with them for 40 or 50 years now, and they cost sooo much less to operate.

Actually, the navy considered changing everything to nuclear back in the 1950's and 1960's, but it found running a nuclear powered ship is significantly less energy efficient than running on diesel, as most of our fleet does now. Unless the vessels have some particular reaosn which causes them to need extreme range, and those vessels are only those major players in power projection such as our super carriers and submarine fleet, diesel is the way to go, for technology so far. Also, running a nuclear powered vessel is costly. Mainly constructing them is difficult.

Just make smaller nuclear reactors for the other ships. Or repurpose submarine reactors. IT's a proven safe tech, we've only been powering subs and carriers with them for 40 or 50 years now, and they cost sooo much less to operate.

NO! That idea is to logical! D:

We must power our ships by firing off NUKES behind them!

The shockwave will carry off our finest to where ever they need to go!

OT: I wonder if what people will come up with. In many cases, the masses guesses are actually better than the things experts come up with.

See above.

Also, no, the uneducated masses (we're all uneducated compared to the admirals and other officers and analysts who actually work for the Navy/ US Government) will mostly come up with ideas that are either stupid or noble attempts at good ideas but fall short for honestly overlooked reasons. There will be some out there that raise eyebrows in the DoD think tanks, and those are what they're combing for. Bottom line, the US Navy is the most powerful naval force currently or ever on the planet. Therefore, it probably knows better than you or average Joe.

use computers to plot the most efficient routes possible

What?
Doesn't the navy do this already? I mean, if they have enough money to buy fuel at a consumption rate of 3300 gallons/min, surely they'd have already decked their ships out with GPS and automated navigational systems.

OT: have they considered hamster power?

The Navy does plot the most efficient routes. On the ocean, that's very easy. Just follow the Great Circle to your destination. A great circle is just the arc on the Earth that has the shortest surface distance. That is actually why the line plotted on the maps of airline flights are always curved. It's because that's the shortest possible path over the sphere.

Hmm, if I had a Navy I'd equip all my big ships with Uranium reactors.
That way they can run for a looong time without fear of running out of steam.

The little ones... well, let's stick some solar panels on those.
I'm a crazy dictator, do I even need a Navy?

Also, see first point above.

use computers to plot the most efficient routes possible

What?
Doesn't the navy do this already? I mean, if they have enough money to buy fuel at a consumption rate of 3300 gallons/min, surely they'd have already decked their ships out with GPS and automated navigational systems.

OT: have they considered hamster power?

I wondered this too. I imagine that on a ship-by-ship basis they probably do, but perhaps they can realize more savings by looking at the entire fleet and seeing how each ship might be able to assist other ships (one ship fresh out of port might be able to drop off food to another ship it'll pass near). I imagine there are some pretty serious logistics to consider: noting the accurate inventories of every ship, communicating that information back to a central command, analyzing the data and then realizing it into action.

See above.

Start converting to hydrogen cells. You'll get more bang for your buck and lower emissions. Also, the militarization of it will make it profitable for the general masses, lowering your costs further.

Excellent idea as well, love fuel cells, but they are painfully inefficient on a overall energy scale. Getting the hydrogen requires that you use some other source to break down water, which is of course where we'd find the vast majority of our hydrogen. So, in order to mass produce hydrogen, your best bet would be to increase the nation's energy infrastructure first, hopefully causing us to finally realize that nuclear can solve nearly everything for us in power plants, then work toward getting fuel cells going. Another thing is that fuel cells are very, very heavy for their power output, so you have the potential of making vessels even slower. Perhaps they won't lose half of their speed, but even a max speed drop of five knots would be something to think about, and you of course need large fuel cells.

Something unfortunate to consider as well is that the catalyst in fuel cells used to allow protons to pass through to join with oxygen but to prevent electrons form flowing is made using platinum. We have no other material yet with which we can make the catalysts. That, of course, means you need to have pretty deep pockets until something comes along (glances as molybdenite-based substitute).


Aha! Sorry about all that, guys. I saw this article only had ten comments to it, so I got all of my discussion responses in at once! Feels good!

 

[Rainboq]

Start converting to hydrogen cells. You'll get more bang for your buck and lower emissions. Also, the militarization of it will make it profitable for the general masses, lowering your costs further.

Excellent idea as well, love fuel cells, but they are painfully inefficient on a overall energy scale. Getting the hydrogen requires that you use some other source to break down water, which is of course where we'd find the vast majority of our hydrogen. So, in order to mass produce hydrogen, your best bet would be to increase the nation's energy infrastructure first, hopefully causing us to finally realize that nuclear can solve nearly everything for us in power plants, then work toward getting fuel cells going. Another thing is that fuel cells are very, very heavy for their power output, so you have the potential of making vessels even slower. Perhaps they won't lose half of their speed, but even a max speed drop of five knots would be something to think about, and you of course need large fuel cells.

Something unfortunate to consider as well is that the catalyst in fuel cells used to allow protons to pass through to join with oxygen but to prevent electrons form flowing is made using platinum. We have no other material yet with which we can make the catalysts. That, of course, means you need to have pretty deep pockets until something comes along (glances as molybdenite-based substitute).


Aha! Sorry about all that, guys. I saw this article only had ten comments to it, so I got all of my discussion responses in at once! Feels good!

Lets not also forget the big problem with hydrogen, it combusts easily and violently. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_disaster] So having it on a warship might not be a good idea.

OT: crowd sourcing certainly seems to be all the rage these days, and it might end up being a good thing too!

 

[MammothBlade]

Use deployable hydro electric power plants as an auxillary power source, and also to recycle a portion of the energy through the ships' motion. They could create some drag, so it would be important to create a streamlined design and position them carefully, preferably where they will receive the most sea currents.

Navies ought to exploit the most abundant resource in their natural habitat - the sea.

 

[Kargathia]

use computers to plot the most efficient routes possible

What?
Doesn't the navy do this already? I mean, if they have enough money to buy fuel at a consumption rate of 3300 gallons/min, surely they'd have already decked their ships out with GPS and automated navigational systems.

OT: have they considered hamster power?

I wondered this too. I imagine that on a ship-by-ship basis they probably do, but perhaps they can realize more savings by looking at the entire fleet and seeing how each ship might be able to assist other ships (one ship fresh out of port might be able to drop off food to another ship it'll pass near). I imagine there are some pretty serious logistics to consider: noting the accurate inventories of every ship, communicating that information back to a central command, analyzing the data and then realizing it into action.

Naval logistics are a nightmare already, to put it mildly. Chances are they're already doing it - because why the hell not?

On topic: no matter how popular this whole crowd-sourcing thing is, I believe there is a reason advanced chemistry/engineering/logistics takes a few years of study.

On the other hand: setting this up is akin to pocket change on their budget, so I guess it's one of these things that's worth a shot.

 

[Teddy Roosevelt]

Use deployable hydro electric power plants as an auxillary power source, and also to recycle a portion of the energy through the ships' motion. They could create some drag, so it would be important to create a streamlined design and position them carefully, preferably where they will receive the most sea currents.

Navies ought to exploit the most abundant resource in their natural habitat - the sea.

Easier said than done. The vast majority of energy you can derive from dipping hydro electric power generating plants into the water will come directly from the kinetic energy your engines have already given you. In short, you're basically wasting energy on something that would give you less in return than what you use to move water across it in the first place.

That said, the idea of exploiting sea currents (energy that does not come directly from the vessel's own propulsion) is interesting to say the least, although I fear even if you could get something deep enough to reach the heart of the currents themselves, the energy yield would be frightfully low, almost to make the cost of such a design difficult to justify.

Although, you are right, streamlining hulls is definitely a constant mission of naval engineers not only for ease of high-speed propulsion, though that is important, as US Navy standards require that all vessels be capable of running 30 knots or more. Because water can hinder a ship with such high drag, a vessel with current hull shapes at speeds significantly higher than 30 knots would actually be putting more energy into generating waves than into forward motion. For warships, 30 knots in itself is an impressive figure. Just being able to do that more efficiently would be a dream.

Of course, not only that, but a more streamlined design allows for reduced flow noise around the hull, which contributes to improved sonar stealth, as well as improved clarity on a ship's own passive sonar sensors. All of these are of course in the Navy's interests.

 

[Sneezeguard]

I propose Steam power! You can build anything with that stuff the Internet told me so.

On a more serious note the most effective thing you could do would be to utilise the water water around you to create energy i.e. hydro electric generators.

but there are several problems with that water has to pass through the turbines of the boat and not sink it.

theoretically the faster to go the more energy you produce but to get going you'd need power to start, kinda a catch 22. Unless it's hybridized in a sense and you have an independent source like a fuel to start it and then you can use the turbine energy to to power the rest of the way.

But I have no idea if this would generate enough power to well power the ship but if Incorporated may provide some energy and reduce some fuel consumption.

oh wait someone else thought of that

damn too slow

 

[Hawk eye1466]

Well they could stop taking all the planes and helicopters off the aircraft carriers every time they come into port that might save some fuel. And they could use alternative oil from corn or something for lubrication.

 

[Dimitriov]

How about using fewer and generally smaller ships? Aside from things like aircraft carriers, what is really the purpose of the majority of navy ships?

Air superiority seems more important, and if you can just make smaller more powerful warheads (which is something that is obviously always being worked on) then what do you need giant ships for anyway?

Missile boats and mobile launching platforms for aircraft seem like the only real useful naval ships to me in the 21st century...

But if anyone knows better I'd love to learn why