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

[Da Orky Man]

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.

The problem with H-cells is that they would significantly reduce the range a ship could travel. And when you cut back a ship that used to have a range of, say, ten thousand km to just over a thousand, that creates problems.

 

[Da Orky Man]

Solar sails and electrolysis to create hydrogen anyone? Heck, aircraft carriers that have safety nets on the sides of the deck could have soft panels installed in said nets. Use the hydrogen produced from electrolysis in fuel cells or a modified ICE.

Hydrolysis is a rather energy-expensive process, and in order to power a frigate you would need several square kilometres of solar panel. Not so good when 80% of your mass is solar panel, and the ship is now many times larger.
I would say start using the 25MW modular reactor from Hyperion. It's small, powerful, soid-state, and really rather cheap.

 

[Kahani]

U.S. Navy's New MMO

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.

So the lesson we can take home from this is that the US navy can't tell the difference between an MMO and a chatroom. Sure, not all MMOs have to involve elves and whatnot, but this isn't a game at all, it's simply a structured discussion. Creating a public discussion forum for people to propose ideas isn't necessarily a bad idea, but why call it an "MMO wargame" when it's painfully obvious that it's no such thing?

 

[Distance_warrior]

What about offshore refueling via floating fortresses connected via stealth piping on the sea bed. It would be safe from sabotage if you just build them in an area too deep for human divers hiding from sonar is easy. Would mean you only had to go back to shore for munitions vital repairs or crew rotation and the cost of pumping as opposed to sailing out oil would be significant. Would also allow a greater patrol coverage for less ships.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

The US government would never do that! What is wrong with you. ):<

All those men are white!

[/kidding]

It's worse than you think. That's a scene from Ben Hur, so I'm pretty sure that all of those men are Jewish.

OT: Well I came into this thread to make flippant jokes about oar power but it's pretty clear from the above that I don't need to bother (or dare).

Has the US navy simply considered scaling back it's operations? Taking a look at the top 15 biggest military spenders in the <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures>world the US spends as much as places 2-15 put together. Unless the US is planning on starting a fight with the entire world, that amount of spending is unnecessary. Scale it back a bit fellas.

 

[Arakasi]

Yes, I wonder how to make a gigantic flat black surface open to the sun all day more energy efficient.

...

 

[Teddy Roosevelt]

Get rid of the Navy, it's largely obsolete. We only really need carriers to be able to launch our jets, seeing as we have military bases in every corner of the planet and naval warfare is really unlikely to happen in a modern war.

The US needs its navy like the UK needs to curbstomp a random nation on occasion.

To prove to people we can fight wars so we never HAVE to fight wars.

Plus, if the US dismantles its Navy, who is going to counter the Chinese? Bar the Indians. But they are not exactly tooling around the Pacific, looking mean.

Oops, I just justified military spending.

Guess that makes me a shitty Socialist.

I hope the first part was irony, but wars between comparable modern powers have never been fought. My guess is that any offensive naval capacity will be rendered obsolete by the incredibly sophisticated and powerful weaponry and guidance systems on modern fighter jets. I'm not an expert but I imagine that the USAF could sink a chinese fleet like shooting fish in a barrel.

Are you kidding? There are tons of articles, not to mention official military concerns, of a conflict against the Chinese. People that have said large wars will never happen again because of X reason have been consistently proved wrong... by larger wars than at any point in previous history. It is thought that a conflict of some sort involving the Chinese and US Pacific Command is very likely in the near future (meaning, say, next 30 years or so).

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!

That's why you would want to use hydrogen. It provides a ton of bang for the buck when used in a combustion engine. You just wouldn't want it to leak that's all.

Hydrogen is not actually useful in a combustion engine. It has a horrible compression ratio. You would use hydrogen for fuel cells.

Yes, I wonder how to make a gigantic flat black surface open to the sun all day more energy efficient.

...

You wanna turn your flight deck into a giant solar panel? Where do you launch your aircraft, then? Landing and takeoff, hell even taxiing aircraft would probably ruin the cells. More than that, carriers, at least our super carriers (not sure about amphibious assault ships) are nuclear powered. They have more than enough energy.

Actually, yeah, people, the US carriers and submarines are nuclear powered. Therefore, they don't use the same diesel fuel as the rest of the US surface fleet, and are therefore technically not necessary to revise. More than that, nuclear is awesome, but sadly not practical for any ships that don't absolutely need well nigh infinite range. The only things that use diesel on our super carriers are the refueling bunkers, essentially huge fuel tanks on the carriers that the rest of the fleet can use to refuel, making them essentially huge oilers.

No, the real discussion should be about our cruisers, destroyers, frigates, etc.

 

[A-D.]

Im thinking...water power. Alright, before the idea is shot down, lets theorize a little.

First, create a system of a spiraling turbine inside a metal tube. Then create a system which merely is designed to create a suction to push water into the front of the tube and out the back, the water itself will simply cause the turbines to be rotated and as such generate power, if done right, you could even use it as propulsion entirely as it replaces the usual form of a ship's propeller and create energy at the same time to power itself and potentially other Electronics on the Ship, the bigger the ship, the more space you have to essentially attach that new system.

Or in short, water generators on a smaller scale along the underside of the Ship, if done correctly you can either reduce the need for fuel because certain things can be powered with the energy created, reduce the fuel needed for propulsion due to the inherent motion of the turbine adding to the ships propulsion mechanism, or eliminate the need for fossil fuel altogether by using the turbines for both power generation and propulsion.

Simple on paper, probably not so simple in practice, but there's an idea. I mean its ships, they are ALWAYS in the water, so why not make use of it?

 

[Teddy Roosevelt]

Get rid of the Navy, it's largely obsolete. We only really need carriers to be able to launch our jets, seeing as we have military bases in every corner of the planet and naval warfare is really unlikely to happen in a modern war.

The US needs its navy like the UK needs to curbstomp a random nation on occasion.

To prove to people we can fight wars so we never HAVE to fight wars.

Plus, if the US dismantles its Navy, who is going to counter the Chinese? Bar the Indians. But they are not exactly tooling around the Pacific, looking mean.

Oops, I just justified military spending.

Guess that makes me a shitty Socialist.

I hope the first part was irony, but wars between comparable modern powers have never been fought. My guess is that any offensive naval capacity will be rendered obsolete by the incredibly sophisticated and powerful weaponry and guidance systems on modern fighter jets. I'm not an expert but I imagine that the USAF could sink a chinese fleet like shooting fish in a barrel.

Are you kidding? There are tons of articles, not to mention official military concerns, of a conflict against the Chinese. People that have said large wars will never happen again because of X reason have been consistently proved wrong... by larger wars than at any point in previous history. It is thought that a conflict of some sort involving the Chinese and US Pacific Command is very likely in the near future (meaning, say, next 30 years or so).

Any large-scale war that happens today would ruin the global economy. This is the first time in human history that countries have been so reliant on each other economically; no huge war would do either country any good, it would be like two vital organs in the same body fighting each other. I don't exactly see a future of eternal peace and harmony, but if you look, the only ones threatening war these days are either religious or ideological zealots, or those in power who would benefit from extreme personal gain.

You sound exactly like the major European powers between 1900 and 1914. The view then was, as it is today, that the major European empires are too economically intertwined for a massive war to be viable. Come 1914... well, you know.

Anyway, the fact is, China is a huge concern for the US in the Western Pacific and its allies (Australia, Thailand, new Zealand, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan), because China would love to push the US out of what it sees should be a Chinese sphere of influence in Asia, as it used to hold way back when China was a regional power. It is already growing as such a power in any case. No, we're not looking at a war where China is looking to conquer the US, or the US to conquer China, but there is still the likelihood of open conflict.

Im thinking...water power. Alright, before the idea is shot down, lets theorize a little.

First, create a system of a spiraling turbine inside a metal tube. Then create a system which merely is designed to create a suction to push water into the front of the tube and out the back, the water itself will simply cause the turbines to be rotated and as such generate power, if done right, you could even use it as propulsion entirely as it replaces the usual form of a ship's propeller and create energy at the same time to power itself and potentially other Electronics on the Ship, the bigger the ship, the more space you have to essentially attach that new system.

Or in short, water generators on a smaller scale along the underside of the Ship, if done correctly you can either reduce the need for fuel because certain things can be powered with the energy created, reduce the fuel needed for propulsion due to the inherent motion of the turbine adding to the ships propulsion mechanism, or eliminate the need for fossil fuel altogether by using the turbines for both power generation and propulsion.

Simple on paper, probably not so simple in practice, but there's an idea. I mean its ships, they are ALWAYS in the water, so why not make use of it?

Lovely idea... but you say suck in water? That requires energy. The unfortunate thing is, the only way to get water to flow through said turbines would be to use either the kinetic energy of the ship already moving through the water, or to suck water through the turbines. That is the issue in itself. You have to use energy to get energy out of the other piece of the mechanism, but thermodynamics steps in and says you just get a net loss of energy by having the turbines there at all.

 

[Dalisclock]

The only things that use diesel on our super carriers are the refueling bunkers, essentially huge fuel tanks on the carriers that the rest of the fleet can use to refuel, making them essentially huge oilers.

No, the real discussion should be about our cruisers, destroyers, frigates, etc.

Small correction: Carriers carry a lot of fuel for their aircraft, which can also be used to refuel smaller ships as well. The Navy uses the same fuel in aircraft as it does for diesel engines/gas turbines.

 

[Dalisclock]

Im thinking...water power. Alright, before the idea is shot down, lets theorize a little.

First, create a system of a spiraling turbine inside a metal tube. Then create a system which merely is designed to create a suction to push water into the front of the tube and out the back, the water itself will simply cause the turbines to be rotated and as such generate power, if done right, you could even use it as propulsion entirely as it replaces the usual form of a ship's propeller and create energy at the same time to power itself and potentially other Electronics on the Ship, the bigger the ship, the more space you have to essentially attach that new system.

Or in short, water generators on a smaller scale along the underside of the Ship, if done correctly you can either reduce the need for fuel because certain things can be powered with the energy created, reduce the fuel needed for propulsion due to the inherent motion of the turbine adding to the ships propulsion mechanism, or eliminate the need for fossil fuel altogether by using the turbines for both power generation and propulsion.

Simple on paper, probably not so simple in practice, but there's an idea. I mean its ships, they are ALWAYS in the water, so why not make use of it?

Sounds suspiciously like you're suggesting a perpetual motion machine.

 

[Dalisclock]

Unless the US is planning on starting a fight with the entire world, that amount of spending is unnecessary. Scale it back a bit fellas.

Well, a lot of it has to do with the US Navy/Military being in love with overwhelming power projection, in that if something happens anywhere on Earth, The US navy could have 3 carriers on station within a month. And would still have several carriers in the yards for maintence and overhaul, not to mention having a reserve force ready to relieve the carriers on station eventually.

And frankly, those sailors actually want to go home sometime. Being on station for 6 months, let alone 9 or 10, is really stressful and crappy, so you have to have more then 2-3 carriers if you want to maintain constant coverage of any given area, let alone multiple areas(say one off the coast of china and two more in the Persian Gulf for air support over Afghanistan).

Though the US Navy still spends too much time at sea per carrier in my opinion. I just finished my sea tour in the Navy, which involved 3 deployments in 3 years on a carrier, where anywhere from 50-75% of every year was spent out at sea for deployment, workups, tiger cruises, sea trials, photo ops, etc. Because of that, I've had enough time out at sea to last me a lifetime, at least on a warship.

 

[Rad Party God]

That's the first thing I thought when I saw the headliner (I read it as US Navy Wants You )

It's an interesting concept overall, let's hope they put these ideas to good use.

 

[Teddy Roosevelt]

The only things that use diesel on our super carriers are the refueling bunkers, essentially huge fuel tanks on the carriers that the rest of the fleet can use to refuel, making them essentially huge oilers.

No, the real discussion should be about our cruisers, destroyers, frigates, etc.

Small correction: Carriers carry a lot of fuel for their aircraft, which can also be used to refuel smaller ships as well. The Navy uses the same fuel in aircraft as it does for diesel engines/gas turbines.

Really? I thought the ships used diesel instead of... what is it, JP8? Makes sense, though, we do like using flexible fuel options.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

Unless the US is planning on starting a fight with the entire world, that amount of spending is unnecessary. Scale it back a bit fellas.

Well, a lot of it has to do with the US Navy/Military being in love with overwhelming power projection, in that if something happens anywhere on Earth, The US navy could have 3 carriers on station within a month. And would still have several carriers in the yards for maintence and overhaul, not to mention having a reserve force ready to relieve the carriers on station eventually.

And frankly, those sailors actually want to go home sometime. Being on station for 6 months, let alone 9 or 10, is really stressful and crappy, so you have to have more then 2-3 carriers if you want to maintain constant coverage of any given area, let alone multiple areas(say one off the coast of china and two more in the Persian Gulf for air support over Afghanistan).

Though the US Navy still spends too much time at sea per carrier in my opinion. I just finished my sea tour in the Navy, which involved 3 deployments in 3 years on a carrier, where anywhere from 50-75% of every year was spent out at sea for deployment, workups, tiger cruises, sea trials, photo ops, etc. Because of that, I've had enough time out at sea to last me a lifetime, at least on a warship.

Agreed. Your first paragraph pretty much sums up the core problem. The US isn't satisfied with simply being able to have a presence in an area, it must be able to exert absolute authority in any given theater whenever it so chooses. Our military gets by on less than a tenth the budget the US does, and whilst I know that our lads and lasses wouldn't say no to a larger equipment budget, we still manage to be where we need to be when we need to be there. It is, as you say, the US military's need to exert complete dominance at any given time that is leeching it's budget.

Also I didn't know the tour lengths were such an issue over the pond. Tough break, fella.

[small]Oh yeah, sorry for the late reply and all that.[/small]

 

[Teddy Roosevelt]

Unless the US is planning on starting a fight with the entire world, that amount of spending is unnecessary. Scale it back a bit fellas.

Well, a lot of it has to do with the US Navy/Military being in love with overwhelming power projection, in that if something happens anywhere on Earth, The US navy could have 3 carriers on station within a month. And would still have several carriers in the yards for maintence and overhaul, not to mention having a reserve force ready to relieve the carriers on station eventually.

And frankly, those sailors actually want to go home sometime. Being on station for 6 months, let alone 9 or 10, is really stressful and crappy, so you have to have more then 2-3 carriers if you want to maintain constant coverage of any given area, let alone multiple areas(say one off the coast of china and two more in the Persian Gulf for air support over Afghanistan).

Though the US Navy still spends too much time at sea per carrier in my opinion. I just finished my sea tour in the Navy, which involved 3 deployments in 3 years on a carrier, where anywhere from 50-75% of every year was spent out at sea for deployment, workups, tiger cruises, sea trials, photo ops, etc. Because of that, I've had enough time out at sea to last me a lifetime, at least on a warship.

Agreed. Your first paragraph pretty much sums up the core problem. The US isn't satisfied with simply being able to have a presence in an area, it must be able to exert absolute authority in any given theater whenever it so chooses. Our military gets by on less than a tenth the budget the US does, and whilst I know that our lads and lasses wouldn't say no to a larger equipment budget, we still manage to be where we need to be when we need to be there. It is, as you say, the US military's need to exert complete dominance at any given time that is leeching it's budget.

Also I didn't know the tour lengths were such an issue over the pond. Tough break, fella.

[small]Oh yeah, sorry for the late reply and all that.[/small]

This is a man of Britain posting, I assume. Well, just let me remind you that the UK does not have anything close to the power projection of the US. maybe you have the ability to get something anywhere you want it to be... but then what do you do with it? The only aircraft carrier you had until very recently (HMS Invincible, now a helicopter platform) was not very large in the first place, lacking the firepower and logistical support capacity of a Nimitz-class super carrier.

Really, the Royal Navy doesn't do anything any more except under the general oversight of the USN, for the most part, because, well, it can't really do much otherwise.

How I feel about the necessity of that firepower... well, I think that may be for another time.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

Unless the US is planning on starting a fight with the entire world, that amount of spending is unnecessary. Scale it back a bit fellas.

Well, a lot of it has to do with the US Navy/Military being in love with overwhelming power projection, in that if something happens anywhere on Earth, The US navy could have 3 carriers on station within a month. And would still have several carriers in the yards for maintence and overhaul, not to mention having a reserve force ready to relieve the carriers on station eventually.

And frankly, those sailors actually want to go home sometime. Being on station for 6 months, let alone 9 or 10, is really stressful and crappy, so you have to have more then 2-3 carriers if you want to maintain constant coverage of any given area, let alone multiple areas(say one off the coast of china and two more in the Persian Gulf for air support over Afghanistan).

Though the US Navy still spends too much time at sea per carrier in my opinion. I just finished my sea tour in the Navy, which involved 3 deployments in 3 years on a carrier, where anywhere from 50-75% of every year was spent out at sea for deployment, workups, tiger cruises, sea trials, photo ops, etc. Because of that, I've had enough time out at sea to last me a lifetime, at least on a warship.

Agreed. Your first paragraph pretty much sums up the core problem. The US isn't satisfied with simply being able to have a presence in an area, it must be able to exert absolute authority in any given theater whenever it so chooses. Our military gets by on less than a tenth the budget the US does, and whilst I know that our lads and lasses wouldn't say no to a larger equipment budget, we still manage to be where we need to be when we need to be there. It is, as you say, the US military's need to exert complete dominance at any given time that is leeching it's budget.

Also I didn't know the tour lengths were such an issue over the pond. Tough break, fella.

[small]Oh yeah, sorry for the late reply and all that.[/small]

This is a man of Britain posting, I assume. Well, just let me remind you that the UK does not have anything close to the power projection of the US. maybe you have the ability to get something anywhere you want it to be... but then what do you do with it? The only aircraft carrier you had until very recently (HMS Invincible, now a helicopter platform) was not very large in the first place, lacking the firepower and logistical support capacity of a Nimitz-class super carrier.

Really, the Royal Navy doesn't do anything any more except under the general oversight of the USN, for the most part, because, well, it can't really do much otherwise.

How I feel about the necessity of that firepower... well, I think that may be for another time.

True, but our (and the rest of Europe's) military is scaled along the projection of always going into conflict with allied forces to take up the slack. Since the scrapping of our carriers, for example, we have an agreement to utilise French carriers when we need them. The US is still operating on the old WW2 mentality of needing enough firepower to take on all comers - hence my original joking comment to 'unless the US is planning to take on the world'. Do we have enough military might to tackle any situation on our own? No, and you're right to point that out. But we don't need to tackle military situations on our own - and neither does the US, but it's military expenditure doesn't reflect that.