This last month has proved to be full of wins as well as changes in direction.
I drove down to Mojave California in order to speak to Burt Rutan (Designer of spaceship one and voyager…) His company also helped to design the hard sail wing for the American Sailing race yacht “America One.” Not surprisingly, I was not able to speak directly to Burt, but I was able to speak to others that were knowledgeable in the concept and general design of the Turbosail. Their experience and knowledge of the TurboSail was actually extensive and detailed. Apparently the TurboSail was fraught with extensive problems and issues. Although after a lot of work and tweaking the TurboSail did in fact work. But not as is reported by the various magazines. The bottom line is that we would have to start from scratch and re-design the complete system.
Although it is feasible and in my estimation desirable, it is not affordable at this time. The cost will exceed over a million US Dollars. So rather than trying to tackle that problem and issue, we will be redesigning using computer controlled canvas systems instead.
One important note on this: Rutan’s company is actually owned by Northrop-Grumman a major US company that is a major player with the shipping industry as well as the aircraft industry. It might be possible to approach NP requesting for their sponsorship to design the TurboSail as a donation or a sponsor. But we will have to have a lot of people supporting that request as well as a more impressive organization… in numbers if nothing else. What if NP got hundreds of emails requesting that they support this project? They just might do it… but we need the numbers and community support first.
The more I research the issue of Oceanic garbage cleanup the more I find that nothing is being accomplished. There is plenty of talk by the UN, marine biologist’s reports and so forth… they are spending millions accessing the damage and long term affects, but there is little in the way of engineers and designers working on the actual problem!
While everybody is analyzing the subject to death, they are paralyzed at actually accomplishing anything. That is what we are doing! We need this ship as the first step in designing some very valid systems that will actually start tackling the ocean garbage problem.
That is why everybody that is involved is so important in following through with their convictions on helping us. The Web site has been worked on in order to make it better, although it is still having problems with Apple computer browsers… I think the code will have to be changed for the front end template.
We have an active partnership with Oregon State University Engineering Department whereas the students are designing and building the power source input controller system for us. This is real exciting as I was able to go over there and spend a day with them… these are extremely smart guys.
We need to expand that for the hydrogen production system as well as the hydrogen fuel cell systems that will be critical on the ship… we will work with anybody that is willing to assist us in our efforts.
Most importantly we are financially in need; please donate a few dollars to help us out… I am spending all that I can from my own savings to support this effort and we still need more for operational costs as well as trips to track down technology and people.
Thank you everybody for their continued help and support.
Gary Darby
Director GIP
