How to design a sailing ship for the 21st century?

Re:How to design a sailing ship for the 21st century? by naravara on Monday May 17, 2021 @02:53PM (#27186809)

How does this work? The article assumes I should already know the mechanics of it, but googling only seems to turn up a bunch of the same sorts of articles.

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Re:How to design a sailing ship for the 21st century? by krisoft on Monday May 17, 2021 @03:33PM (#27187384)

I'm not an expert on it really. They rotate the giant cylinder and the wind is blowing by. The rotation forms a low pressure zone one side of the cylinder which acts as a lift force perpendicular both to the rotational axis of the cylinder and the wind.

It's the same effect which "turns" a soccer ball if you kick it with a spin. There is a really nice demonstration of the effect in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OSrvzNW9FE

This wikipedia page has a way better summary than my attempt above: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotor_ship

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