Gizcast #10: The world's best boat design?

02:52 September 9, 2009 PDT

Gizcast #10: Austal's trimaran - the world's best boat design?

As the Gizcast breaks double figures, Michael Mulcahy speaks to Tony Armstrong of Austal, a West Australian shipbuilding company that's leading the world in the construction of fast ferries. Austal has just signed some huge contracts with the U.S. Navy thanks to its revolutionary trimaran ship design that delivers an almost miraculous set of benefits over traditional single hull and catamaran designs. Geoffrey Baird's also got a roundup of top stories from the Gizmag.com homepage. Presented by Loz Blain.

Download the full episode as m4a (m4a is great, it contains chapters, links and images if your player supports them) or mp3 to put on your MP3 player.

Or listen right here:

Further reading on the topics covered in this week's podcast (in the order they're mentioned):

Feature Story:

Austal's trimarans - the world's best ship design?

Quick Wrap:

User Comments (3)

great to have the podcasts back .. where have you been ?

Traff

- September 9, 2009 @ 08:09 am PDT

This vessel would be truly fuel efficient if it was powered by 1 of these engines rather than 3. The comparison that Austal is making is that 3 are more fuel efficient than 4 engines, but 2 is too many. Just one of these engines burns about 1000 gallons of MDO per hour. Their standard propulsion on most of their HSV's is 2 of these engines for about 2000 gallons of MDO burned per hour. The 102M would burn about 3000 gallons of MDO per hour. That's a little more than $9000 per hour at current MDO prices. The routes that these ships take around the world are usually more than an hour. They gotta have steady business to make it work. Even in Japan last year, a company didn't have enough business to justify it with just 2 of these comparable engines. The most telling part of this story that I noticed was that they are building this vessel without a known buyer? Is that true? This vessel is a monument to the profligate habits of a pre-peak oil world.

Brad Parsons

- September 10, 2009 @ 09:09 am PDT

Correction:

Fuel efficiency is all relative. This vessel would be truly fuel efficient if it was powered by 2 of these engines rather than 3. The comparison that Austal is making is that 3 are more fuel efficient than 4 engines, but 3 are still too many. Just one of these engines burns about 500 gallons of MDO per hour. Their standard propulsion on most of their HSV's is 4 of these engines for about 2000 gallons of MDO burned per hour. The 102M would burn about 1500 gallons of MDO per hour. That's a little more than $4500 per hour at current MDO prices. The routes that these ships take around the world are usually more than an hour. They gotta have steady business to make it work. Even in Japan last year, a company didn't have enough business to justify the fuel expense with comparable vessels. The most telling part of this story that I noticed was that they are building this vessel without a known buyer? Is that true? This vessel is still a monument to the profligate habits of a pre-peak oil world.

Brad Parsons

- September 13, 2009 @ 12:09 am PDT