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Bill Gates Did Not Order a £500m Hydrogen-Powered Superyacht (bbc.com) 284

"Billionaire Bill Gates has not commissioned a hydrogen-powered superyacht from designer Sinot," reports the BBC, citing their direct confirmation from the company itself. It has been widely reported that Mr Gates ordered a £500m ($644m) luxury vessel, based on the concept which was displayed in Monaco in 2019. Sinot said it had "no business relationship" with Bill Gates. It added that that the concept yacht, called Aqua, was "not linked" to either him or any of his representatives.

"Aqua is a concept under development and has not been sold to Mr. Gates," a spokeswoman said.

The Guardian has now removed their original article. But here's what they'd originally reported: Bill Gates has ordered the world's first hydrogen-powered superyacht, worth an estimated £500m ($644m) and featuring an infinity pool, helipad, spa and gym...

The boat has five decks and space to accommodate 14 guests and 31 crew members. In a further environmentally friendly feature, gel-fuelled fire bowls allow guests to stay warm outside without having to burn wood or coals.

But its most cutting-edge feature is tucked away below decks – two 28-tonne vacuum-sealed tanks that are cooled to -423F (-253C) and filled with liquid hydrogen, which powers the ship. The fuel will generate power for the two one-megawatt motors and propellors via on-board fuel cells, which combine hydrogen with oxygen to produce electricity. Water is a byproduct.

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Bill Gates Did Not Order a £500m Hydrogen-Powered Superyacht

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  • Back in the day yachts used to be moved by the wind..

    • by nukenerd ( 172703 ) on Monday February 10, 2020 @07:05AM (#59710048)
      "Yacht" means a pleasure vessel. A "sailing yacht" means one powered (principally) by the wind. Of course, back in the day wind power was the main option, although slaves rowing was another.
      • A "sailing yacht" means one powered (principally) by the wind.

        And a "tasteless yacht" means one powered by money and not by maritime esthetics.

        • And a "tasteless yacht" means one powered by money and not by maritime esthetics.

          Nowhere does it say that a yacht has to give you any pleasure.

          If the owner's happy with his vessel then it's a yacht.

  • by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Monday February 10, 2020 @04:45AM (#59709814)

    You *do* need to be a billionaire to run something like that. I remember a quote from Forbes himself: "My yacht has gold faucets. That's cheaper. If they were of brass, I'd need 2 people more to clean them." Gotta love the metrics of the super-rich.

    I'll stick with Airbnb and rented Kiteboards for the time being, thank you very much.

    • "If they were of brass, I'd need 2 people more to clean them." Gotta love the metrics of the super-rich.

      Super-rich and super ignorant, or at best disingenuous. 316 stainless would not need cleaning and would not look obnoxious.

      • by dwywit ( 1109409 )

        I think gold looks quite pretty - as an accent, like a wedding band or a thin trim on a dinner plate.

        But gold taps, yeah, that's obnoxious and ostentatious.

        • "But gold taps, yeah, that's obnoxious and ostentatious."

          Only topped by gold guns.

          • The pure kind that is soft and rubs off, so you slowly imprint your ass on the seat and literally flush down money every time you shat onto that money.

            I remember hearing a story of some Dubai royalty having over140 of them in his palace. But I bet our former royalty was not much better.

      • Super poor and super ignorant - 316 stainless steel still corrodes on a yacht.
        • Talking out your ass. [thyssenkru...ials.co.uk]

          • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

            Problem you're missing is high rate of water flow combined with marine environment.

            It's going to corrode. Your link says as much if you actually read it.

            • Problem you're missing is high rate of water flow combined with marine environment.

              Problem is, you don't know WTF you're talking about. High rate of fresh water flow? Yeah sure, give me a break. Immersed in salt water? Indeed, even 316 can corrode, with the help of a wide variety of ions and life forms in the water. Can also corrode if in contact with dissimilar metals. But just salt air? No, it just doesn't. Take a walk around any marina to convince yourself. Fifty years on the sea and your 316 stainless will still be bright and shiny, never having been polished or otherwise cleaned unle

  • Doubt.jpg (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Nife Cat ( 5950278 ) on Monday February 10, 2020 @04:48AM (#59709820)
    I highly doubt the construction of an entire half a billion superyacht is in any way environmentally friendly...
    • Re:Doubt.jpg (Score:4, Informative)

      by Rei ( 128717 ) on Monday February 10, 2020 @05:44AM (#59709894) Homepage

      Neither is fueling it with hydrogen, which is either A) (the vast majortiy) made from natural gas - at a loss - or B) made several times more inefficiently (net system efficiency well-to-wheel) from electricity (in comparison to batteries)

      Regardless, given that this is the damage from a mere 4kg going off [ctif.org] (about the amount used by a single hydrogen car) - powerful enough of a shockwave to detonate airbags on a car passing by on the adjacent road - I seriously hope they never moor that thing in port near Reykjavík. (It was annoying enough when Paul Allen "docked" Octopus offshore here and blocked our views while he played ocean explorer)

      (I really recommend any of the "But hydrogen is safe!" people read NASA's handling guidelines [nasa.gov] for hydrogen. Liquid hydrogen is even worse than compressed).

      • A) (the vast majortiy) made from natural gas - at a loss - or B) made several times more inefficiently (net system efficiency well-to-wheel) from electricity (in comparison to batteries)

        A) Yeah, like he would build a new yacht to be environmentally friendly, and then not demand the hydrogen to be made in an environmentally friendly way too. Dude probably has his own plant.
        And just because some way exists to make it in an environmentally unfriendly way, that generally doesn't mean the method is bad! I can ma

        • by Rei ( 128717 )

          Sorry, but if you think wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, etc are zero impact, you're sadly mistaken. A hydrogen economy involves ~3 times the wind turbines, ~3 times the solar panels, ~3 times the dammed-up rivers, etc etc. That is not a world that I want. Should I even bother to mention the fact that hydrogen leaks through almost anything, and leaked hydrogen destroys ozone?

          And regardless of what you want to believe, 95% of hydrogen is produced from natural gas. Bill Gates hasn't built a secret n

        • Please tell me what environmentally friendly way there is to produce liquid hydrogen on the scale needed for this thing.

          Rich people don't give a single though to how the hydrogen comes to be, they just look at the first order "hydrogen is cleaner than fossil fuel!" and spend half a billion dollars on a boat. It never occurs to them that the hydrogen probably comes from fossil fuels to begin with, and takes more energy to extract the hydrogen from the fossil fuel.

          The exception to this would be if there were

    • Re:Doubt.jpg (Score:5, Interesting)

      by spth ( 5126797 ) on Monday February 10, 2020 @07:13AM (#59710066)

      On the other hand, it can be useful to have a prototype of a hydrogen-powered ship of this size.

      Bill Gates paying for the prototype by making his yacht it then is better for the environment than building a conventional yacht and another prototype ship (or just building the yacht and not building the prototype due to lack of funds). Beside.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • There's already a lot of interest in diesel-electric systems which make for relatively simple pod-type directional thrust propulsion, since you're basically just embedding an electric motor in the pod vs. connecting mechanical linkage to the prime mover. They also allow the engines to be run at optimal power bands and allow generation capacity to be spun down when its not needed.

          The challenge will be getting the hydrogen prime mover systems down in size and complexity enough for it to be viable in 30-meter

  • by burni2 ( 1643061 ) on Monday February 10, 2020 @05:00AM (#59709834)

    This is really "fucking" PR-stunt by "Atomic Bill" and it isn't a really good one because:

    1.) This yacht has under current status hydrogen production (~98% from Methan CH4) a really big CO2 footprint

    2.) The built itself, is using excessive resources for little benefit, that might have been used in a better way, perhaps when being used to produce a wind turbine for example - that would have saved CO2.

    Don't understand me wrong it is really nothing wrong with having a yacht or being rich. But trying to ride on the "climate wave" and pretending to do something good, when in reality it isn't really good for climate or environmentally friendly.

    If he want's a yacht with low emissions he can buy one with good exhaust cleaning technology - for example one that doesn't dumps all scrubbed soot directly into the sea water.

    • Hydrogen is very difficult to handle - the tanks are big and heavy. It would be better to combine the hydrogen with carbon and make long chain molecules - about 10 to 12 carbon atoms will do. That way, they will have a liquid that can be easily stored and burned in conventional maritime diesel engines.
      • Use fuel cells! And if your fuel is synthetic and hence clean, you'll have zero side-products. Just CO2 and water.
        Compress the CO2 in a tank, use it to improve buoyancy, whatever.
        And when at a port, pump it off, bring it to your plant, and use solar power and water to turn it into your fuel again.
        Clean cycle. Energy-dense fuel. No nasty battery chemicals. No risk of explosion or unstoppable fire.

    • Your points are well taken, but I must admit that when I peruse their web site it becomes abundantly clear there's nothing whatsoever "environmentally friendly" about a superyacht. The notion that all you spew out is water is merely a small selling point out of many, and those many things are about how many people you can party with, the design, luxury, etc. The fact that you are rich and want to party in style on the water won't get you Greta Thunberg at your next do. I don't get the impression that Gate

  • Imagine if a few prominent rich people demanded their super yachts be powered by sail, wind (through a turbine) and/or solar with other environmentally considerate features for recycling, waste management, materials etc. The ship could still be grotesquely opulent but it might set a trend for this sort of thing.
  • by vyvepe ( 809573 ) on Monday February 10, 2020 @05:38AM (#59709880)
    It is more environmentally friendly to use LNG. 95% of hydrogen is made from LNG. It is easier to liquify natural gas than hydrogen. You do not need to cool LNG tanks that much (if it is needed at all).
  • by fazig ( 2909523 ) on Monday February 10, 2020 @05:42AM (#59709888)
    In a further environmentally friendly feature, gel-fuelled fire bowls allow guests to stay warm outside without having to burn wood or coals.

    Does anyone here know if the process of creating those chafing fuels, the thermal energy that is released when burning them and the waste products are environmentally friendlier than using plain old wood as a fuel?
    What's the difference in (useful) energy density both for energy / volume and energy / mass?

    I know that chafing fuel has several advantages over wood for indoor use, like having a lot of its chemical energy coming from the hydrogen in its bonds burning into water vapor, thus not producing as much CO2 and CO as burning wood (~50% carbon) does. Those two gasses can be quite dangerous indoors and still kill people who are foolish enough to burn larger quantities of wood or coal indoors with insufficient ventilation and or without a proper chimney every year.
    But I haven't thought much about the other things I mentioned above.
    • environmentally friendlier than using plain old wood as a fuel?

      You've got to keep up with the eco hype. Burning wood is now evil because it creates fine dust.

      For example, wood pellet ovens used to be an environmentally-friendly alternative for heating your home. Then the whole fine dust craze hit. Our super progressive Green-party overlords in Germany are even trying to get fireplaces and traditional bonfires banned.

    • Gel fuels are made from unicorn farts. The only byproducts of combustion are pixie dust and good feels. It's a lot like the emperor's clothes, the super rich think there's something there and pay a lot for it, and we're not supposed to question them.

  • else Billy and his floating rich man's toy will reach low-Earth orbit in less time than you can say "Oh the humanity"...

  • by Cederic ( 9623 ) on Monday February 10, 2020 @06:15AM (#59709958) Journal

    In a further environmentally friendly feature, gel-fuelled fire bowls allow guests to stay warm outside without having to burn wood or coals.

    Or you could put a fucking jumper on.

    Look, stupidly rich man wants to buy a stupidly expensive boat, go for it. Just stop pretending it's anything remotely environmentally friendly.

  • Wouldnâ(TM)t nuclear have been a better choice? Presumably he could have bought a nuclear propulsion from the Russians on the cheap.
  • Who thought that was a good idea?

    Then again I can see the appeal of superconduction. :D

    • If the cooling fails, expanding hydrogen is routed into several large sacks tucked away on the deck. Assuming nobody smokes, the yacht simply flies back to port.
  • by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Monday February 10, 2020 @07:27AM (#59710084)

    "An academic spent six years studying the lavish boats of multimillionaires. Her conclusion: showing off the owners’ wealth and status matters more than travel"

    https://www.theguardian.com/li... [theguardian.com]

  • by AnyoneCanBeCool ( 6597510 ) on Monday February 10, 2020 @08:40AM (#59710232)
    Sinot published a statement on their website that refutes the selling and any connection with Bill Gates. https://sinot.com/ [sinot.com]
  • Thanks for saving the world Bill
  • No he didn't (Score:3, Informative)

    by sdjimmy ( 875372 ) on Monday February 10, 2020 @09:29AM (#59710376)
    From the BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/tec... [bbc.co.uk]

    It has been widely reported that Mr Gates ordered a £500m ($644m) luxury vessel, based on the concept which was displayed in Monaco in 2019. Sinot said it had "no business relationship" with Bill Gates. It added that that the concept yacht, called Aqua, was "not linked" to either him or any of his representatives. "Aqua is a concept under development and has not been sold to Mr Gates," a spokeswoman said.
  • Fake News (Score:5, Informative)

    by Major Blud ( 789630 ) on Monday February 10, 2020 @10:16AM (#59710504) Homepage

    According to BBC, this is fake news:

    https://www.bbc.com/news/techn... [bbc.com]

  • Fake news (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bueller_007 ( 535588 ) on Monday February 10, 2020 @10:34AM (#59710600)

    The yacht company explicitly says that he is *not* buying it.
    https://www.bbc.com/news/techn... [bbc.com]

  • For that much cash Bill could have spent 50 years on the international space station. He must really like gravity.
  • by maroberts ( 15852 ) on Monday February 10, 2020 @10:49AM (#59710662) Homepage Journal
  • by pr100 ( 653298 ) on Monday February 10, 2020 @11:23AM (#59710792)
  • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Saturday February 15, 2020 @01:05PM (#59731182)

    Slashdot once prided itself on not editing, censoring, or otherwise tampering with content. To the point that when a post was once removed they ran an entire story on it. Now we have EditorDavid completely re-writing the original story with all comments intact and reposting it as news while the original submission has been removed.

    What The Fuck! That is not how you even pretend to run an open an honest site. It now looks like 220 comments are criticising a story which did not exist. It now looks like a chunk of the comments are correcting (debunking) a story that is in fact debunked in the submission.

    Grammatical mistakes, okay. Dupes, yeah this is Slashdot so we're used to that. But changing the entire submission and leaving comments intact then reposting is just NOT OKAY.

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