I may well be wrong, but this proposal sounds like a box ticking exercise.

Which keyword do we need to include to acheive the most subsidies?

A green-hydrogen powered submarine that removes micro-plastic from the oceans and delivers cargo.

Well done sir, well done indeed.

And it's researching AI for another big fashionable tick.

But the project is doomed from the start because it doesn't mention the cloud or blockchain.

I suppose we should be grateful the government is only spunking away a few tens of millions on this flop. They usually waste tens of billions on lost causes.

I was going to say Buzz Word Bingo but box ticking works too.

They forgot to include blockchain

So long as we are going to use Build Back Boris Britain Better Boxes for those ticks. This must be all part of Leveling Up, you have to start at the bottom (trough) and somewhere near the seabed is just that. Also, it will be a great story for Cop(OUT)26.

... while producing electricity. The more it travels, the more power it generates!

Don't worry about block chain, that was last year.

It's now VLCSaaS (Very Low Code Submarine as a Service).

I don't fully understand what the benefits of it being a submarine, rather than a surface vessel, are? Does it go deep enough that it doesn't really need to worry about other traffic? Or is it all about the sea state and being less affected?

The mention less affected by adverse weather conditions - though I assume it will still be affected at each port.

> The mention less affected by adverse weather conditions - though I assume it will still be affected at each port.

Being able to go beneath heavy seas is about the only advantage. I can see many disadvantages and I'm not even an expert.

1) Buoyancy. They say the sub will have positive buoyancy to aid recovery. However, a shipping container - even full - has a lot of air in it so extra ballast will be required. This ballast can be in two forms: (a) permanently attached to the sub - which means the sub no longer has positive buoyancy or (b) externally attached so you end up with lumps of lead or steel gathering barnacles. Where do these go when not needed - left on the dockside? Or carried anyway? Or what?

2) Shipping containers are not watertight. So you need a large loading bay door that can allow one to be craned in and then sealed watertight. That's a lot of finicky engineering to go wrong in real life, even if the prototype works.

3) Fishing nets. How is the sub going to avoid fishing nets?

and several more.

For example: a shipping container has a lot of air in it so a lot of extra ballast is required - and you can't just use water - the sub has to sink

"Or is it all about the sea state and being less affected?"

The plan is for it to travel at a depth of ~25 metres, so yes, sea state becomes pretty much a non-issue except at the very start and end of the journey.

Too many new technologies for this to be a real thing.

Anybody sane would fund submarine fuel cells, cargo submarines, microplastics scrubbing and AI shipping as separate research projects.

Anybody insane would have added CO2 scrubbing, Internet coverage, passenger cabins and stealth to the package.

Most likely somebody knows somebody and Matey told them exactly what shit to put in the proposal so they could tick all the boxes without raising suspicions (Note to lawyers: In my humble opinion).

The BBC:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-58571143

reported that the grant given to Oceanways was £380,000. Somehow I doubt that this will be enough to do much other than prepare a report...

The report would be on what would be needed to do a study on how to build a prototype...

nonono... to do a study on how to conduct a feasibility analysis to consider all of a project's relevant factors—including economic, technical, legal, and scheduling considerations—to ascertain the likelihood of completing the project successfully.

And I didn't even make it up, look at the internets!

Their website is neat looking. And it appears they have arrived at a prototype stage at least.

That might be a reason for the funding. Usually you like to fund either research or things that are close to ready.

If this might become economically viable, then supporting it now is a way to speed it up. The submarines seem smaller than the word usually conjures up - cargo capacity around 5kg.

There's a test run from London to Amsterdam slated for January 2022. Interesting.

https://www.oceanways.co/mission-one

are some drawings and some renderings and a desperate plea for someone to notice them.

This is at a very early stage if the first prototype can only carry 5Kg of cargo. At that size, I think they are trying to crack too many eggs, while the idea has some merits, the overall look is just that of a funding grabber.

It will be interesting to see how far the prototype and the company goes.

so... £380K for 5kg, how much for 100,000 tons? ;)

The Beeb also suggested journeys between Glasgow & Belfast and that whisky might be a suitable cargo. Given that both countries produce it (give or take a spelling variaton) it looks like a coals to Newcastle job in both directions.

I wonder what these guys are smoking. This makes about as much sense as a jetski powered by a fusion reactor.

A cargo-carrying submarine faces some rather obvious practical difficulties - for instance the watertight (at pressure) container-sized hole that will be needed for loading and unloading. Where's the oxygen for burning the hydrogen going to come from? If it uses some sort of snorkel, the sub will have to operate close to the surface and therefore be a major risk to shipping.

The economics make no sense either. A sub will cost 10-100 times as much as to build a surface ship that has far more carrying capacity. It'll be the same story for running costs and maintenance. Besides, there's usually only 1 or 2 days a year when UK-EU ferry sailings get cancelled because of bad weather. So who's going to pay extra to put their containers in a sub instead of on a conventional ferry? It could well be cheaper to send stuff using the space shuttle.

"a jetski powered by a fusion reactor"

Awesome idea, now to get a grant for that...

Better still, sell it to Australia

"A cargo-carrying submarine faces some rather obvious practical difficulties"

https://stingray.fandom.com/wiki/Terror_Fish

And that's why they then build Stingray.

cynic in me says: there's never been better times than now to promote ideas of ZERO! EMISSION! DELIVERY! no matter whether realistic (do they have . And, on a less cynical note... why would you run cargo in underwater mode which, presumably, requires a lot more power to push through water, rather than to push 'a bit of it' through water, i.e. surface? Yeah, they mentioned, adverse weather condition, but still... unless we're trying to invade Ireland or France (again) - 'in secret'?!

It’s always a good idea to invade France. Ireland, not so much.

It was, IIRC, published sometime in the 1970's. One of the future predictions in it was submarine cargo ships. The artists impression from what I remember was something quite large, very wide and long, probably nuclear powered and was intended for world-wide transport. I think it might even have had a helicopter landing pad on the deck too.

As a side note, they also published "silly" ideas of the past too, like a railway engine with a couple of horse on a treadmill and other similarly hilarious even if meant seriously at the time inventions. And there was always a a short SF story at the back from the likes of Clark or Asimov, and was one my first forays in my lifelong love of SF :-)

...is alive and kicking. This totally sounds like a pointy-haired-boss's idea! Makes no sense on any level, save publicity-friendly buzzwords, as discussed amply, above.