Transport · Built and demonstrated
Ship propulsion
A 36.5 MW superconducting motor was built and tested for naval use.
The record behind ship propulsion
A 36.5 MW propulsion motor at full power · AMSCSuperconductors in ship propulsion
A propulsion motor sits low and far aft where a hull has least room, and its size drives the arrangement of everything around it. A superconducting motor of the same power occupies a fraction of the volume and mass, which is a naval architecture argument rather than an efficiency one: it buys deck space and flexibility in where the machinery goes. One was built and load-tested at full power, so feasibility is settled.
What is stopping ship propulsion
A ship is a poor place for liquid cryogen and a good place for shock loading. A fleet requires the cooling plant to be as reliable as the diesel it replaces, over a service life measured in decades and far from a laboratory, and no program has been willing to be first.
What a better material would change for ship propulsion
The machine has been built, so what is missing is a cooling system a navy would accept, and a conductor that ran warmer is the most direct way to get one. The rest of the argument was settled at full power on a test stand.
Near ship propulsion, in transport
SuperMatics is a platform infrastructure company for superconducting devices: software that finds the material and the process, lab work that makes and measures it, and pilot manufacturing with industrial partners.If you are working on something in this field and a material is what stands in the way, tell us about it.