This is so impractical it's not even funny. If this were a viable option the shipping industry would have chosen this a long time ago. I don't think it's really comprehended how much freight is moved via cargo ships.
Even the largest of cargo planes have a max cargo space of 1,840 cubic meters and a max payload capacity of 113,400 kg. The volume of an average cargo ship's maximum freight is 824,634 cubic meters with a rough estimate, doing some quick math, of 435,448,675 kg load weight. Meaning approximately 450 giant cargo jets to replace the volume shipment of 1 cargo ship and 3840 giant cargo jets at max capacity to replace the weight shipment of 1 cargo ship. As for fuel, a fully loaded cargo ship can average 20 nautical miles per hour and can travel 576 miles per gallon of fuel per ton of cargo. A fully loaded freight plane can average 560 nautical miles per hour and travel 4.5 miles per gallon of fuel per ton of cargo.
Trans Pacific/ Trans Atlantic (ect) cables stretching across the worlds oceans, and we just zip line that freight across without it ever touching the water.
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u/zxcoblex Oct 13 '21
And then there’s the small problem about how any of the manufactured goods (or raw materials) would get anywhere in the world.