bateau SEMP

CONT: The SEMP ship Yamato 1 is packed with the huge power and refrigeration systems needed to run it. A ten-man crew squeezes into a small cockpit at the front. Despite these limitations, the Japanese are hoping that SEMP systems will become smaller and more powerful leading to a new generation of fast passenger ferries and cargo ships. Unlike today's ships they will be highly manoeuvrable: by reversing the polarity of both thrusters, a SEMP ship should be able to come rapidly to a halt. Reversing just one drive would make it turn on a yen. It would also be eerily quiet. This has prompted the America's IEEE to try to fit SEMP drives into a submarine - echoes, as it were, of the ""caterpillar drive"" used by the silent submarine in the film ""The Hunt for Red October"".