Superconducting electric drive, ship

Mike Superczynski, head of the Machinery Technology Branch of the Navy s David Taylor Research Center, is a big man with a booming laugh who knows all about Japanese EMT but is far more interested in what the navy calls S/C electric drive—superconducting electric drive—as it applies to ship propulsion, and specifically to a test craft called Jupiter II. He also knows a lot about superconductivity and likes to tell the story about the admiral who once introduced him to a scientific symposium with the words, Now the super is Mike s middle name, and the czynski is Polish for conductivity. ... 

The navy s approach to superconducting ships is far different from Saji s. While the ST-500 bootstraps itself along using seawater as the power fluid, the craft the navy has christened Jupiter II runs on a superconductive motor which drives a propeller. Moreover, the ST-500 is a model that has done its tricks only in a test tank. Jupiter II, with a 400-HP motor and generator (later upgraded to 3,000 HP), was the first vessel in history to be propelled at sea by a completely superconducting electric drive system. 

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