The AI Bill App guessed correctly- “(H.R. 9432) was not enacted into law.”
On the plus side, NASA developed power kites 60yrs ago, so kite experts ever since productively research them, at very little cost. DOE flying kites is categorically absurd, no matter if 5000TW of Upper Wind could 100x power the world. On the other hand, Asia is where US-pioneered AWE is most actively being developed, based on deep kite traditions and modern industrial might.
(Text of H.R. 9432: Airborne Wind Energy Research and Development Act (Introduced version) - GovTrack.us)
~5000TW in Upper Wind, with comparable additional power in ocean currents tappable by paravane (water-kite).
Renewable Energy Superabundance.
US AWE pioneers can content themselves with having originated the field and defining most of its fundamentals, even in part from within DOE (notably [Loyd LLNL 1980]). DOE’s conventional wind managers simply have no role in AWE progress. After all, Upper Wind, higher than hardware bolted to a pole can reach, is a spatially separate resource (>1000x in potential) requiring aeronautical prowess DOE lacks. US will simply import its AWE materiel from China, as the technology gains market, like other US-originated industries where decision-makers did nothing to retain them.
I can tell by the writing style this is one more post by DaveS. Just as I could tell from the DOE report on AWE, that he had cracked his way into the somewhat lazy minds of the NREL skeptics, when I noticed a favorite Santos self-complimentary term (“domain expert”) in the text. (One more self-created meaningless “credential” from “the circular firing squad” of mutually-complimentary “credentials”/ The blind trying to lead the blind. Funny how we don’t see anyone else in AWE bothering to call themselves an AWE “expert”, including a “domain expert”, especially anyone who has always remained consistently unable to demonstrate ANY significant power production in all their years of “trying”. Let’s see, were the Makani team AWE “domain experts”? Then why did they give up?
OK so anyway, looks like we might as well forget AWE here - I guess the Chinese string of parachutes is the answer to AWE, or else we’ll at least have to keep importing any lifter kites or power kites from China. So we can dominate the field of wind energy…
Thanks to David Santos Gorena-Guinn:
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We have seen enough SS wings in the last decade to establish them as a new standard class of parafoil, along with the classic “twin-skin” ram-air parafoil. This modest test uses an RC scale paramotor SS parafoil-
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Sail! Robot paraglider drops from high-altitude balloon - YouTube
Wow, nice name-change. Will we hear next that the other “in the news for false credentials” Santos also lied about his real name? This project appears (to me anyway) one more attempt by Dave to reinforce his previous assertions that somehow, “single-skin” kites are “the answer”, to the exclusion of all other approaches. However, I would point out that this “project” in no way demonstrates anything anywhere NEAR a re-entry from space. Being dropped from a weather balloon from a height low enough that you can plainly see all the details on the ground is just that - a low-level drop from a weather balloon. Nowhere near “space”. And the apparent curvature of the Earth is just an artifact of Go-Pro cameras, and similar cameras, where a somewhat “fisheye” lens is used to make sure to capture as much peripheral area as possible, lest the camera miss any visible details. I would also point out, like my hang-glider, the area around the leading edge is not single-skin. Looks to have wraparound battens or some way to hold a 3-D airfoil shape.
A few years back, the statement was made that such kites are going to make ski lifts obsolete. That erroneous statement is just one example of the firehose of wrong statements from this same source, always posturing in a futile attempt to “win” some “argument”. What it neglects are things like most ski resorts are mostly in forested areas, with comparatively narrow trails through trees, that winds are not always favorable when you want to go skiing, that skiing and snowboarding offer a sense of freedom and high speed that does not go well with being tethered to a large kite, and that winds in the mountains are notoriously fickle and often completely change direction from one part of the mountain to another, from bottom to top, and across the mountain, due to the fact that winds must go around mountains, with a lot of ensuing turbulence. People are still riding ski lifts, although in my own case I’m taking a season off so I can get some things done right down here on planet Earth. I guess we also read that ski lifts will have kites attached to produce energy. One more sideways laddermill I guess. We might be waiting quite a while for that one. Meanwhile, we’re still mired in mere posturing, meaningless “news” about something that demonstrates nothing, leads nowhere, is not related to AWE, and is unlikely to become a part of space flight. Some things never change.
Doug: “this “project” in no way demonstrates anything anywhere NEAR a re-entry from space.”
DaveS:
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Agreed, this is just a new case of SS innovation. SpaceX has been using parafoils for rocket stage recovery for several years, and these are now trending to Single-Skin (as shown).
Doug forgets Kite Skiing has newly opened up vast open snow fields for skiing, no mountain resort nor lift tickets needed.
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Yeah and you could go out in the desert and hit golf balls all day too. That’s not gonna make golf courses, with their beautiful manicured fairways in convenient locations, obsolete. What most skiers and snowboarders really enjoy is groomed slopes, not getting pulled into a crevasse, 6-foot-deep drift, rocks, or just or bunch of gravel, by a kite. The typically wrong statements you have made, that I was responding to, were that kites are going to make ski lifts obsolete, or something to that effect, and something about kites being attached to ski lifts to generate power, etc. etc., etc. - on and on with the exaggerated nonsense, thinking nobody will ever mention it or stand up to it.
I will also point out your unmistakable writing style, where you start out with the person’s name followed by a claim that they did something wrong, in the first two words. The fact is I did not forget any of your claims about kite skiing. The fact is, those first two words amount to yet another false statement from you, which are so routine for you that you don’t even notice, don’t care, or both. As kids, we were getting pulled across open snowfields by the wind way back in the 1960’s. This stuff is not that complicated or groundbreaking.
