Wow. Huge PR opportunity for Airseas
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Gosh, this is great ânewsâ! Pulling ships by kite! âCutting downâ emissions⌠I canât wait to see all the ships being pulled by kites, now that I saw this article! Hey, Iâve got an idea! Letâs all hold our breaths until all ships are pulled by kites!
Not so much news as good publicity. Front page of CNN it pretty hard to get
One thing I learned: News doesnât matter if your shit isnât going to work out anyway.
What matters is how it works, not CNN looking for another âstoryââŚ
Kite pulling a ship has been done. First conceived by Dave Culpâs KiteShip (USA) and demonstrated eventually by KiteSails (Germany). Airseas now treadng the path shows confidence in the tradition.
My observation here as an AWE enthusiast is: that Ship-pulling, the most accomplished AWE feat to-date has been by means of sports Style power kites and not Makani style âkite-coptersâ.
Any lesson herein for other applications in development?
As one who envisioned kites pulling ships as a no-brainer slam-dunk surefire success decades ago, I would point out that so far, all we get are kites âpullingâ ships already under engine power, supposedly âloweringâ fuel use, but never to the point that anyone is compelled to continue the attempts. And any attempts with a smaller âshipâ seem to involve mostly solar panels and probably backup diesel.
I would once again point out, we never seem to see a ship of any significant size utilizing kites as a major source of power. Seems like itâs always an optional add-on for bucket-list demos, then the kite is stowed and life goes on.