Hi Reinhart,
Billy Roeseler’s visionary ribbon-rotor MSc in the '60s, long before he invented kitesurfing, represents perhaps the earliest reference to this AWES concept space, as he later adapted it for a Boeing internal whitepaper about AWE application.
JoeF may be able to locate the later Boeing AWE concept version.
We also remember Dr. Mark Moore’s work in this concept space at NASA LaRC.
“…the ground tether would connect to the stationary CSR center hub and not experience a [sweep] velocity or drag.”
Like Billy, Mark’s concept variation called for wing surface along the rotating tether sections, with glider-tips unreeling from a complex hub. Billy’s tip aircraft were called “delta pods”: Mark’s tips were more glider-wing like. The challenge of unreeling aloft to full diameter was their trade-off against large circular runways.
One circular runway is surely enough to launch and land large numbers of paired aircraft, much like an airport serves many aircraft. Stacked CSRs are under study, which could rise from one circle.
Two landing and takeoff wheel-trolleys on grass could in principle serve all the rotors.