Facebook in the game?

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I did not see at first that it is not tethered to the ground. In that case I cant see how it could work. Only with a vertical component of the wind or by the solar panel mentioned or by a battery for as long as it may last. Because I’m having trouble seeing how this device can gain energy in normal use

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Hard to imagine that being realized. Much simpler projects like the google loon seem to be very hard already. And the much simpler yoyo awes concept is justbeing commercialized.
From readong the abstract I couldn’t quite understand how it would work.

From a birds eye perspective, to generate energy, you need some energy to harvest. Either difference in speed ground vs air, or difference in speed of air at two different places. If the whole system is mid air and all wind is blowing in the same direction, eventually the system will be moving at the same speed as the air surrounding it.

At this point its just another actuator spending energy, perhaps even a very good one, I dont know

It seems they want to extract power from the wind gradient. It seems to me infeasible, considering the low strength of this gradient, and its nonexistence in many days, and the magnitude of the tether drag involved with a 1 km tether.

I haven’t looked at that closely to be frank, just shared the news I have seen on fb. Technical details are maybe not so important at that point. Seeing another possible big player in this game will help the whole thing going forward

The sort of flying envisioned in the Facebook patent has been the Old Forum’s special expertise. Here is the tip-of-the-iceberg of JoeF’s extensive FFAWE sources and discussions-

http://energykitesystems.net/0/FFAWE/index.html

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That was a good source of info on the subject. Thanks