Example of badmouthing (though I won’t spend the time to make an exhaustive search):
varied concerns publicly raised since AWEC was privately created in 2010 by a closed insider group dominating to this day
This year has seen major mishaps of high-risk high-complexity AWES architectures; a low- MTBF statistical pattern long predicted by various expert stakeholders. Especially menacing architectures are the premature scaling down-selects of Google’s Makani and AWEurope’s leading venture insider members, like Ampyx, Kitepower, and TUDelft.
At least US and China AWE R&D is not Makani-Shell PR-distorted research; that venture recipe has been adopted by…Norway, who also now fills the AWEurope lead position, by the KiteMill CEO. Let them boycott China and US to look progressive. No that, won’t happen. Its really just a small inside club minding its own narrow interests.
A decade ago there was a lot of EU venture optimism for rapid AWES commercialism and deployment to poor emerging economies. The failure of these hopes by technological incompetence owed to an elite academic top-down venture-capital cultures
If Ampyx made its Flight Logs public, there would likely not be very many hours between crashes, and no hours logged operating the AP3 from a catapult perch. All that “safety” is pure speculative marketing.
Kitepower is currently withholding crash data on where its UHMWPE tether dragged and ended up, especially whether it draped across Valkenburg traffic and pedestrians. The safety reporting offered is very incomplete, and reflects venture capitalist self-interest more than sound aviation sector precedent.
Yes, AWE R&D involves a lot of crashing, as a pioneering aviation field, but should not involve a lot of venture-capitalist cover-up.
We can go on at great length about unwise Kitepower engineering design, like how its operational planning, power electronics, mechanical reeling, and software all failed together in its Valkenburg crash.
We both know key people in both ventures. Its the now classic Cowboy vs Playboy AWE cultural divide.