Hi @tallakt , thank you for your work.
I can agree for the almost, letting some unknowns as we can agree.
My purpose was to start from related Omnidea experiments, with about 5-6 m/s wind speed and a spin ratio (tangential speed of the spin cylinder/wind speed) of 1.21, then try to extrapolate with a wind speed of 10 m/s for the same spin ratio, then with a spin ratio of 2. Beyond the power consumption was too high.
For scaling, I preferred the implementation of the motorized belts along the balloon.
This looks correct to me. Perhaps I was wrong to worry about the phases slowing down when the cycle itself is longer, when the balloon scales up.
As (air) mass increases, so does inertia. In a sense you’re right: a large balloon will resist thermals better thanks to its inertia… until the moment when a thermal that’s too strong ends up dragging it along without being able to stop it, because of its inertia.
As I can’t go any further with this idea (scaling by using motorized belts), because I don’t have what is required to make a serious prototype, I’m putting it aside either to take it up again later, or for someone else to do it if they feel like it, or to abandon it.
In addition to all this, I would add that I see at least four ways of scaling for an unit or a AWES farm: Scaling by size (as for this Magnus balloon), Scaling in numbers rather than size, Kite Networks, AWES farm in bumper car mode (allowing more density, perhaps possible with Magnus balloons in the case of no damage due to possible collisions).