Indeed, everything is in the image. But that’s my opinion and I don’t think it’s shared in AWE circles. And yet, it is obvious. It’s up to you to find out what I think, or dare I say, what you should think.
Just as in any Energy Project, Site Assessment is a vital project requirement. Addressing Site Assessment for AirborneWindEnergy Systems, therefore, shows serious efforts towards some project implementation, at least in terms of feasibility at a given location.
@dougselsam comments to me seem rather off-topic and this calls to question the rationale for ‘all questions to be addressed by the author’ as demanded by forum rules. Some comments are simply out to denigrate the author and derail the topic, such really need no bother, IMHO.
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Hi Pierre: Experience says your concern would be with spacing.
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Once again I check my email, see I have some message here, so I click on the link to this site and the first thing I see is "topic closed, moved to “slow chat” - as usual. So I click on that “slow chat” link and find myself clicking maybe 50 times to get up to the present message on Slow Chat. I’m supposed to reply to John, but he doesn’t have much to say. All I have to offer is 30 years of fielding questions and aimless accusations from people who say they are developing new wind energy systems, but who are not now, never have, and never will… 
I’m really tired of these ever-shifting “topics”. I see a message and the topic has changed before I can even finish replying, then the system interrupts me so I end up rewriting the whole reply and now I don;t even know where it is or how it git here or anything. This whole thing is getting to be more and more of a complete waste of time and energy.
Wind Energy Industry facing layoffs:
It is worrying that the wind energy is performing layoffs when we have global warming as a slow trend and an imminent energy crisis ongoing in Europe… should have thought wind was booming now
Hi everyone: I just ran across this TRL readiness comparison of EVTOL flying electric “cars” - a similar comparison might be made for AWE systems. At the top of their list is JOBY, a former AWE company who quit AWE almost immediately after starting in about 2008:
LINK:
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“TRL readiness”?
As you put it… Is that getting ready to be ready?
Or something like technology redundancy level readiness?
Hi Rod: Yes I knew that was redundant when I wrote it. Yup I guess it’s “getting ready to get ready”. I remember when what’s-his-name from the previous forum went thru periods of fixation on the term TRL. Trying to think - what were the “TRL” of Makani and Altaeros? I was never a big fan of such analyses, given how often they turn out to be meaningless. But it sounded so similar to AWE in the sense of the number of entrants and competitors, and the task of trying to make any sense out of all their favorable press-release-type info versus whatever reality lurks beneath the surface, I figured I’d throw it on the fire over here. I’m not ready to give an opinion on the likelihood of success for any of these EVTOL projects, but I’d be hesitant to climb on board for a ride, given the possibility of just falling out of the sky, depending… .
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TRL is like people telling us Tesla can’t do autopilot without a lidar on the roof.
If you are an investor you may be in the unfortunate situation that you would have to consider the TRL report. For the rest of us, maybe just let that stuff pass in quiet.
If the airtaxi company knows what it is doing, it wont need an outsider to tell then how much work is left.
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Mark Moore (Whisper Aero formerly did an AWES study @ NASA) always has a good comment on LinkedIn on how far from the truth the marketing is in many EVTOL
However, I did see an encouraging comment from him recently… High praise
Just the fact that they CALL them “taxi” ahead of any fact tells you a lot. They are basically saying nobody will want to buy one for their own use. A vehicle designed for a single use: to get you to the airport. Dreamers. You think airports want a few hundred of them flying around in their airspace? If they were any good, they would be in use RIGHT NOW, in some place that has no rules against them. Vaporware.
Wind Energy Industry facing more layoffs. This time, rather than Siemens, it’s GE Onshore Wind. The article does mention competition from Siemens as a factor. (They don’t mention offshore wind in this article):
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OK so both GE Wind and Siemens are laying off people, at least for onshore wind. Here’s an interesting twist: A U.S. Court has decided GE (Largest U.S. turbine manufacturer) can’t sell On-Shore turbines in the U.S. anymore, due to Siemens patents:
https://nawindpower.com/judge-rules-ge-offshore-wind-turbines-cannot-be-sold-in-u-s
Hopefully the two companies can reach some agreement.
Correction: The ruling was regarding GE’s Haliade-X OFF-SHORE turbines - sorry, I screwed up.
https://www.ge.com/renewableenergy/wind-energy/offshore-wind/haliade-x-offshore-turbine
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Here’s another “look, it wiggles!” wind energy “breakthrough”:
Von Philip Bethge
04.10.2019, 18.00 Uhr • aus DER SPIEGEL 41/2019
Hello John,
This article is already three years old. And also the picture seems to represent a SkySails’ offshore kite farm, far to any jet-stream.
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DaveS: Every AWE journalistic item tells a story. None are entirely correct. In this case Der Speigel does get the Jet Stream part wrong, but so do contributors here get many facts wrong, never necessarily corrected. However, every item, right or wrong, adds its bit to societal awareness of AWE, that leads to increased action. This item also records New Forum socialization.
The graphic is a nice window into SkySails PR even earlier than 2018, so with many now quaint details, like bridles the artist depicts too short, and rectangular rather elliptical wings. Look close to see the two-line system SkySails depends on, a thin upper line for handling and safety retention, with a traveller up and down, lately dispensed with in the SkySails 100.