From the Engineer. Co. Uk

NASA is set to launch its Low Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD), a saucer-shaped test vehicle that will gather data about landing heavy payloads on Mars and other planetary surfaces.

LDSD is scheduled for launch today from 0830 HST at the US Navy’s Pacific Missile Range Facility in Kauai, Hawaii.

Hopefully we can glean some more experimental data on in line tether inflation.

Roderick Read
15a Aiginish
Isle of Lewis
HS2 0PB
kitepowercoop.org

hmmm, yes, an increasing flow of cartoons.  WILL flow.  Stated without doubt. Important.  uhhhh, Roger that.  Copy.  Everybody got the memo?  An increasing flow, starting with this one from 1978(?).  Cartoons are an important ingredient for the dismal lack of progress in AWE.  For example, Professor Crackpot learned how to address the public from Daffy Duck!  And that forms an important part of the good professor's arsenal against progress.  It's all about distraction:  People become focused on such distractions, accepting them as a valid excuse for zero progress.  The thinking goes like this:  "If this guy wears a polka-dot bowtie, scruffy beard, dirty glasses, AND talks like Daffy duck, he MUST be a  genius, otherwise, how could other knowledgeable people take him seriously?"  It's then assumed that a "breakthrough" "must be" "just around the corner", as soon as the good professor actually gets around to it.  Meanwhile, just relax and enjoy the cartoons!  Gosh, where's NASA when you need them?  "Help, Superman!"  :)

i'mposti nghis t so peopleca n seewhat  amessag e looksli ke ifid  onttake; extra  timeto  gobac k and undoallt  he damage that the systemdoe s tomyca  refulty ping.  theco mbinationofmy  c omputer andyahoo  cannptk eepupwoit  hn ormalty pingspeed . ifin d linksta kealo  ngtimt e o comupwenclicke d on.  whenyah oo getsb usy, it barelywo rks.  ITHINKT  heyneedm  oreservr esorsomee  thing.

I agree: dynamic soaring is pregnant with possibilities, most unrecognized, unseen, unimagined, unappreciated.  :)

Gabor,

Speaking of "ignorance" have time-domain simulations been done to determine just how "robust an energy cycle" might characterize dynamic sailing as a form of AWE?

DaveL

No, actually nonsense and ignorance were not on the list I had in mind...
I will leave it for others to inject those seemingly essential ingredients, insuring they miss the mark and never see the light.

Yeah, and, Speaking of "ignorance" have time-domain simulations been done to determine just how "robust an energy cycle" might characterize "der yo-yo principle - yah" as a form of AWE?

Doug,

As matter of fact, for some "der yoyo designs", extensive time domain simulations have been run, some details of which I know for a fact were presented in your presence, but maybe "you were distracted by dandruff" at the time :-)

I have posed this question for dynamic-soaring on more than one occasion on this list, even going to the trouble of defining what I referred to as a "robust energy cycle"……it is one thing to conjecture energy production via the method of omphaloskepsis (without the insight that can be afforded by scientific simulation techniques), and yet another thing (as you have correctly pointed out) to actually perform that harvesting under duress by "mother nature" :-)

That said, prior to first flights of all modern aircraft, time domain simulations have been conducted to satisfy the designers of the basic validity of their designs and performance, even providing the test pilots with aircraft handling characteristics prior to committing to flight.

DaveL

Hi Dave L. Thanks for 'splaining.  I was probably either yawning or laughing when the "time-domain" crap was being presented.  I have to admit I don't even know what a "time-domain simulation" even is.  To me it is just more mumbo-jumbo endlessly advanced by people with zero understanding of wind energy, as though the more complicated-sounding they can make their presentation, at some point they can create enough sheer confusion that someone thinks they know what they are talking about. 

I was out in our daily strong wind yesterday, checking out the performance of various wind inventions.  I didn't need much besides a voltmeter, and amp meter, my eyeballs, and my half-a-brain,stretched like a piece of chewing gum.  True, most of the poorest-performing designs you see promoted reflect a stationary configuration, with actual motion an afterthought.  I guess they are "time-stands-still" designs.  Oh, you have to include time?  It's a domain?  Wow, mean like "www.time.com"?

Anyway, I'm sure we've all heard the term: "Garbage-in/garbage-out", right?  No amount of complicated terminology will change that. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig.  A rose is a rose by any name.  If a basic concept doesn't pencil out, or work out, analyzing it to death using advanced beard-scratching techniques won't help.

"what Doug failth to realithe..."  You are funny Dave S. !   :)))

No Dave S. it is YOU who "fail to realize" almost any salient factor in any thread including this one, and I guess I must have missed the part about tether drag in this discussion, which should not even be a factor if you had any idea what you were doing. What I see from you is more bragging about several more of your "future accomplishments", which seemingly know no bound.  Tell us, Oh oracle of ignorance, when will your fantasy future arrive?  Then will you shut up?  (hah ha, a funny concept, no?)  I also do not agree with the sickening term "necrology", not relevant to wind energy..

Kitesurfing replaced windsurfing, not waterskiing.  Wakeboarding replaced waterskiing.  Nothing has replaced the boat, nor the ski lift.

This is spectator/armchair-quarterbacks, disagreeing with other spectator/armchair-quarterbacks, while none produces useful power.  100% meaningless.

Hello Everybody,

So many responses are surprising for me. Thank you. Finding those guys
on dynamic-soaring.de several years ago was a great help to me.
They were really experts in DS model flight. It is my personal loss that
this site no longer exists.

Get it?  Stall?  Ah, wind humor, ya gotta love it.  Newsflash:  Informal back-door talks between Selsam and the top brass of GE's international wind energy research arm, which began at Windpower 2014 in Las Vegas a few weeks ago, are temporarily stalled.  Selsam is so far unable to convince GE of the advantage to juxtapose GE's cloth-covered blade effort, and Selsam's patented helium-filled blade technology.   Selsam's patented multiple rotor technology faces a similar, ongoing, uphill push, at least with regard to overcoming the healthy and open-minded skepticism of GE.  GE does concede that 1000 1 kW rotors weigh less than a single 1 MW rotor, while spinning faster to eliminate the need for gearing or oversize generators, and appreciates Selsam's innovative approaches to wind energy.  The key hurdle at this point is that Selsam has yet to fully convince GE that weightless blades and/or multiple rotors can successfully lower the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) below that of GE's existing wind energy technology, about 4-5 cents/kWh.  The ball remains in Selsam's end of the court.  Wah.

DS means Doug Selsam, right?  :O....

Here;s what you don;t understand:  Paul Gipe, Mike Barnard, etc., are to wind energy what music critics are to rock & roll.  They don't play an instrument, they don;t write songs, they can't sing a note.  You can;t jam with a music critic, or a mere fan, or a poseur who tries to dress, act, and talk like a musician. 

Similarly, wind energy authors do not design or create turbines.  They don;t build turbines, don;t sell turbines, don;t install turbines, and don;t maintain or run turbines.  They are mere pundits, not really in a position to analyze advanced technology. 

What they ARE in a position to do is to describe accurately the state-of-the-art, and to call out blatant Professor Crackpot attempts to fool people into thinking the latest typical wind energy beginner misstep is a breakthrough.  Those are easy to identify, since they always have the exact same characteristics.  These typical beginner missteps are part of the status quo, so they are well-known.  If you embody them, the critics will call you out just as a music critic will call out a new performer who turns out to be tone-deaf, unable to carry a tune or even follow a beat.

By the way, what do you call a guy who hangs out with musicians?  Answer: The drummer.  ha ha ha - a musican joke!

If a breakthrough IS on the horizon, about all these folks can do is comment given their ability to analyze against a backdrop of knowledge of the status-quo.  If your ideas exemplify typical well-known begninner missteps, guys like Paul and Mike can usually flag it pretty quick.  If a real breakthrough emerges, about all they can do is ask for some performance numbers, or in my case, offer to test your machine and tell the truth that it's the most powerful machine they have ever tested..

All in all, it doesn't matter what they say.  If you know what you're doing, and  you know how much power you;re making, you could care less what they think.  It's only when you're lost and can produce no power, maybe you've flown a blue tarp as a kite or something and can't make any power anyway, that you think that what critics think is even relevant.  Then you think your assignment is to "debate" the pundits. 

That's like wanting to debate Formula-1 racing journalists, thinking a debate will make your wheelbarrow win the Indy-500, while in reality it is not even allowed on the track, and the real racers scratch their heads at how anyone could be such an idiot.

These guys do not pretend to be wind energy system designers.  It;s just that when they see idiocy masquerading as progress, they call it out.  At least they know enough to do that.  It's only when you consistently can produce nothing even the least bit promising that you feel relegated to confronting such pundits as though if you could only somehow out-argue them, your weak attempts could thereby gain traction.

The best way to out-argue the critics is to come up with something that works, and then there is nothing they can say to change that fact.  All their scolding has no effect.  You don't listen to it anyway.  So why keep talking about it as though any of it makes a hill-of-beans difference to anyone?  You are merely delusional.

"You are not such fastidious about your own word choose..." - Gabor, that is "word choice"...  i know, i know, your English is way better than my nonexistent Hungarian.

Almost every single word you type is wrong.  I just can't take all day trying to correct each wrong word, of each wrong sentence you write.

The wind energy world knows fabric-coverings on blades evolved into hard-shells 100 years ago.  There is a reason for that: wear.  Nonetheless, if a major player like GE is willing to squander a little of Uncle Sam's free money on zeppelin-esque fabric-over-frame blades, it's logical to then discuss filling with helium, hydrogen, or methane.  While I still believe the best result would have a hard shell, or at least hard leading edges, there's nothing inconsistent in my advocating that a major wind energy player with a side-bet on blades built like a zeppelin be filled with a buoyant gas like a zeppelin. 

As usual, reasoning beyond what will fit on a bumper-sticker is beyond your consideration.

Why don;t we take the rest of the day to debate whether i know what a leading edge is.  You keep saying I don;t know what a leading edge is.  You said it again today.   Do you think anyone believes that?  No, they all just see over and over that you are a desperate liar, day after day.  Telling the same lie, again and again, that I don;t know what the term "leading edge" refers to, is not only off-topic, and a personal; attack, but also a lie, and you know it's a lie, and everyone who reads your lying words knows it is a lie.  So please, stop with your agonizingly hypocritical critiques of everything I say.  You're basically a scoundrel who will stop at nothing to be seeming, in hour own mind only, to make a diffference while you do nothing but lie and insult anyone and everyone who has the slightest clue about anything.

Virtually everything you type on here is 100% wrong.  You claim over and over that kite-surfing replaced waterskiing.  When I try and tell the real story, that kite-surfing replaced windsurfing, and not waterskiing, and that it is wakeboarding that replaced waterskiing, you cannot even respond.  It;s as though reality just doesn;t register in your brain.  It;s all fantasy, all the time.  I really don;t think any ski lift has been eliminated because of kites.  I know that deep down, you also know this, yet you keep insisting on these bizarre notions.  You know what you say is not true, yet you can;t help yourself from saying it again.  Strange.  Whom do you think you're fooling?  To what end?  Do you think you somehow score points by mischaracterizing sports?  The fact remains, your wind energy efforts have been 100% ineffective so far.  Not even a teeny trace of success, while you outbrag anyone and everyone.  You may be setting new wind energy records for bragging versus results.

Good point Roddy.  No ski lift has been replaced by kites yet.  That was one more lie.  People still enjoy waterskiing, in spite of wakeboarding.  Somewhere there's still someone windsurfing, even in the face of kitesurfing.  But most of all, only a complete lying delusional idiot would try to say kitesurfing has replaced waterskiing.  That's just the icing on the cake of one more idiotic, off-topic (sports) discussion, peppered with hypocritical accusations of OTHERS being "off-topic", designed to camouflage the fact of zero progress in airborne wind energy.  If not for off-topic comments, mostly blatant lies, often several lies in the same sentence, mischaracterizations, and idle bragging/threats of supposed future accomplishments, Dave S. would have nothing to post here several times a day. 

Yeah that was boring, and of course, off-topic.  Where's Dave S. when you need him?  Hey Dave S., tell the teacher, Roddy was off-topic!   That's it Roddy, 50 lashes with a wet noodle! 

I was conceived at GE in Syracuse NY as part of a secret experiment to mate the smartest engineer with the best-looking secretary.  Of course I grew up surrounded by that funny-looking curly-cue GE logo.  I remember asking why the GE logo looked like an illegible tangle.   My mom (the secretary) explained it was supposed to represent the letters G and E.  "Wow, I had no idea" I said, "They sure went to a lot of trouble to make their letters G and E hard to recognize!"

Well, ya know, I was just a kid.  Kids tend to just see things as they are.
Anyway, I've been talking with GE Wind for years.  They were the first to offer to test a SuperTurbine(R).  That SuperTurbine(R) testing, which finally ended up being funded by the California Energy Commission, took place offsite from GE Wind headquarters, at their Director of Anemometry's personal facility.

One main dynamic I picked up on is that the big wind companies are busy with their own daily emergencies.  They're more likely to buy a startup after it is proven succcessful, than try to take on new technology that, if successful, could eclipse their bread-and-butter.  They are smarter to stick with their bread-and-butter until they see others pulling ahead, since they would still have time to buy them out anyway.  Still, they have solid and competent people who can discuss wind energy sensibly.  Far different than here.