The albedo of broken cloud fields

Mass is defined in terms of inertia and gravity effects. Kites have a curious relation to mass. The normal part is a kite's rest-mass, in practice what the kite weighs on a scale. A kite in nominal lift mode pulls upward, reducing the weight a scale sees to negative-mass or negative-gravity values. A kite can also produce increased inertial mass readings, by a sort of virtual mass. A wing resists translation in heave dimension, as if it had added inertial mass, but does not resist so much in surge or sway dimensions. A tethered wing especially resists tethered to Earth. This is a remarkable extension of the Earth's own mass, by means of string. Another odd case is a kite parked on the surface by reversed AoA, as Revs are parked. They actually are pushing downward, in effect adding virtual mass to rest mass.

An strict interpretation common in QM physics is to respect whatever is measured as such, and a kite truly produces exotic statistical mechanics, never mind how ordinary most folks consider kites. The Higgs Mechanism explains how mass accrues to particles. Since a Higgs Boson has recently been confirmed by the LHC, this is considered established science. How do scientists try to explain the Higgs mechanism to layfolk? In his book on the subject, Physicist Sean Carroll describes a vacuum chamber with "little robots...each...equipped with sail". Evacuated, the robots move about freely, but add air, and they acquire a mass effect. "The robots are particles," he goes on, "and their sails are their couplings to the Higgs Field, which is represented by air. My colleagues at Caltech in engineering and aeronautics (said) "that sounds awesome"".

Just so, the kite has been leading us into the same analog particle physics, like knowledge miners connecting from opposite directions. Its never been a problem that some folks balk at any comparison of kites with particle physics; our pleasure is over the same dynamics as these Caltech folks admire. That AWES kite experts gained the same new insights at almost the same time as professional physicists is sweet. There is plenty of new engineering science to develop from the identification of the kite as a particle physics analog. QM even requires complex-mass effects, and its going to be fun to identify the kite's version. Its an open question if AWE will succeed by the limited engineering physics most developers presume, or if the vast intellectual edifice of advanced physics will prove decisive, as it has for semiconductors. We have barely begun to understand kites, and what they can do, but already different perspectives can agree, its "awesome".

There is a proliferation trend of AWE market studies of generally low domain expertise. This one is fairly typical, excepting the odd prominence of Bruce Banks Sails, a seemingly non-AWE conventional sailmaker. Perhaps there is something new here-


https://www.openpr.com/news/816510/Global-Airborne-Wind-Energy-Equipment-Market-Report-2017-Innovate-e-Kite-EnerKite.html

To make Carrol's Higgs analogy as clear as possible; he is invoking a towed wing in air, and the air itself is the Higgs Field. The robotic sailing vehicle is a particle that excites the Higgs Field by it sail, to acquire mass. The analog Higgs Boson is the wind-in-the-sail. We have no problem seeing the kite topology implicit in this analogy. Earth corresponds to the tow vehicle for a sail or kite wing, and we can interpret the wind field as the static POV and Earth as moving, under Galilean Relativity. From the static-Earth POV, wind can be seen as a quasi-aether flow.

While aether is specifically discredited as a static medium for 19th century light propagation physics, it lives on in wonderful mythological and misc scientific discourse, and is worthy of its own Forum topic in relation to theoretic AWE, since aether's primary ancient physical meaning was "upper wind" (Wikipedia). We now know the solar system is filled with rarified gas/plasma, including solar wind for solar kites, and there is no such thing as a true classical vacuum, nor any definite kite boundary between our atmosphere and space.






 

Here's the Wikipedia Aether line-up. Note the many rich intuitive correspondences with AWES theory, which will be discussed in follow-on postings-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_(classical_element)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_(mythology)

Lots of new details but no big revelations-

http://www.awec2017.com/presentations/fort-felker

Sorry, but my full-featured Yahoo mailer has bogged down my dinky CPU with ads and features, so I am resorting to basic mail mode and my links are not hot meanwhile.


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There is hidden economic bias in this test, in that GoogleX can prevail by brute spending, but still not count for much. A different sort of test is suggested by the Wright Bros. The major milestone for AWES architectures that ultimately prevail is the moment of proof-of-concept, and the key endurance milestone is survival-to-payback, which varies greatly between architectures. There is no magic one-year criteria; its a dumbed-down analysis.

kPower's two-week all-modes looping foil session, only stopped due to schedule constraints, still seems to be the endurance record in AWE, but at ~25W prototype scale. It could have gone on for the four years since, had kPower been able to afford to buy kFarm when it went for sale (200k USD, pocket change for Google). What truly counts is potential, and little is lost by not doing a feat that reasonably could be done, as long as the lesson is learned. Sooner or later, R&D funding to loop a ship-kite as an AWES will be applied, and MW output is expected.

Even if the M600 were heroically operated for a year, its expected net-power-out is dismally far from MW level. SkySails did in fact operate its ship-kite AWES at sea several years, and no disputes the MW scale boost to propulsion. "Kite Plant" does seem like a good term-of-art, suggesting AWE more than "kitefarm", the previous coinage.

A diligent fly-off process remains best-practice to sort out winners and losers in aerospace, but don't expect GoogleX to willingly compete in that format, when its dominance is in capital and mindshare. Makani narratives as a whole seem aimed at somehow dumping the venture at a good price to any credulous new investor, as Google has done with other X turkeys. A diversified AWES testing program and sound milestone criteria are not expected.

Once again, dubious logic, that an economic kite-plant unit must be MW scale. Solar PV is based on solar cells with at most a few watts output each, aggregated into panels then arrays. Solar Thermal mirrors and collectors are not much higher in unit-power.

Fort neglects to note that, in principle, small kites in vast networked arrays can aggregate into GW scale plants, just as solar units do.

An interesting commentary of Fort's at AWEC2017 regards the notorious "valley of despair" effect in technology development. Without saying so too bluntly, he was obviously referring to turmoil within Makani experienced first-hand. We have had previous indications, like an ex-employee anonymously reporting internal "angst" on an employment website. The despair is related to technical choice, in that high-complexity AWE is predictably high-risk AWE. We can imagine the soul-searching that may have resulted if M600's maiden flight crashed, ten years in. Makani has been so troubled that hardly anyone has lasted the whole ten years, except Andrea the photographer, whose cameras at least are robust.

The funny thing is that Open-AWE is much less subject to technical despair, given its faith in KIS. Yes, there is some chronic pain to limited budgets, but in the long run cheaper systems result compared to over-funded "gold-plated" ventures, where folks jump out windows when everything crashes down. In countless DIY AWES experiments, joy is the general experience, since most experiments advance knowledge and get one out into nature. The occasional setback is more comedic slapstick than sad. Hope instantly returns for tomorrow's test. The faint shadow on DIY AWE happiness is the potential for death or physical injury, like skiing, say. Its still simply a great joy.

Despair is healthy emotion when it leads to changing course from a doomed path to an open path. Its always an emotional distraction when bad outcomes happen. Surely Fort and team are consoled considerably by good salary and benefits, but such consolation also keeps them on the high-complexity "path of infinite pain", rather than radically change course. The lowly Wright Bros were never so happy as when they solved problem after problem, with no despair-factor (even as Langley and Maxim despaired). That's the "right stuff".