Dave Culp has long had a pet idea of "flying-rope" as consisting of many tiny kites strung along a line. Just toss it out in wind to fly it. James Macnaghten calculated that stratospheric kites will too-easily have miles of tether lay on the ground in weak wind. The problem is that long "bare" tethers accumulate weight, drag, & negative-lift as tremendous down-force. KiteLab found empirically that even high-speed reeling might not keep up with the characteristic "slight-slack/sudden-sag" effect. Lang saw the effect in simulation.

Why not put lifting kites all along a high-altitude tether? Call it a kite stack or train, its really just a macro version of Culp's winged rope. Sudden-sag would be slowed by lift & aero-resistance all along the line. Optimal high-altitude kitefarms may take form as fuzzy-looking latticeworks of self-lifted lines covered with kites.

Existing absolute kite altitude records are held by (sparse) trains, not single kites, showing an advantage for multiplied lift. There are handling trade-offs to Self-Lifting Tethers, but the good news is that the method offers hope for eventual high-altitude AWE & related aviation.

CoolIP                       ~Dave Santos            Sept. 20 , 2010        M
 

Comment and development of this topic will be occurring here.       
All, send notes, drawings, and photographs!   Notes@EnergyKiteSystems.net

Terms and aspects:   

• "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." –A. Einstein          

Related links:

• Commentary, see.
• Isentropic  http://www.energykitesystems.net/0/Isentropic/index.html

Commentary is welcome:

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