| AWE's
venture-capitalists are not crash-reporting to aviation safety-culture
standards. Its just too big a cultural leap. When someone eventually
gets hurt or killed, the regulatory honeymoon will end. As predicted here consistently since 2009, Google's pathetic multi-crash statistics (~1 crash per 100hrs logged flight) indicate they are many years away from survival-to-payback reliability; that they originally estimated to be five-years' operation, but may be far longer. This program, and others like Ampyx, will naturally if slowly vet overly complex architectures from early AWE, while helpfully building public awareness for the entire field. The unpredicted latest Google crash context is Kite Power's recent prior runaway and crash of its single-line LEI in a populated area, at fatal force, but luckily no one was hit. Ongoing high-complexity kiteplane and single-line AWES crashes will eventually favor interest in Single-Skin Multi-Line Power-Kites that are remarkably crash-worthy and very unlikely to runaway. Hundreds of past Forum messages have documented probable failure modes for high-complexity crashes. It perhaps matters little exactly which known modes killed these platforms, unless overlooked failure modes are being covered-up. So sorry for talented hard-working engineers who got stuck in high-risk AWES design, who may be unable to ever pivot from looming Darwinian elimination. Not sorry for speculative hype-driving AWE insiders who "exit" funding rounds with profits locked-in, even as inadequately warned investors lose everything. |