DaveS,

"Wikipedia notes that sailboats are windpower, which use wind to move, just as a simple kite moves upward from the ground,..."

The appropriate correspondent of sailboat is rather kitesurf.

Now you do not agree with the definition of Britannica, it is a change.

What you name as""authoritative" sources " allows understanding for a large part of concerned people. As you want to change a definition without the agreement of others you make an authoritative action.

PierreB 

daveS,

"Go complain over the due pace of engineering-science on some other forum."

You too.

PierreB

Hey Dave S.
A rock is held against the wind by contact with the ground.  A shear-tether, if you will.  And it deflects wind, turning kinetic energy into heat.  You can't tell, but the earth is deflected a teeny bit, so the rock is doing work.  So any old rock is a wind energy system, by your definition.  And I ick-splained how a lawnmower engine is really a wind energy conversion system (WECS) with its own internal weather.
And I noticed yesterday as I was slowing down from 72 mph on skis how when I stood up, I became a kite, well sort of.  Good thing.  Everything's a kite.  Safety first.  Some people say I should be wearing a helmet.  So many trees, so little time...
But what I really have to take exception to is your assertion that my aviation experience is limited to a few flights in my hang glider down a bunny slope.  That is not the sum total off my flying time.  I also flew Cox gasplanes in a circle or more often into the ground as a kid, AND last year I bought a cheap radio controlled electric airplane from Harbor Freight, placed it on the concrete floor (runway) opened one of my hangar doors, and "hit the gas".  I flew this plane so well, my first time, that I caught an updraft within the first minute.  So I cut the power to both motors and tried to just hit one motor or the other for brief bursts, to steer the plane and keep it overhead.  Well, it just kept going up.  And up.  And up and up and up, with no motor running.  Maybe it was caught in an invisible dust devil.  Soon it was hard to see, and after a while, we just couldn't find it in the sky anymore.  It was gone.  So there.  I'd like to see you pull that off.

Oh and of course I used to make and fly kites as a kid, but we know that has nothing to do with anything.  Kites.  Hmmph.  Kites are for kids...

:)

DaveS,

A rock being a WECS, a kite being a WECS by your definition, a rock is a kite by your logic.

PierreB 

Company spelling correction to: MITSUBISHI ELECTRIC CORP ============================================================

 (unlinked clip)

The opportunities do seem to be a great multitude as noted near the beginning of this forum. 

How will we spend our time? Which AWES will receive our attention. A new room may be opened for specialties.   In mathematics literature in the search for what mathematics is, some seasoned mathematician suggest that "Mathematics is what mathematicians do."     AWE community will be known by what it does, I suggest. How much of our coin will be spent on rock WECS  (high interest in geology circles. http://geology.com/articles/racetrack-playa-sliding-rocks.shtml   Soil erosion respects wind energy on rocks in many ways. Serious science. The principle of anchor-tension-blown-wing plays in many places in scinece.)   Choices will be made by AWE community members and the resultant will be AWE.   We have a powerful see in kite.  As PierreB indicated, look over the general flow of what this forum is about and most of the doings is about generating electricity by tethered wings that have close resemblance to traditional kited wings; we have many secondary task interests on the record, some inspired by seeing the richness of the kite principle in even some its abstract glories. Appreciating the richness, the depth, the broadness of the kite has merits.   But then again, how will AWE known?  Perhaps by what we do. 

    Spend your kite coin and bless the world with energies in the form you choose; use the kite coin to solve the challenges you choose. The mission of this forum is that kite coins will be spent to do some significant good in the world by way of AWES.    Let's keep going as we are with a very interesting start. 

Nice Rod!

       In article:  "one million kilograms. That much mass, constructed in this fashion, prevented torsion on the structure to keep it stable, but was insufficient to prevent severe vibrations due to winds."

Dave Culp in the late 1970s used kite trains to pull boats.   Dave Culp

The Case for Transport Sail Craft

by

Billy Roeseler, Theo Schmidt, Andrew Beattie, Cory Roeseler,

Dave Culp, Russell Long, Tad McGeer, & Richard Wallace

A version of this paper was presented by the authors at the World Aviation Congress, 

Los Angeles, California, on October 24, 1996

===========================================

Harry, 

       I do not have any notes where teams are materially moving toward kite trains for heavy-ship traction use. It would be fun to know the backroom notes of SkySails Marne on this. 

[Anyone?]    

http://www.energykitesystems.net/Kites/Trains/  is a bucket of links on trains. 

A room in AWESMuseum for study and discussing kite trains, yet a young room: KiteTrains

In some posts I point some too big difficulties to produce electricity with an Arch like Mothra.

However its two anchors _ being an inconvenience for adaptation in all wind directions _ can take a serious advantage by holding the iceberg

IcebergWaterbagKiteTowingMethod.89192722.JPG

in two distant points or more without loss of useful kite area. To start some crosswind motion is realized, and for travel Mothra becomes static. Towing an iceberg has no forcing schedule _ only waiting for good winds _ contrary to transportation of goods where a precise schedule is required, the economy of fuel decreasing in spite of towing kite since ship speed must be constant.

PierreB

"arm-chair pessimists" are people both criticizing serious teams like Makani and proposing schemes having no chance to usely produce electricity. A system like FlygenKite ( http://flygenkite.com ) is more suitable than any arch (but less than Makani which is yet insufficient) for this purpose, although I look after another serious possibility as rotative system.

PierreB

Dave S.  You said "If you over-generalize what a kite is, the definition loses usefulness." - I feel like I may be getting through to you...

Tell Joe, K?

:)

For utility-scale crosswind kites show their inherent limits (moving tether, no maximization of space),while they are seen as the most promising AWES. Now helicopter like SWP is yet too heavy, but I think it is a problem of engineering (R&D) rather than an inherent limit: see the human powered helicopter on www.youtube.com/watch?v=syJq10EQkog . What are _ bad or good _ possibilities to make a rotor lighter and more scalable _before SuperTurbining it?

PierreB

Maybe remotely controlling a from-iceberg kite tug could save from having to employ tug ships. Maybe one kite pilot person hundreds of miles away could kite-control a hundred smaller  kited ice bergs with smart connections to KCUs. Or maybe the KCUs could be robotic and using GPS and sensors for wind, etc. bring "home" the bergs all on their own.   

The link PierreB brought forward had a suggestion to use ocean tidal forces or wave power (forget) to pump melted berg water to higher land locations.   Kite systems could also play in that pumping effort. 

~ JoeF

Just as I closed the last post, a flash came to me about kite arches, say Mothra. Recall how those scissor-like large ice-block grabbers work that pinch the block.  Well, the anchors of the Mothra have a pinching component on soil earth that could possible be used to pinch an anchor into the sides of an ice berg  to get a grab; then the anchor terminal might be shaped as a plow wing and slowly "fly" into the ice berg as the pinch continues to grab the berg. 

I hear what you are saying, DougS !     Usefulness is a neat arena.  Use language to move one's project forward; one need not use the words and concepts that are not helping one's project.  Be prudent for one's life and project. 

    For me, yet, I am finding neat usefulness for the findings about kite essence as such plays in different realms. I've advanced from your seeings; thanks for the play.  A mastery over the essence just may help one move in the most practical realms also. Yet, a worker may focus on one niche mechanical project and not have much need for mastering kite essence in other realms; he or she may have enough text to complete a certain project.    

    It took only a second to click-share a few years ago that a strand of string  in the air or in water will have its times as a true kite system and WEC and thus AWES; but such awareness may not much help Magenn MARS system project.  However, there well may be some niche scientific research that could benefit from appreciating the kiting going on in a strand of string out in the air or water.  The strand of string in a real dynamic fluid goes through many kinds of motions; some of the actions fly the end portions deferentially and sets up tension in the mid sections of the strand; compression and tension is occurring; segments react with the whole in various ways.  Have the string with ribbon flat shape and get even more actions.

    http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/files/2013/09/flying-balloon-spider.jpg

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/files/2013/09/ballooning-spider.jpg

http://image.shutterstock.com/display_pic_with_logo/94874/94874,1301591949,3/stock-photo-blue-ribbon-fly-and-bend-on-a-white-background-74402431.jpg

My main focus was resolving the angle of an arch tether into its anchor vector two components; one component pinches toward the other anchor; the other component has a projection downwind. The two anchors' pinch component squeeze or compress the soil directly between them. http://www.physicsclassroom.com/Class/vectors/u3l1e2.gif

The Fsub h  components of the two anchors of the Mothra are toward each other, a soil pinching.