You know they pretty much ripped everyone off, for nothing right?

I'm a 70 year old that has the background in electronics and aerodynamics to understand what they did and why, and I feel confident that _very few_ people understand what they did or why it was important. Which means the world is NOT in _good hands._

I am right behind you in age and the more I see on KZfaq especially in the comments make me feel confident the the world will be on the hands of a bunch of knuckleheads. But when we die I have no idea where they will live.

Disagree; if you try and fail and you waste other peoples money then Houston, our superannuation accounts have a problem. Especially when an investment manager chooses the risk for you.

@@Ralph_Baric_PhD_C2019 GOOGLE I have to agree with jack. I knew the final result when I was 5years old My kite crashed when the wind died when the wind changed it flew into the trees or power line if I flew it to high the tether broke or the power of the wind broke it. conclusion kites are for fun not work. and mom did not buy me another one if I broke mine.

Wrong, in this regard the main failure in life is being duped into believing that humankind is responsible for any changes in climate, when historically it’s been, and will continue to be, in a state of constant flux. These idiots fooling around with kites isn’t going to do a jot of good. I despair at the level of lunacy going on in the world today, it simply beggars belief. We have tons of cheap energy, trashing it for very expensive alternatives will be mankind’s demise.

@@clivehorridge coal guzzlers instead of petrol guzzlers. That is what we are to believe. Just imagine the shifting of all transport energy to solar/wind. Its not going to happen. So then you have to ask for what other reasons. When you look up world meters, known economical viable reserves of crude run out by 2068. Now ask yourself the COP 26 goal of 2050. That leaves 18 years lee way. But the world is not leaving coal, yes it may have reached its peak of new development but with more than 100 years of current use still in the ground and no viable alternative (because the colored haired kids and germany refuse to keep nuclear as an option) means that all that energy used for transport must be shifted to electricity. So we want to increase electricity demand by a third to one half whilst at the moment 70-80% is still generated from coal. There's gold in them there hills. And only the Jews got rich selling you shovels. Now think of the hardest thing to ween off crude. Airplane travel. That avgas is pretty hard to match. And there are a class of people that want to keep flying. And they are going to want you to keep subsidizing its costs as it gets more expensive due to the availability of crude. So ground transport run on coal is the beginnings of the rationing of that valuable crude. And yes, the more you look into climate variance of the last 2-300 K years, taking nto account the LGM, the younger dryass, melt water pulses etc, increased CO2, decreased ocean ability to neutralize via fresh water river damming. You start to see a picture. Volcanology, planet wobble, and impactors (meteors asteroids) seem to be the triple threats that bring about accelerated climate variance. We serve these whims. Adapt or die.

I really enjoyed the footage & work your teammates put together, it seemed as if it was an exciting time spent building and launching a kite that seemed operational.(Bravo)

No... I don't agree with you.

@@Reth_Hard wot cha talkin'bout ,willis?

@@OscarRuiz-gj3mp You are wrong, admit it!

@@Reth_Hard wrong about having fun? Wrong about kiting a 5 meter foil being a workout? Do you even english?

@@Argosh wtf is he talking about?

I like your positive vibes you create with our almost poetic words that were uplifting and positive.

Yes. If we stop questioning and testing the obvious (our even if it's a "what if") our "goals for man kind" will never happen.

Great stuff! Only the music makes it annoying!

This brings to mind the quote from Thomas Edison: "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”

Yay... everyone gets a trophy. Yes, documented like the Hindenburg and other dumb ideas.

Beautifully documented epic failure. May future generations learn something ( I doubt it though ). If they has spent a fraction of that time reading about the *climate scam* fake alarmism, they could have saved themselves 13y of wasted effort and done something more meaningful with their considerable skills and money. This insanity is wasting a generation and killing all our futures.

Ha ha. what these people learned individually, will impact all our futures

And how much power did it generate?

@Chinmoy Mitra exactly no specs at all.

What kind of knowledge are they sharing and to what end? Do you really feel that this kind of BS projects can succeed?

@@chinmoy1955 it's really just showing that this is a possibility for the future

@@chinmoy1955 what's BS standing for?

@@heavyweather Bull Shit

@@chinmoy1955 you've not followed the development. The better high altitude technologies are winning now. Like Skysails Power where the generator stays on the ground and the system archives 6000 full load hours/a. That's without a heavy concrete foundation, blades, tower and accompanied transport troubles. Comes in a container and is set up in a day.

There are others. twitter.com/awesystems

Really? It's tethered.. a tether would make a great roadway for those helpful little electrons.

You’re listening comprehension isn’t very good because they explained it all what do you mean how are they going to get it to the Ground silly it’s tied to the ground

It's a pile of shit mate .the whole idea was stupid from the begining .

If NASA can drive around on the moon and Mars… and, moreover fly over Mars, Makani WILL succeed!

@@georgej.robinson4316 If NASA is able to put men on the moon, you sure should be able to lick your own elbow... what a nonsense argument

@@tristancraven3685 YeahNO. I can see YOU aren't a sailplane pilot...

I'm sorry, this statement will come off cocky as heck here on KZfaq where we all should applaud/commend great efforts, cheer for one another, and simply root for trying (right?). However, as an engineer involved in the tech community, I had huge conceptual doubts about this project from the start. I predicted what a massive waste of funding and resources it would likely turn out to be, and needless to say, unfortunately all of my predictions turned out to be right in line with my initial sarcasms about the project. It was one of the biggest wastes of resources I've seen in years. It was as if they chose a group of some inexperienced children just wanting to toy with investment money to create, well, a giant toy for them to play with on other people's wallets, regardless of the results. No engineer that I know had any actual expectations for these "kites" to do anything worthwhile--especially on the big current stage of current wind harnessing designs existing. The whole project came off as a practical joke, on a giant scale. It's ok to have ideas, concepts, etc., but when those concepts depict immediate modes of likely problems and failures, good scientists know when to cut the project and change course. These guys just didn't care, they wanted to be correct, refusing to admit defeat, when defeat was inevitable. What energy committee would honestly get together and believe there would be huge-scale operations of these things deployed across great areas of landscapes (I.E. deployed in large numbers) and expect a successful deployment on such a scale that there wouldn't be more unit downtime, crashes, and maintenance of these devices to overcome the costs to keep the others running and consistently deploying? This was an engineering nightmare in its full glory from the get-go, and I hope many learned to watch what they throw investment money at in the future. The failures taught more about hideous designs than the small amounts of up-time taught about ever trying such a disaster again. As I said before, I am sorry to have to be so honest and blunt about this project, but a nightmare project it truly was. It never had the slightest chance at defeating the common wind generators for up-time and low maintenance abilities, it should have been shut down long before it ever reached such scales of failure. Some folks just aren't cut out for the work they do; they operate on internal bias to try and force the unobtainable. Unfortunately, this group of folks fell into that category. Never knowing when to simply pull out and start a new path to a new project. Fortunately for some, we got to learn that bad ideas on large scales can still exist that allude the general public into buying into hocus pocus and sleight of hands, only to be fooled and used in the long-run for their lack of knowledge on the subjects at play. I hope many of you view future projects with a much finer toothed comb before crossing fingers and emptying wallets towards donations. This is a project that to a degree has really angered and upset many fellow engineers including myself as something that amounted to nearly a prank on the ones who really are making great strides in the fields of renewable energy sources, only at the cost of their much harder work, devotion, and common-sense attitudes about what to do when failure is inevitably on the horizon due to bad initial ideas. I hope these "kite junkies" picked up a lot of what never to repeat in the future when real world engineering is on the front-line. Sometimes, better ideas simply already exist in implementation, and a good scientist will quickly recognize such fact. But, we are all human with emotional flaws sometimes tied to our work, and great failures are often great learning lessons in disguise to those too young to realize how much of our work is fundamentally flawed by such evolutionary traits. To that I say, God speed humanity; don't give up forever, just allow good and bad experiences to keep shaping our brains and thought processes, continuously evolving our future endeavors for the advancement of this great race found here on planet Earth. 😉 After All, we're only a few hundred thousand years into our discoveries--a blink of time on the cosmic scale. Imagine humanity after a few hundred thousand more years building upon our discoveries. Eventually, we won't be chasing the wind, we will be creating it. I find great pleasure imagining that distant future for us--no matter how many times humanity may have to reboot through that lengthy process. We will get there, one day, we will get there.

it's very expensive

Commendable however the project went way off scope. Simple, cheap electricity........this is not that. There are so many complex factors that mean this isn't viable...I like the concept but I cant see it happening. The simple rise and fall system with the surf kites still seems a system 'on scope'. Also as a noise consultant I think would have a hard time getting this through planning...A craft that sounds like a dive bomber....Id have people complaining within a 5 miles radius....

@@jdickson242 I think they were a bit ahead of some techonological advances. We see now AI driving cars and flying drones, and that AI is/will no longer be that expensive. I think with a push of AI and also some input from aeronautical engineers this could be taken up by an aeronautical company.

@@jdickson242 You are thinking too conventionally. Only 1/4 or so of all present energy use is in the form of electric power. How might things be re-arranged if we had just as much energy, but it was electric power, far offshore? Hmm? Anyway, on the wide open seas, there is nobody around to notice the noise.

@@YodaWhat 😄

Lol

Sky Sails did not piggyback off their tech. They understood what simplicity meant from the get-go and are now a profitable going concern.

@@benwatkins7032 Well, they have also tried and failed before. Their technology was originally meant to power large scale maritime cargo ships for reducing carbon emissions of the biggest pulluters. But they came up with the solution right at the time of the crises of this entire industry. Hundreds of cargo ships, if not thousands, have been scrapped, while barely the biggest companies have survived. Noone was ready for paying a new technology. Sky Sails went bankrupt and was bought out and has continued with the mobile energy generation solution.

@@benwatkins7032 But yes. Simplicity is crucial sometimes. Amazing technology Makani has developed with such a giant powered kite. Unfortunately extremely difficult to be proven stabile in a long time autonomous flight mode even enduring very high wind gusts like at places with the best wind resources have to face. And the cost and safety risks are sadly high in case of loss of control.

And how many million birds has it killed?

@@maxwaters1461 😂

N,

It entertained them for a time.. but a project that was a waste of money from the start.

@D go build them then

@@spencerdw1 yes. Delusional students spending other people's money for their own enjoyment.

You need to edit your post if you mean "funded". Yeah, they were milking that tit for all it was worth. And some of them deserve contempt- the broad running the lathe wearing a _long sleeve sweatshirt,_ for instance. But overall, I'd say it was pretty damned impressive.

Whatever! They spent 13 years and didn't produce a final working product. Maybe because the project kept going bigger and more complex for greater power generation. I see it every time. "The gravity light", imo, was/is a far greater success which continues bringing benefit to individual people. What produced this failure were the investors, unlike the gravity light which stopped and got what it had developed out into the world. Google was never interested in developing a product that can be sold and will benefit the people's power needs. It was interested in getting a product that it will own and sell the power generated to the grid who then sells that power to the people. What they started with was derailed by the deep pockets they accepted money from early on. Just my opinion. Cheers.

@@sailingsolar I think you're right. A small project that could bring power to one town or village might have had traction.

@@sailingsolar Depends what you call a final product, product design tends to keep renewing and keep being improved.

@@sailingsolar Never heard of that one - I just tripped over this in my feed. This also isn't a zero-sum game: this team's accomplishments didn't lessen "the gravity light's" accomplishments, did it?

Even though they didnt finish with a final product, their research and product development will still help future endeavours on the subject. This is first and foremost a film about the story of the company as a whole, not just the tech or that they "didnt deliver". They certainly delivered; if this was a university doing the research and publishing papers on it, it would (imo) be highly praised by the scientific society. Maybe even Siemens would dip their toe into it. That remaims to be seen. (I just finished this video when writing this. Havent read more on the subject if there has been further development by other teams after Mekani)

Eventually when “Global Warming” has gotten every other president elected over the past 20 years and nothing has happened yet maybe they can turn a profit on this by allowing rides on their kites 🪁 😃

*were

A lot of money and wasted time (time we don’t have according to the documentary). Your statement belies the notion you really believe the urgency. It’s not about giving you ‘the experience’. Is it?

@@tanner882 "nothing has happened" You aren't paying attention...

@@Studio23Media things haven’t changed since the late 90’s. All the tech we have now we had then, things have been nipped and tucked to appear “New” but nothing is.

someone forward this to trump for a trump narration of its process ala his "shjjj... shjjj..." cancerous windmill explanation. maybe both hands going in circles with a "shj. shj. shj. shj." maybe the noise causes 8 types of cancer this time.

@@MrDarchangelomni Better: Attach him firmly to a blade of a regular giant machine and let it spin for a few weeks.

@@YodaWhat why? Do you wish people tortured? Do you believe it justified? What must one do to deserve such treatment? Would you personally execute and complete your previously written/described assault, if given legal opportunity? Or do you just like to talk out your starfish on the internet..

@@philip2774 "He" isn't "people". "He" has killed hundreds of thousands of people. "He" is also a traitor, having committed High Treason. But none of the Parties will mete out appropriate punishment, fearing their own _just desserts._

@@YodaWhat Wow, someone drank the Kool-aid

Try thousands of years- think sailboats and windmills grinding flour. Stuff like this pisses me off,what a ridiculous waste of time,money,fossil fuels etc- I would love to know the carbon footprint this monstrosity left in its wake....

I respect their effort and hard working. But why not keep the kite stay in the same position?

Yeah, but that actually works. It doesn't crash into broken pieces.

Why impractical? There are container ships and oil ships right now that use figure 8 kites to give the ship extra power to reduce transport cost

@@royaldecreeforthechurchofm8409 Motored ship going against the wind may use more energy with a kite dragging behind.

They are putting them up offshore now too. They work just fine

@@ALTINSEA1 yea

@@royaldecreeforthechurchofm8409 yeah I'd imagine it's hugely popular... not.

how could they posssibly not know this was going to fail when they completely abandoned the original premise of the kite design - simplicity.

You should apply for a spot on the team.

Why are you still living with your parents..

If you want to move away from this climate situation just get in your car and move. Easy.

It wasn't outside the box at all. This is an OLD concept. What is NEW are the electronics and control techniques.

What a woke joke of a project, spanking all that money! Seriously, the waste is criminal. It’s numptys like you the feed the BS projects like this. This is a typical feel good factor going way too far before some has the balls to pulls the hand break on. This project should have never got off the ground. Pun intended!

@@jimchambers8810 Yes Jim, as they lost taxpayer funding all this proof they accumulated couldn't attract a single private investor and none of those so-called engineers or researchers were willing to dig into their own pockets.

about the same thing and it does the same thing that a wind turbine does LOL I guess you got to give these kids something to do who wants to work a 9 to 5:00...

@@thats_my_comment sorry, but you must have ADHD, having missed the entire mention of the proposed advantages of such a kite, namely, that the higher you go, the faster and more consistent the winds are. You, sir, are a dunce.

It kept them employed and earning and I suspect they are more accountancy types than engineer. I would like to know the cause of the original leader's cause of death. The most important event in this video and it was glossed over. Suspicious?

@@unsucks9337 Employed yes, earning is debatable.

@@unsucks9337 ​ iLluMinATi OmG I added this conspiracy to my database of global tragedies that are likely perpetrated by the UN and their team of alien overlords

It is dead. There won't be anything anymore. You can just watch the last 5 minutes of the video.

Way too complex. Even with the simplicity of windmills they are running into new problems

Yeah but imagine being the guy who gets to spend all of the money on ultra complex "cool" systems. You can't stop him. Apparently. It truly is a vanity project that could be simplified.

@@REPORTEVERYLIBERALCOMMENT Elon Musk would have scheduled Rapid Disassembly. Just a ridiculous idea dreamt up on a beach after smoking one too many joints.

Has some uses? You don’t have to think long before realizing currently used renewables are far less complex. Can you imagine the transmission cost for enough off shore units? Remember their test unit powered only 30 homes. A lot of unshared infrastructure for very little capacity. This idea was a waste of time and money

So are cars and planes but they work

Ever hear of a *LIGHTNING ROD?* Remember how Dr Frankenstein "Empowered" his creature? Large box kites on cables to direct the lightning to his creature.

Writeoff!

@@rickcoona , Heart attack pictures, fatty foods is animaIs cIogged arteries : kzfaq.info/get/bejne/Z5unmrykudWzgoE.html !!! kzfaq.info/get/bejne/pqyAedGZy9uwonk.html Vegans don’t have this problem because that is the animals. Vegans don’t get clogged arteries, 4% cancer if you’re vegan. Meat based diet 51% death rate. That is extremely high for a frigging burger etc. Gorillas in the wild, have 1 percent cancer. And they never ever eat animals !!! Peer review science !!!! KZfaq delicious vegan food. Time to change ✅❤️😉.

Hey, I also Amit I Singh sometime's

Hey, don't make fun of someone's name

​@@meteorfive6 If the guy had really really thin skin and was severely injured by that guys goofy sense of humor that appears as though it was not insulting in the slightest, he would be able to speak for himself. Here is the long boring story, but maybe you suffer from a short attention span and are unable to read fast nor install a browser plugin for reading aloud selected portions of text? If it was me, I'd tell you to chillax, remain calm, and stop trying to inflate a hurt feelings and emotions thing into any kind of huge victimhood conflict that could elevate into more serious conflict or physical injury as seems always to be the plan with cultural Marxism enthusiasts that fail to realize that Marxism was tried many times and no one competent was able to pull it off because the revolutionaries murdered everyone competent in those societies. 200 plus million people were murdered due to Marxist dialectic materialism prompted by the removal of religion so that humans were NOT made in the image of some deity so cold be summarily murdered for political power gain, etc, IE., that immorality could rain free of any constraints of a higher power. As well, the axioms, presuppositions, conclusions, policies, ideology, are deliberately biased by viewing everything through a distorted lens. Also each person is an individual not merely a clone of everyone in their various group memberships so that they think in ways that can be different especially if they are divergent from their socially engineered Prussian education system that intends that cookie cutter copies are made so that everyone has predictable consumer behaviors that can be swayed by advertising to buy the latest fad thing, or adopt the latest fad ideology, or whatever else. Leftism likes to blame all woes of individuals who made their own life choices on other innocent, uninvolved parties. Recall Jacobinism was the precursor to Marxism. It drove the French revolution that saw mostly trouble making based mostly on envy of those who had higher levels of competence who were able to make and save some money to have any. It was using Hebrew Israelite Biblical "sins of the father" kind of punishment of death on those trying to make a happy life, etc, even though Jacobins were atheistic and supposedly shunned religious stuff. "THE IMPERIAL FRENCH CAUSE" "IN DEFENSE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE" Fascifist Turns out the Jacobins were funded by their supposed enemies--an extremely wealthy banking dynasty who eventually funded internationally the forces of many countries to oppose Napoleon Bonaparte who determined who was at the actual root of trouble making turmoil. Instead, if you are talented, then go out and start a business. You'll soon learn that the oppressed versus oppressor narrative is utterly a false one unless you get backers with unlimited deep pockets that would support you in the high burn rate years until you gained some kind of monopoly market share or whatever, that is just not going to happen typically. I was at one time a lefty too. It usually is very unhelpful to issue criticism upon comedians who were attempting to be amusing rather than hurtful. Having thin skin is a sure way to elevate minor issues into huge trouble making that could cause revolutions, and wars over simple misunderstandings or poor senses of humor. Life is too short to have it wasted being thin skinned, stirring up trouble and trouble making. In high school bullies there would punch me in the face, break my nose, having it bleeding--real physical injury--I just turned around and walked away from the fools and did not say anything. That is real tolerance of someone who is being deliberately annoying and violent. Everyone taught in schools to be SJWs is NOT a good plan so that the long march through the institutions of society of the Frankfurt school and Antonio Gramsci cultural hegemony are doing their task to make the world a much worse place due to making young naive propaganda unquestioning into domestic enemies of everyone else who is innocent and just trying to live their lives free from real tyrannical fascism. See kgb defector yuri bezmenov cultural subversion Learned a new thing a few hours ago from very nice older black female university lecturer about slavery about the way Eastern Europeans from slavic countries (from where the word slave was derived) sold many of their children into slavery even prior to 500 BC. That is a very long history of slavery, if you ask me. See kzfaq.info/get/bejne/bs-Kd8ShzLfIdqM.html Why White People are Called Caucasian (Illustrated) Skip the long introduction by the old man there, then watch and listen to the older black lady scholar from Princeton University all the way until the end. Some people have cited news that these same peoples are still victims of slavery by having the young females tricked into thinking that they have been offered a well paying office job in Western Europe only to find themselves in the sex industry in brothels, turning many tricks per day, etc. The system of enslavement is being run by ethnic mafia kinds of dudes. This is true injustice rather than just a poor sense of humor. Some have said that this form of human trafficking has been facilitated by nefarious members of the elite people who run most of the countries around the world. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/mNZyi5Bkl9PPfGQ.html Chief Counsel Robert David Steele. ITNJ.org Seating Hearings on international human trafficking, pedophilia rings, organized crime sex enslavement, etc.

how old are you,3?., this is a total waste of time & money. 13 yrs,& they achieved what,.nothing.. free energy is available,, but its free,. so you cant have it..

It's a wonderful film for audiences that have heads full of slop.

You said her or him, it's actually him or her. Him alway's comes first.

​@@patman0250 My condolences to your wife...

@@solarmande7280 Phh! I ain't got no ball and chain buddy. Keep them jars away from my nuts.

Well said and I couldn't agree more... just wayyy too many high-risk variables and even if most of the variables could be solved, I simply do not see how such a design could survive sitting out in the elements long term, especially during major weather events.

Is absolutely insane, like you said too many moving parts, and that should be the death knell from the get go. They should have done something else if they want to make something competitive with conventional wind turbines. One guy in the comments suggested tethered helium dirigibles. That sounds a hell of a lot more practical than this joke.

@@steveperreira5850 it was tried as I remember. A ring shaped balloon and the rotor in the middle. Never heard of follow up though.

@Daneel Olivaw - I recall seeing those experimental ring-shaped balloon wind turbines (with the center-mounted wind turbine)... not in person but online. Which btw, sure seems to make a lot more sense vs thinking a super finicky kite wing (expected to rotate round and round 24/7/365 while tethered to massive moorings) was somehow going to revolutionize the energy industry(?) At least the ring balloon wind turbine design could be configured to retract back into a (sealable) ground-level bunker or sealable above-ground domed housing ... which would not only offer superior protection during non-ideal wind conditions/severe weather but would also offer ideal sheltered maintenance. On a side note (and to be clear) I'm not knocking the amazing feat of engineering involved in the tethered kite project but I am knocking the total and utter impracticality... which should have been realized long before the project was further and further green-lighted/funded. It's too bad the design team didn't shift focus to a more practical project, such as the ringed balloon wind turbine design ... I bet they could have knocked that design out of the park and more likely seen the fruits of their labor blossom into actual mass production and long-term contracts(!)

After watching the film how many things can go wrong now seems pretty obvious. That is to say they couldn't have foreseen all of those issues from setting out a decade ago.

yes maybe this will help other research. But like most of these energy things, All in it for the government grant money/ 10% research 90% salaries.

@@rssvss the market isn't really figuring it out either. We need new ideas. *aword

Was dodgy at the start. Was dodgy at the end. Full stop.

Why does their kite look so complex? ( Ref: 37:00) I thought they were trying to make wind for cheaper?

@@FrankReif We need batteries my friend, we need batteries.

You are obviously not Dutch. Ten years ago there was a similar Dutch project. This video looks very very familiar. I hope they succeed to conquer the entire world. Google Wubbo Ockels + Laddermill.

Enerkite in Germany - but the kites are much smaller.

B52, they'll be over a hundred years old when retired.

Exactly, too many crazy high force dynamic factors. No way does it scale up, no way. It’s a pipe dream and that’s what I expect from people With the California mentality that we can do anything because we are smarter than everyone else. I’ve lived here my whole life I’ve seen it over and over again. When I faced impossible projects, I told the management so, and refused to work on them, not because I’m afraid of Possible failure, because I’m sure of it. Somethings are just not possible to become viable products.

@@steveperreira5850 LMAO maybe you fail so many times because of that attitude...

Yes just like planes, very unreliable and many dynamic factors, I think we should just stick to trains, actually just horses...

@@Studio23Media Just be confident bro..

Indeed, the film lets this completely unclear. - Anyway it's obviously ths spinning of the tiny propellers. I don't see the point why this thing should be better than a traditional wind mill of, say, similar wing size. The one explanation in the beginning that due to the larger diameter the yield was larger is nonsense because of course the moving plane does not use the power of the wind that blows where the plane just isn't.

@@christiangeiselmann -- It's long been known that there is a dramatic voltage differential between ground and altitude, the higher the altitude, the higher the voltage. This is used for some autonomous flight control systems, which constantly measure the left/right wingtip voltage delta. The problem with _harnessing_ this voltage is that -- besides the fact that it's of extremely low _current_ (amperage), it's _Direct_ current. Cue video of Edison pulling out his hair as his engineers read the facts of life to him (regarding power generation and distribution). What are you going to do with umpteen thousands of volts of DC? Well, you could step it down to a more _manageable_ voltage, at which point the _current_ would increase all by itself. Well, that is, you could if it was _Alternating_ Current. Solutions? Sure. Viable? Not so much. Easiest would be a spark gap -- when the voltage -- likely fed into a condenser bank -- reached a high enough level so as to make a spark happen between two electrodes, the current would _crudely_ "alternated" -- and if there was the primary of a transformer placed between the spark and either the feed, or ground, then the _secondary_ would provide the desired voltage, with a higher current. Of course, this would not be our nice friendly 60 Hz sine wave. It'd be random, noisy, probably s sawtooth or perhaps something between a sawtooth and a square wave. Or, just random noise. Oh, right -- the feed -- which gathers the voltage out of the air -- would also become a _very_ powerful _radiator_ of the broadband "signal" created by the spark gap. ("Broadband" in the traditional sense of the word, from before it became "synonymous" with "high speed" Internet; this, apparently due to "broadband" having won the protocol war with "baseband" -- with either/both being fully capable of very _high_ speed or very _low_ speed -- but, I digress.) The result would be the obliteration of all open air radio communications within a quite large radius (the higher the collector/radiator, the higher the voltage and thus the higher the efficiency, with efficiency being a two-edged sword, therefore the higher the efficiency, the larger the radius of obliteration). Or, someone could come up with a super-efficient DC motor that could run at the tens of thousands of volt/microamp juice, and use it to turn a generator to produce 60 Hz AC at usable voltage levels. I would not hold my breath waiting for that. Well, I guess I should start watching the video now, and see if it can hold my attention throughout its entirety.

And the answer is a resounding *_Nope!_* I don't have enough time in my life to endure this long, droning [yeah, I said "droning"!] puff piece covering a pack of idealistic young saps who'll swallow the crisis du jour, and then proceed to wash it in Other People's Money. But should I ever find myself in need of a tragic yawner I'll be back in a flash.

@@This_is_my_real_name ...i'm suspicious of all the positive comments...someone is deleting the ones that question them....like " How much power does your overly complicated and prone to damage windmill make?"

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/jpyBZ8qpts3KmoU.html

In the ocean I think is twice difficult!!

That's not Andrea Dunlap speaking at 1:49:36 . Maybe it's Kate Stirr?

That was so fit.

Heartbreaking to a lot of people here from what I’ve read. But if you’re a level headed engineer you understand how impractical this is from the very beginning, and you are not surprised at all by the sad ending. As an R&D engineer with a good measure of success, before starting a project you need to investigate the limits, Elon musk talks about this a lot, but it is not a new idea as I was practicing this methodology some many decades ago. Cursory analysis by qualified mechanical engineers would doom this product from the get go because it doesn’t scale up, we don’t have the strength of materials for such dynamic stresses so as to make big enough kite turbines to compete with existing standard windmills. I like seeing people work hard and really innovate, but I hate to see them waste a decade on a doomed project.

This was 13 years millions of dollars and carbon emissions all for naught. What a dumb generation. 🤦

That’s sad... You must not have watched very many. This was a TERRIBLE example, and all they engineered was a shit drone attached to what is essentially a winch, to try and create energy. REAL Engineers have been down this road long ago. There’s a reason we went with huge wind turbines in valleys.

Agree. Each design should go through many committees both inside and outside the team. Copious feedback before drafting the design is the best approach.

This was engineering that needed people thinking with an occams razor element. Back to the drawing boards and completely start over.