Governor hair grease was assured there would be no math
I recall about 15 years ago Google applied to patent a tethered wind turbine, one that would be anchored to a spot on the ground and would hover in high winds at 1000-1200 feet. It would use computer controlled louvers to adjust height and direction to keep it steered into optimal winds as well as guide the thing down if something failed or if wind speeds dropped too much to keep it aloft. The tether itself would conduct the generated power to the anchor point. I believe they abandoned the patent.
Anyone remember this, why would they have abandoned this? I recognize the FAA challenges to ensure air travel safety, what else am I missing?
From an article that Ars republished at the time, the tech wasn’t maturing fast enough and other competing efforts were beginning to outpace it, so Alphabet pulled the plug as part of their ongoing Moonshot Project cost/benefit analyses.
” why would they have abandoned this?”
First: When has Google ever carried through on anything?
Second: To get to 1,200 feet would require a ground footprint at least a mile in radius. And just how close would you be willing to live to something like that.
That’s off the top of my head in about five minutes. I can come up with all kinds of wildly impractical ideas if all I have to do is describe something like louvers to keep it steered into the wind and some magical control system that will make it do anything but com crashing to the ground when the wind stops suddenly, as it does, without having to actually design something that can be built and will work.
“Second: To get to 1,200 feet would require a ground footprint at least a mile in radius. And just how close would you be willing to live to something like that.”
I would think, you would put it on the ocean.
Not sure why 1200 feet high, but it seems it might be high enough in terms of not operating in a marine
environment.
Not sure how this thing flies…
I am going give it whirl without having it fly- and I think going to go higher than the middle of turbine
being 1200 feet [365.76 meters] high. Say 500 meters.
So I want cheap floating platform, and limit it’s depth less than 100 meters. Pick, 40 meter {131 feet}.
Try this, 20 meter diameter and 20 meter high, titanium skinned balloon tank, filled with very salty
water. Same thing above it, filled with freshwater 19 meter, and 1 meter high floor filled air.
So salty water sinks, and freshwater floats in seawater, and 1 meter of air floats a lot:
10 x 10 x pi x 1 = 314.159 cubic meters of displacement- it floats 314 tons. If wind turbine weighs more, add another 1 or 3 meter high floor.
Next smaller diameter, balloon tank, say 9 meters in diameter and 50 meters high, then narrow it to 5 meters in diameter and 50 meters high. Again made with thin wall titanium and pressurized with air {or could even use helium}. And this I assume gets us above most of the marine environment, and so going higher we can switch to marine aluminum- as a guess.
And need another 400 meter higher, so continue with 5 meter diameter for another 100 meters, then continue to taper, 4, 3, and 2 meters.
So, how stable does in keep vertical:
“The density of the Dead Sea is 1240 k g / m 3 ”
And 314 cubic meter per 1, x 20 = 6280 times 240 =
1,507,200 kg of “ballast weight”.
So it’s sort of like keel of a sailboat.
One obvious problem is the high-wind situation, which landing it doesn’t fix. You still have a very very lightweight structure with a large surface area trying to ride out a severe storm, which means parts of it will be in the background when the weather guy gives his disaster report.
Anchoring it over the ocean just means the debris gets washed up on the beach.
A severe storm could be bad news for wind or solar energy.
Maybe California could build a branch line of its high speed train out to the wind farm and use that to deliver the materials and personnel. Maybe they could get federal funds if they promised to use that as the first station on Joe’s proposed train to India.
Musk is already boring the tunnel. There’s talk of a gravity gradient power system once the tunnel is properly evacuated. Insulation is to be provided by a new enterprise called HellX.
I have an idea I’d like to sell California. Mount wind turbines atop the high speed rail trains, spun by the wind of the trains’ passage. Use the power generated by the turbines to drive the trains. You realize this is FREE ENERGY?! Don’t bother with my royalty checks. Use the money to fund reparations payments. A statue in Times Square will be sufficient, Postea Divus.
Governor hair grease was assured there would be no math
I recall about 15 years ago Google applied to patent a tethered wind turbine, one that would be anchored to a spot on the ground and would hover in high winds at 1000-1200 feet. It would use computer controlled louvers to adjust height and direction to keep it steered into optimal winds as well as guide the thing down if something failed or if wind speeds dropped too much to keep it aloft. The tether itself would conduct the generated power to the anchor point. I believe they abandoned the patent.
Anyone remember this, why would they have abandoned this? I recognize the FAA challenges to ensure air travel safety, what else am I missing?
From an article that Ars republished at the time, the tech wasn’t maturing fast enough and other competing efforts were beginning to outpace it, so Alphabet pulled the plug as part of their ongoing Moonshot Project cost/benefit analyses.
” why would they have abandoned this?”
First: When has Google ever carried through on anything?
Second: To get to 1,200 feet would require a ground footprint at least a mile in radius. And just how close would you be willing to live to something like that.
That’s off the top of my head in about five minutes. I can come up with all kinds of wildly impractical ideas if all I have to do is describe something like louvers to keep it steered into the wind and some magical control system that will make it do anything but com crashing to the ground when the wind stops suddenly, as it does, without having to actually design something that can be built and will work.
“Second: To get to 1,200 feet would require a ground footprint at least a mile in radius. And just how close would you be willing to live to something like that.”
I would think, you would put it on the ocean.
Not sure why 1200 feet high, but it seems it might be high enough in terms of not operating in a marine
environment.
Not sure how this thing flies…
I am going give it whirl without having it fly- and I think going to go higher than the middle of turbine
being 1200 feet [365.76 meters] high. Say 500 meters.
So I want cheap floating platform, and limit it’s depth less than 100 meters. Pick, 40 meter {131 feet}.
Try this, 20 meter diameter and 20 meter high, titanium skinned balloon tank, filled with very salty
water. Same thing above it, filled with freshwater 19 meter, and 1 meter high floor filled air.
So salty water sinks, and freshwater floats in seawater, and 1 meter of air floats a lot:
10 x 10 x pi x 1 = 314.159 cubic meters of displacement- it floats 314 tons. If wind turbine weighs more, add another 1 or 3 meter high floor.
Next smaller diameter, balloon tank, say 9 meters in diameter and 50 meters high, then narrow it to 5 meters in diameter and 50 meters high. Again made with thin wall titanium and pressurized with air {or could even use helium}. And this I assume gets us above most of the marine environment, and so going higher we can switch to marine aluminum- as a guess.
And need another 400 meter higher, so continue with 5 meter diameter for another 100 meters, then continue to taper, 4, 3, and 2 meters.
So, how stable does in keep vertical:
“The density of the Dead Sea is 1240 k g / m 3 ”
And 314 cubic meter per 1, x 20 = 6280 times 240 =
1,507,200 kg of “ballast weight”.
So it’s sort of like keel of a sailboat.
One obvious problem is the high-wind situation, which landing it doesn’t fix. You still have a very very lightweight structure with a large surface area trying to ride out a severe storm, which means parts of it will be in the background when the weather guy gives his disaster report.
Anchoring it over the ocean just means the debris gets washed up on the beach.
A severe storm could be bad news for wind or solar energy.
Maybe California could build a branch line of its high speed train out to the wind farm and use that to deliver the materials and personnel. Maybe they could get federal funds if they promised to use that as the first station on Joe’s proposed train to India.
Musk is already boring the tunnel. There’s talk of a gravity gradient power system once the tunnel is properly evacuated. Insulation is to be provided by a new enterprise called HellX.
I have an idea I’d like to sell California. Mount wind turbines atop the high speed rail trains, spun by the wind of the trains’ passage. Use the power generated by the turbines to drive the trains. You realize this is FREE ENERGY?! Don’t bother with my royalty checks. Use the money to fund reparations payments. A statue in Times Square will be sufficient, Postea Divus.