Hi Pierre: Yes, such a hypothetical aircraft could just use batteries (if it existed)… Their proposal of going the 25% efficient hydrogen route, to me, indicates maybe they don’t understand simple math. That is a red flag toward taking anything else they say seriously. I may have been somewhat joking about the airship flipping upside-down after launch due to the weight of the solar cells on top, but maybe not - have they considered the weight and balance aspect? Who knows? I’m also thinking that since an airship is buoyant, it might not need much power during the night anyway, since it should require no power to simply remain airborne.
In this project, hydrogen would only be used for supply the motors, not for buoyancy, which is ensured with helium. And this airship would move day and night.
Hi Pierre: Yes, I read that it would be buoyed by helium. That means it would not need power to remain airborne at night. Therefore, what would be the point of a 25% return on energy stored during the day, if the original electricity could just be used at 100% during the day for propulsion? I did not see any indication of how the hydrogen might be stored. If it is at ambient pressure, that would be one thing, otherwise it might require compression, further reducing overall efficiency.
One aspect you have not addressed is how many of these giant airship stories have been published over the last 15 years, or even the last 50 years, while none have actually been built.
Some book suggestions: https://www.reddit.com/r/kites/comments/177sjaf/bridling_guidelines/
A post was merged into an existing topic: Using a kite to lift a regular wind turbine?
Your other topic is now a mess with comments that talk about something else. If you like I can move some of the comments, that you would list, here, or maybe to a new topic. But your new proposed topic is dumb and I don’t see why we would want to give space to every dumb idea.
I see the problem. The “two simplest ideas” (of which one in on topic, but the other is not) were largely discussed and mixed. So it is difficult to see what comment could be displaced.
The new proposed topic is about the second of the “two simplest ideas”. @dougselsam seems to consider that these two ideas should be more investigated. I just see that @tallakt liked it. I think it’s a basic idea, without thinking that this idea is promising.
My opinion is that you could merge these two topics, renaming them: Using an aerostat or a kite as a lifter of a regular wind turbine?
I guess. I merged them. They are kind of the same topic and kind of not. You can rename the topic.
Thanks. I deleted my double comment and renamed the topic so that the discussion of “the two simplest ideas for AWE” is reflected.
Just saw this
A 10% improvement in gas turbine efficiency. Should reduce fuel consumption by 10% for the same amount of electricity generated, if it all works out.
Yeah, if man were meant to fly, God would have given him wings! We only need one airplane maker in the world - Boeing - we can rely on them to bow to new rules requiring engines that don’t fit, so they can then apply a software band-aid that kills everyone when they crash!
I can’t believe the U.S. car companies wasted billions developing electric cars, and now they aren’t selling. Ford loses the price of a regular car on every electric they sell, so they’re backing out. Same with GM. Nearly everyone seems to fall for the fake “reality” superimposed over the real reality. At some point they wake up.
That seems to be related to the fact that Tesla in fact is earning money on their cars, putting Ford in a squeeze… it does mean though that Ford must level up or perish, because the future is not fossile fuel based
It may seem that way to someone with a restricted information flow, but I keep hearing on the financial channel that fossil fuel use worldwide is still increasing. People are getting tired of Tesla. The cars look like little turtles. Their “trucks” are not moving forward. The vehicles weigh too much, and cost too much, meaning they take too many resources to build. Fuel cars only need to carry half of their fuel - the other half comes from the air. They are imitations of living, breathing beings, that help green the planet by providing much needed CO2 to plants. CO2 levels had reached an unprecedented low, almost to the point below where plants can even survive. It may be that fuels transition to a more sustainable insertion into the carbon cycle, by using methane clathrates directly from the sea bottom instead of waiting millions of years for it to be subducted deep underground where it slowly turns into oil .Viewpoints change like, well, like the weather. Yesterday’s “scientific fact” is often today’s complete nonsense. it is easy to just keep repeating “the propaganda”, but over time things change. A different, yet completely scientific, way of looking at it is that fossil fuels are bringing a dying, about-to-freeze planet, back to live, after all the carbon was slowly subducted underground over billions of years. Temps have been in severe decline since the dinosaurs, and if it goes on much longer, we could find ourselves in a “snowball Earth”. Just sayin’ - there are many scientifically-valid ways to look at such a complicated situation, and popular viewpoints go in and out of style, sometimes pretty quickly - you never know!
I’ll give you a sppecific example of a “well-known scientific fact” that went on for decades, which I personally debunked for years:
Every “expert” including doctors, “journalists”, etc., “KNEW” that two drinks a day for men, one for women, “was healthy and increased longevity”. It was admitted that the drinks increased cancer risk, but the supposed benefit was increased heart health.
I used to write to “Scientific American” telling them that the articles stating that falsehood was placed right across the page from ads for Absolute Vodka, etc., and their main sponsors just happened to be alcohol companies. There it was, little old me, going against the entire “scientific establishment”.
Well more recently, people have done metastudies disproving the “alcohol is healthy” falsehood.
Turns out, as I suspected all along, there were statistical flukes that led all those “super-smart people” astray. Turned out the sampling of non-drinkers included a lot of ex-alcoholics who had already ravaged their bodies, and so who, as “non-drinkers”, had a shorter lifespan. It was that simple. Who knew it all along? Me, that’s who. If you want the real story, ask people like me.
Well. Though I would have liked more models to choose from, and Tesla have been getting flack for their customer service in Norway, I have never been happier with a car than I have been with my Model 3. The thought of going back to a gasoline based car seems totally alien to me at this point.
Electric cars was a thing waiting to happen but was blocked by car companies and oil companies, who did not have real incentive to change until Tesla and global warming came along.
Say what you want, people really enjoy Teslas here. To say they would prefer a gasoline Ford just doesnt make any sense (well maybe in an alternative facts based world).
It is only to be expected that some larger companies like Toyota and Ford are unable to follow the general pace of innovation these days, and so are doomed to a severe cut in market share.
Though why is Ford important? The cars arent much to boast of and their management has some of the highest salaries around. Maybe its just good riddance?
If Tesla werent US based, things were looking very bleak for US car industry, from where I stand.
Well, that is also good information Tallak. Nothing like actual user experience. I don;t really think it was oil companies influence, or car companies “dragging their feet” that stopped the adoption of electric cars, so much as affordability and the weight of batteries. With the wide adoption of laptops and smartphones, lithium ion batteries became sufficiently developed that electric cars became a more practical choice. But originally, even Henry Ford’s wife drove an electric car, as electric cars were once the norm, way back when cars were just getting started. Lead-acid batteries were just too heavy, with a limited number of charge cycles, compared to buying gasoline at the local drugstore (as it started).
The configuration that we were told would soon dominate the automotive world, way back in the 1970;s, was what they called a “hybrid” concept, which was essentially an electric drivetrain powered by a small gasoline generator that was either on or off at any moment, tuned to burn cleanly at a single RPM, and it was envisioned that the small motor could be a turbine. Well, that never happened. More official narrative that turned out to be wrong. Personally, I spent most of my younger years envisioning an electric car infrastructure powered by solar panels and wind turbines. As someone who builds their own generators, which are actually electric motors, using my own custom-made neodymium magnets, I’m a big fan (no not a windmill) of the electric drivetrain. Nothing like the simplicity of a single moving part! But I don’t rule out the emergence of the original concept of a hybrid vehicle. Already, “plug-in hybrids” are taking an increasing market share. I believe at least one has no physical connection from the gasoline moto9r to the drivetrain, but the motor just powers a generator that charges a relatively small and lightweight battery. Even the California projections for 2035 include plug-in hybrids. So we’ll see where it goes. I am really tired of dealing with pistons and all the complication that car engines entail these days. Almost impossible to work on, even for experienced mechanics. Too many sensors and electronics. But so far, electric cars weigh too much, and are not affordable for the average person to buy. Plus, most less-affluent people, especially living in apartments, don’t have a way to charge an electric car. Anyway, once you’ve been around for many decades, you begin to see how fads come and go, and how established “scientific facts” can turn on a dime, with the “authorities” scarcely even admitting they were wrong, or in other cases not standing up for the fact that they were right all along. I’m glad to hear you are happy with your car. I met a lady in the Walmart parking lot the other day, charging up her new Polestar. It looked really cool. She said she used to have a tesla, and never saw what was so great about it, but now she really liked her Polestar much better. The stock is about $2 today, down from a SPAC merger at $10. Ticker symbol PSNY. Might be a strategic investment, although the price could still drop further for a better buy.
Why not let the car companies figure ut who is here for the long haul in a worldwide drive-off [aka the world]? That is, rather than spending money buying stocks that could be spent on AWE…
It’s good to have a diversified portfolio of assets. Not good to have all your eggs in one basket. Let’s say you get rich with AWE. Next is you are responsible for investing the money wisely. So now you have become an investor whether you like it or not.
Polestar was a racing division of Volvo Cars. Volvo Cars was bought by Geely in China. They are producing Volvos and Polestar and a few other names. Polestar’s sales are doubling every year. They are almost profitable. Building a plant in the U.S. so as to qualify for incentives and bypass tariffs. Polestar electric cars are fast like a Tesla, but weigh a few hundred pounds more. They look cool - good styling. But the main thing to me was how happy the lady I talked to was with hers, after being underwhelmed by her previous Tesla. She said the Polestar drives and feels much smoother, yet with a similar range.
PSNY Stock up 8% today so far.
Speaking of goofy ideas that will never be built, what ever happened to the stacks of concrete blocks lifted and stacked by a crane, as energy storage? Wasn;t it only in the last year or two we saw this “breakthrough” in so many “news” outlets? Do you think it could store much more energy than a single tesla car battery? At what cost? Was that more “really smart people”? So what happened to that idea? Where is one today? Did someone finally do the elementary school math on it?