-----Original Message----- From: OrionWorks [ I keep hoping there is still serious R&D working on the technology to harvest wind energy from 10,000 - 15,000 feet, where the jet stream blows faithfully 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and at several times the ground speed. Yeah, yeah, I know... I know... it's a crazy idea! Too impractical! Too dangerous! Where would the jets fly!
Crazy enough to work. [JB:] The jet stream is much higher - more like 30,000-40,000 ft. A tether to ground is totally impractical with present technology - graphite fiber. However, this does not necessarily doom the idea, since we are only interested in the relative (harvestable) wind speed- and not the absolute speed, relative to ground. At some point in human history, there will be enough cooperation between nations so that a procession of gigantic kites could be employed for this, beaming the electricity down via microwaves to a succession of ground based receivers. If the average absolute speed, relative to ground were say 150 mph; and if we could design use a large "drift kite" moving at half that speed, but fully controllable (steerable) via computers to follow the ideal path of the jet stream -- then we could theoretically harvest the "other half" of the air speed (relative to ground) - and a constant 75 mph (relative to the kite) ain't half bad... awkshully it's half good ;-) ... plus if we can also use the a long antenna-tether as the "ballast" i.e. as the required drag mechanism against the absolute wind speed (in addition to the drag of the collection airfoils or propellers), then that long tether (half mile long??) which is a conductive wire, can serve a double purpose - make that: attempt to harvest the slight charge differential and slight ionization caused by tribology friction at that altitude. I have a hunch that this "free-charge harvesting" could possibly be more fruitful than the differential wind speed, or that there would be synergy there ... ...but sadly this kind of concept would take bazillion$$ to develop. Jones
