"High-altitude winds between 1,640 and 3,281 feet (500 and 10,000 meters) above the ground are stronger and steadier than surface winds. These winds are abundant, widely available, and carbon-free.
"The physics of wind power makes this resource extremely valuable. “When wind speed doubles, the energy it carries increases eightfold, triple the speed, and you have 27 times the energy,” explained Gong Zeqi "
High-altitude winds between 1,640 and 3,281 feet (500 and 10,000 meters) above the ground
So y’all will have in depth conversations about the meaning of the colors of a fucking Labubu with ChatGPT, but can’t be bothered to ask it to do the math on this?
Cause 10,000 meters isn’t 3,281 feet.
They accidentally added a zero, it’s supposed to be 1000m (doubke 500m).
Can’t Americans make a flying coal-burner to fight this green abomination?!
they should transport coal to space and drop it to just burn on reentry
If anything that would be the china thing to do. This whole article is probably paid for as distraction while they add another 20 coal power stations and continue destroying the world with co2 emissions.
Super cool!
…But helium, so not super scalable, right?
They could make it hydrogen, for extra fun when one fails around all that electricity…
The fact that helium is such a rare, irreplaceable, and scientifically useful material makes it wild to me that we use it to fill kids’ party balloons.
It’s not even being collected at the source (natural gas deposits) because it’s too cheap to be worth the extraction. This is because of the US liquidating its strategic reserve that it had been holding since the age of Zeppelins.
Also for unmanned aircraft, using helium instead of hydrogen is just crazy
Good news, it’s not that rare that that would make a difference. There’s plenty of it, just need different extraction techniques to further up the supply (unfortunately, that’s fracking lately iirc)
Could you use hot air? It might require some of the energy being generated be consumed, but its much more sustainable.
So it’s a 100kW generator and you would need around 60kW to float the weight of a hot air balloon basket with a couple of people. My math is probably way off though.
As cool as this is, I"m also super interested in what happens
ifwhen the cable breaks.Same as if you let go of a kite. It’ll just tumble back down to Earth over some distance.
Pretty sure they have more than one cable on this thing.
Ok.
As cool as this is, I"m also super interested in what happens if when the cables breaks.
Like, how far will it go? A hundred kilometers? a thousand? Ten thousand? I just imagine one of things getting lose and it circling half the globe.
