Post #1235004

2026-02-25 00:28 UTC

The wind at 32,000 ft is 200 times stronger than the wind at the surface? Ummm… 10 knots * 200 = 2000 knots. I don’t think so lol. A lot of strange numbers in this article that bring its accuracy into question. No mention of the weight of a 1 and 1/2 km wire that is also suitable to anchor this thing in place. Or are they going to float batteries and bring them down to discharge?

Replies (4)

@drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2026-02-25 03:45

> Ummm… 10 knots * 200 = 2000 knots. I don’t think so lol. First of all, kinetic energy scales with the square of an objects velocity. Second, since we're talking about a continuous stream of fluid instead of a single object, increasing the air speed not only increases the enegy per unit mass of air, but also the number of units of air per second that pass through the turbine. Which means that the amount of energy extracted scales by the cube of the wind speed. https://kpenergy.in/blog/calculating-power-output-of-wind-turbines So, more like going from 10 knots to 60.

Open ##1237975
@turdburglar@piefed.social 2026-02-25 01:21

they gonna use magsafe connectors for wireless transmission, duh.

Open ##1237976
@My_IFAKs___gone@lemmy.world 2026-02-25 03:24

Maybe it means the kinetic energy of the wind, which I believe scales against its velocity-squared?

Open ##1237977
@XeroxCool@lemmy.world 2026-02-25 03:08

I'm thinking it's about consistency. 10kts 10% of the time vs average 150kts 100% of the time (the math is a little off but we're in hypothetical estimates already)

Open ##1237978