3 ms·

When you're going at exactly wind speed, there basically is no wind at all. If you had frictionless wheels, you could turn off your propellors and you'd just be

When you're going at exactly wind speed, there basically is no wind at all. If you had frictionless wheels, you could turn off your propellors and you'd just be coasting along, feeling no force whatsoever from the wind, as if there was no wind at all and you were not moving. The difference here -- you ARE moving, relative to the ground. You can, instead of coasting, reach down and grab some power from the huge mass rolling by below you. That'll try to slow you down -- it'll apply a force in the direction of the ground speed -- but if you harness some power and use it to drive a high efficiency propellor, you might be able to get a little extra speed, but as you speed up, you have more resistance both from the wind and the ground, so you can't do it forever.

rusk 5y ago
What you suggest sounds analogous to a flywheel. You’re using the mass of the vehicle to stabilise your speed and drive the propellor when the energy stored in your momentum > the energy you get from the wind. However, this does not account for the full experience they are describing where you can attain speeds far greater than wind speed. If that’s the case there must be a different “angle” to it, pun intended. He’s not just harnessing the purely linear “push” from the wind. There must be other vectors superimposing. Could well be the lift provided by the Bernoulli effect on the propellor blades. As I mentioned elsewhere once you get to that level it’s all very domain specific.