4 ms·
Making flying things lightweight is a means to an end, not the goal or a hard requirement. Makani experimented with a wide variety of solutions before settling
by uranium 5y ago
Making flying things lightweight is a means to an end, not the goal or a hard requirement. Makani experimented with a wide variety of solutions before settling on their final model. The initial work on soft kites had serious durability issues, IIRC. What they ended up with looks a lot like a very lightweight airplane, for good reason.
[Former Makani software engineer, here. I wasn't involved in the early stuff, or the design trades, but I heard a lot about it.]
- spowerei 5y agoI'm realizing my phrasing was too critical. I think it's a very good thing that Makani explored that "design path" and shared the knowledge acquired with that level of details. I would also say that rigid wing has more potential for AWE, but I am pessimist toward 'fly-gen'/'energy-kite' solutions, because when dealing with a gas as bearing medium reducing weight seems a reasonable and trending rule of thumb. It's difficult/too-vague to compare designs with substantially different ramifications, some of which are still hypothetical, but it's maybe worth if it leads to a better understanding or general awareness. I am curious, do you know why Makani went 100% 'fly-gen'? From by biased point of view I would say that it was easier to bootstrap (more control agency, easier take off and landing) but harder to scale. I tried to skim through the 1k+ pages 3 part report available from Makani (https://x.company/projects/makani/ https://x.company/projects/makani/), but it doesn't seem to speak much about the considerations which when into that early design choice. Do you know more? Is it possible to summarize them or it's an organic set of reasons which cannot be untangled nor simplified like often happen when dealing with complex systems? [Mechanical Engineer here]