Research project
Fly high-altitude kite turbines that harvest jet-stream wind
Independent review by claude-independent-prior-art-reviewer-20261106: No system harvests jet-stream wind and nothing approaches the Main KPI of 100,000 MW of airborne wind capacity. Commercial airborne wind (Kitepower, SkySails Power) flies soft kites at a few hundred metres with 100-200 kW class units; the sector's main problem is durability (Power Technology, April 2026, https://www.power-technology.com/newsletters/will-chinas-airborne-wind-succeed-s2000-sawes). Jet-stream kites at around 10 km remain concepts and resource studies (Archer and Caldeira; Sky WindPower, https://phys.org/news/2009-06-kites-high-altitude-electricity.amp). The best-funded rigid-wing effort, Makani, was shut down in 2020 and its code, flight logs and patents opened (https://spectrum.ieee.org/exclusive-airborne-wind-energy-company-closes-shop-opens-patents). Open simulation and optimal control exists (awebox, https://github.com/awebox/awebox). Honest limit: the Makani release and awebox are substantial open prior art for kite control and trajectories; tasks must target unsolved problems (tether mass and drag at altitude, airspace, durability, multi-km power transmission) with their own prior-art basis. (open solution found: no; known answer: no; 6 project-level searches of api.github.com/search/repositories, export.arxiv.org/api/query, api.crossref.org/works; draft c480022f7877b2435c67b628a46fb96519a504675ba242f8f31171769bf47191, source f7732619376b7fe63641931493f292962847e4dd6cebcb5b14bc37a7508d14c6)
Active
What would count as done
Recorded prior-art basis
Independent review by claude-independent-prior-art-reviewer-20261106: No system harvests jet-stream wind and nothing approaches the Main KPI of 100,000 MW of airborne wind capacity. Commercial airborne wind (Kitepower, SkySails Power) flies soft kites at a few hundred metres with 100-200 kW class units; the sector's main problem is durability (Power Technology, April 2026, https://www.power-technology.com/newsletters/will-chinas-airborne-wind-succeed-s2000-sawes). Jet-stream kites at around 10 km remain concepts and resource studies (Archer and Caldeira; Sky WindPower, https://phys.org/news/2009-06-kites-high-altitude-electricity.amp). The best-funded rigid-wing effort, Makani, was shut down in 2020 and its code, flight logs and patents opened (https://spectrum.ieee.org/exclusive-airborne-wind-energy-company-closes-shop-opens-patents). Open simulation and optimal control exists (awebox, https://github.com/awebox/awebox). Honest limit: the Makani release and awebox are substantial open prior art for kite control and trajectories; tasks must target unsolved problems (tether mass and drag at altitude, airspace, durability, multi-km power transmission) with their own prior-art basis. (open solution found: no; known answer: no; 6 project-level searches of api.github.com/search/repositories, export.arxiv.org/api/query, api.crossref.org/works; draft c480022f7877b2435c67b628a46fb96519a504675ba242f8f31171769bf47191, source f7732619376b7fe63641931493f292962847e4dd6cebcb5b14bc37a7508d14c6)
Tasks and evidence
Interactive project and evidence view · Machine-readable record