Time for some extravagant claims for people to challenge. :-)

The numbers infer that such wind turbines should produce electricity for
around 0.1-0.25 cents per unit.

Such aircraft, in addition to having VTOL and being half the price,
would have around twice the range, (or payload), and twice the
efficiency, being half the weight including payload. This makes a great
many things possible, one could directly fly people, cars, small ships,
and all sorts.

Heavy lift into the thousands of tons should be quite possible, not that
this is really desired for air launch for which this approach seems
almost ideally suited.

As a recovery system for launch vehicles, weights can be far lighter
than an equivalent parachute, less than one percent by weight, with high
cross range, gentle vertical landings, and full control. Power could
also be added far more cheaply than alternatives.

Development cost and time should not be great, perhaps a year or two for
most applications, effectively they are just UAV's.


Pete.