Essay by Eric Worrall
Humans might face future air travel restrictions, but wind turbines could get a free pass if inventor Mark Lundstrom has his way.
How a Giant Aircraft could Ease Clean Energy Supply Chains
By Charlie King
October 17, 2025Radia’s WindRunner aircraft could redesign how wind turbine blades and oversized cargo reach remote areas, bypassing outdated road infrastructure limits
The infrastructure supporting global ground transport serves daily traffic but struggles with oversized cargo. Supply chains across the world face increasing pressure as the scale of renewable energy components expands. Wind turbines in particular present a challenge due to their sheer size and the limitations of existing logistics networks.
Radia, founded in 2016 by aerospace engineer Mark Lundstrom, sets out to change this with its WindRunner aircraft. Designed to transport the world’s largest wind turbine blades, WindRunner reaches areas that roads and railways cannot access. Traditional infrastructure can move blades around 70 metres long, but the next generation of turbines requires blades exceeding 100 metres. This creates a need to rethink how energy projects move their largest parts.
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“Big Western wind turbine makers need direct financial support to make the investments needed to aid decarbonisation,” says Tim Dawidowsky, Chief Operating Officer of Siemens Gamesa. “The supply chain is facing substantial challenges that could limit production capacity and increase turbine prices.”
Read more: https://sustainabilitymag.com/news/windrunner-how-a-giant-aircraft-ease-clean-energy-supply-chains
…
A promo video of the new aircraft;
As far as I can tell the aircraft hasn’t been built yet, they’re looking for funding.
Building an aircraft that size which can land on rough runways shall be, how can I put it, challenging.
I’m no aircraft engineer but I’ve flown light aircraft before. Hitting even a small bump at speed can flex the entire airframe. Large aircraft can have big fluffy wheels and long shock absorber assemblies which can help reduce the peak force inflicted by impacts on bumps, but large and long airframe structures are also more vulnerable to stress. If the front wheels of a 70m+ aircraft hit a bump which isn’t fully absorbed by the wheels and shock absorber assembly, 70m is a lot of leverage. Any slight flaw in the design and even a small bump could result in thousands of tons of force being exerted on components which aren’t designed to take such punishment.
It is just barely possible to build aircraft this large. Ukraine owned the world’s only Antonov An-225 Mriya until it was destroyed during the Russian invasion. The Antonov could carry a 70m cargo. But Ukraine’s ex-soviet airplane required a paved runway over two miles long to get airborne.
The ex-Soviet Antonov An-225 Mriya aircraft cost around $300 million to build. I find it difficult to imagine anyone landing a commercial aircraft which costs a third of a billion dollars on a dirt track.
Who still believes wind is the cheapest form of energy? Now all the easy wind locations have been taken, wind now apparently needs financial support to expand, for developing $300 million airplanes intended to be landed on dirt tracks in the middle of nowhere. The cost of wind power just got even more absurd than before.
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But the LCOE model has wind as cheapest. In the alternate reality where models are authentic reflections of the world.
I’m 100% sure that those gigantic planes will be 100% powered by green energy.
Renewables are just like Joe Biden.
As long as someone else does all his work and pays for everything and everyones his dysfunctionality everything is fine.
But without massive assistance from outside they’d collapse.
As long as they use the turbine blades for the props like the auto-pen was used, what could go wrong?
Perhaps they could redesign the blades to be telescoping
“How a Giant Aircraft could Ease Clean Energy Supply Chains”
It’s hard to imagine a more self-contradictory headline.
A new metric FLCOE (Full Levelized Cost Of Energy) includes gap filling, imposed costs, and lifecycle including the capital cost for three (3) wind and/or solar installs to equal one CCGT or an assembly line cookie cutter SMR good for 70+ years. W&S are more than twice as expensive.
Waddya mean cheapest? It’s totally free! Just ask Nick. Nick…?
Wind and Solar are very expensive, c/kWh,, because they:
1) require batteries, and
2) artificial inertia systems,
3) a greatly expanded and reinforced grid, if fossil fuel systems are not allowed for regulating, filling in and balancing, to ensure the electricity fed into the grid balances what is needed by users, on a less than minute-by-minute basis, 24/7/365; the grid itself does not store any electricity.
BATTERY SYSTEM CAPITAL COSTS, OPERATING COSTS, ENERGY LOSSES, AND AGING
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/battery-system-capital-costs-losses-and-aging
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Utility-scale, battery system pricing usually not made public, but for this system it was.
Neoen, in western Australia, turned on its 219 MW/ 877 MWh Tesla Megapack battery, the largest in western Australia.
Ultimately, a 560 MW/2,240 MWh battery system, $1,100,000,000/2,240,000 kWh = $491/kWh, delivered as AC, late 2024 pricing. Smaller capacity systems cost much more than $500/kWh
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Annual Cost of Megapack Battery Systems; 2023 pricing
Assume 45.3 MW/181.9 MWh; turnkey cost $104.5 million; 104,500,000/181,900 = $574/kWh, per Example 2
Amortize bank loan, 50% of $104.5 million, at 6.5%/y for 15 years, $5.484 million/y
Pay Owner return, 50% of $104.5 million, at 10%/y for 15 years, $6.765 million/y (10% due to high inflation)
Lifetime (Bank + Owner) payments 15 x (5.484 + 6.765) = $183.7 million
Assume battery daily usage, 15 years at 10%; loss factor = 1 / (0.9 *0.9)
Battery lifetime output = 15 y x 365 d/y x 181.9 MWh x 0.1, usage x 1000 kWh/MWh = 99,590,250 kWh to HV grid; 122,950,926 kWh from HV grid; 233,606,676 kWh loss
(Bank + Owner) payments, $183.7 million / 99,590,250 kWh = 184.5 c/kWh
Less 50% subsidies (tax credits, 5-y depreciation, loan interest deduction, etc.) is 92.3c/kWh
Subsidies shift costs from project Owners to ratepayers, taxpayers, government debt.
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Excluded costs/kWh: 1) O&M; 2) system aging, 1.5%/y, 3) loss factor 1 / (0.9*0.9), HV grid-to-HV grid, 4) grid extension/reinforcement to connect battery systems, 5) downtime of parts of the system, 6) decommissioning in year 15, i.e., disassembly, reprocessing, storing at hazardous waste sites. Excluded costs would add at least 15 c/kWh
COMMENTS ON CALCULATION
Almost all existing battery systems operate at less than 10%, see top URL, i.e., new systems would operate at about 92.4 + 15 = 107.4 c/kWh. They are used to stabilize the grid, i.e., frequency control and counteracting up/down W/S outputs. If 40% throughput, 23.1 + 15 = 38.1 c/kWh.
That is on top of the cost/kWh of the electricity taken from the HV grid to charge the batteries
Up to 40% could occur by absorbing midday solar peaks and discharging during late-afternoon/early-evening, in sunny California and other such states. The more solar systems, the greater the midday peaks.
See top URL for Megapacks required for a one-day wind lull in New England
40% throughput is close to Tesla’s recommendation of 60% maximum throughput, i.e., not charge above 80% and not discharge below 20%, to perform 24/7/365 service for 15 y, with normal aging.
Owners of battery systems with fires, likely charged above 80% and discharged below 20% to maximize profits.
Tesla’s recommendation was not heeded by the Owners of the Hornsdale Power Reserve in Australia. They excessively charged/discharged the system. After a few years, they added Megapacks to offset rapid aging of the original system, and added more Megapacks to increase the rating of the expanded system.
http://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-hornsdale-power-reserve-largest-battery-system-in-australia
Regarding any project, Banks and Owners have to be paid, no matter what. I amortized the Bank loan and Owner’s investment
Divide total payments over 15 years by the throughput during 15 years, to get c/kWh, as shown.
Loss factor = 1 / (0.9 *0.9), from HV grid to 1) step-down transformer, 2) front-end power electronics, 3) into battery, 4) out of battery, 5) back-end power electronics, 6) step-up transformer, to HV grid, i.e., draw about 50 units from HV grid to deliver about 40 units to HV grid. That gets worse with aging.
A lot of people do not like these c/kWh numbers, because they have been misled by self-serving folks, that “battery Nirvana is just around the corner”.
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NOTE: EV battery packs cost about $135/kWh, before it is installed in the car. Such packs are good for 6 to 8 years, used about 2 h/d, at an average speed of 30 mph. Utility battery systems are used 24/7/365 for 15 years
HIGH COST/kWh OF W/S SYSTEMS FOISTED ONTO A BRAINWASHED PUBLIC
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/high-cost-kwh-of-w-s-systems-foisted-onto-a-brainwashed-public-1
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People are brainwashed to love wind and solar. They do not know by how much they screw themselves by voting for the woke folks who push them onto everyone. Their ignorance is exploited by the woke folks
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If owned/controlled by European governments and companies, would be a serious disadvantage for the US regarding environmental impact, national security, economic competitiveness, and sovereignty
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Western countries cajoling Third World countries into Wind/Solar, and loaning them high-interest money to do so, will forever re-establish a colonial-style bondage on those recently free countries.
What is generally not known, the more weather-dependent W/S systems, the less efficient the traditional generators, as they inefficiently (more CO2/kWh) counteract the increasingly larger ups and downs of W/S output. See URL
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/fuel-and-co2-reductions-due-to-wind-energy-less-than-claimed
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W/S systems add great cost to the overall delivery of electricity to users; the more W/S systems, the higher the cost/kWh, as proven by the UK and Germany, with the highest electricity rates in Europe, and near-zero, real-growth GDP.
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At about 30% W/S, the entire system hits an increasingly thicker concrete wall, operationally and cost wise.
The UK and Germany are hitting the wall, more and more hours each day.
The cost of electricity delivered to users increased with each additional W/S/B system
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Nuclear, gas, coal and reservoir hydro plants are the only rational way forward.
Ignore CO2, because greater CO2 ppm in atmosphere is essential for: 1) increased green flora to increase fauna all over the world, and 2) increased crop yields to better feed 8 billion people.
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Net-zero by 2050 to-reduce CO2 is a super-expensive suicide pact, to increase command/control by governments, and enable the moneyed elites to get richer, at the expense of all others, by using the foghorn of the government-subsidized/controlled Corporate Media to spread scare-mongering slogans and brainwash people.
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Subsidies shift costs from project Owners to ratepayers, taxpayers, government debt:
1) Federal and state tax credits, up to 50% (Community tax credit 10%; Federal tax credit of 30%; State tax credit; other incentives up to 10%);
2) 5-y Accelerated Depreciation to write off of the entire project;
3) Loan interest deduction
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Utilities forced to pay:
At least 15 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from fixedoffshore wind systems
At least 18 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from floating offshore wind
At least 12 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from largersolar systems
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Excluded costs, at a future 30% W/S annual penetration on the grid, based on UK and German experience:
– Onshore grid expansion/reinforcement to connect far-flung W/S systems, about 2 c/kWh
– A fleet of traditional power plants to quickly counteract W/S variable output, on a less than minute-by-minute basis, 24/7/365, which means more Btu/kWh, more CO2/kWh, more cost of about 2 c/kWh
– A fleet of traditional power plants to provide electricity during 1) low-wind periods, 2) high-wind periods, when rotors are locked in place, and 3) low solar periods during mornings, evenings, at night, snow/ice on panels, which means more Btu/kWh, more CO2/kWh, more cost of about 2 c/kWh
– Pay W/S system Owners for electricity they could have produced, if not curtailed, about 1 c/kWh
– Importing electricity at high prices, when W/S output is low, 1 c/kWh
– Exporting electricity at low prices, when W/S output is high, 1 c/kWh
– Disassembly on land and at sea, reprocessing and storing at hazardous waste sites, about 2 c/kWh
Total ADDER 2 + 2 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 2 = 11 c/kWh
Some of these values exponentially increase as more W/S systems are added to the grid
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Offshore wind full cost of electricity FCOE = 30 c/kWh + 11 c/kWh = 41 c/kWh, no subsidies
Offshore wind full cost of electricity FCOE = 15 c/kWh + 11 c/kWh = 26 c/kWh, 50% subsidies
The 11 c/kWh is for various measures required by wind and solar; power plant-to-landfill cost basis.
This compares with 7 c/kWh + 2 c/kWh = 9 c/kWh from existing gas, coal, nuclear, large reservoir hydro plants.
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The economic/financial insanity and environmental damage is off the charts.
No wonder Europe’s near-zero, real-growth GDP is in de-growth mode.
That economy has been tied into knots by inane people.
P.T. Barnum was right.
In what way?
As in:
There’s a sucker born every minute – Wikipedia
The phrase is often attributed to P. T. Barnum, but its authenticity is uncertain. It was popular among gamblers, con men and salesmen in the 19th and 20th centuries, and appeared in literature and media.
I thought that might be what he was referring to, but there’s no evidence that Barnum ever said it.
What a spectacularly bold piece of grifting. It’s almost as ludicrous as this drivel.
“China’s Flying Power Plant Generates Megawatts”: Engineers Reveal Airborne Turbine That Makes Ground Wind Farms Obsolete
The Green pond-scum always seem to want to make wind turbines fly without understanding anything about aviation engineering.
They are also skilled in the development of flying pigs.
Return of the Spruce Goose.
The IEEE Spectrum thought this thing was The Right Stuff:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/wind-turbine-blade-transport-plane
To be fair, the Spruce Goose actually did “accidently” fly for a few hundred yards during a test taxi.
(For those who don’t know, it was a seaplane designed by Howard Hughes during WW2. He was at the controls.)
And in the movie “The Rocketeer”, our hero flies on a mockup of the Goose. And the Hughes character looks up and says something like “The damn thing DOES fly!”
I just love it! The more they try to DECARBONIZE the more FF they have to use, hilarious. And they just can’t see it, the flaming hypocrisy.
They are also breeding up herds of unicorns, and collecting those precious farts. !
Yep. Note the fart offtake on the off quarter of the beast.
Also see the pot of gold at the bottom of the rainbow in the boot of my car.
S/
Maybe that’s the cause of global warming?
I have watched these components being unloaded from a ship and blades transported through small cities with cops necessarily helping the too long trailers. Train hit one in Luling, Texas, fortunately blade did not hit nearby filing station. What they need is a seaplane as they can always taxi and when they break into two sink like all the artificial reefs being sunk deliberately. Solves the very flammable fiberglass problem. The Spruce Goose looks big enough but windmill blades used to be made out of real outlasting materials that you could haul with a pickup truck. Affirmative Action de-education must have worked.
Great. Now we have the blades delivered to remote locations that lack adequate roads. What about the steel bases, the nacelles, all the concrete? Add to that the specialized cranes required to put it all together. After of course first figuring out where to land a giant cargo plane in places that don’t even have good roads.
Air transport makes sense for cargo that has high value relative to its weight or where delivery schedules are urgent. Boeing built a custom 747 (the DreamLifter) to transport 787 components from subcontractors in Italy in Japan for final assembly in the US. As one Boeing spokesperson put it “we’re building 100 million dollar aircraft for demanding customers. We’re not going to wait two months for a ship to deliver critical components.”
We just drove from Portland to Atlanta last week and saw a disgusting number of wind turbines in Iowa and quite a few oversize trucks carrying turbine blades. There’s no value delivering turbine blades any faster than you can get the base poured the tower erected and a crane in place to lift the nacelle and blades into position.
Maybe I’m missing something, but I just don’t see how the transport time for turbine blades is a limiting factor on the overall schedule.
Can’t stand it – you’re demonstrating rational common sense.
I wonder about the local airfield too, just from the point of supposedly building wind turbines in windy areas.
Further, any land used for the runway is ineligible for the wind turbines. The proposed aircraft is either a moonshot or a grift.
The next “brilliant” idea will be to parachute the blades.
C.All of the above.
This kind of ignorance takes my breath away. CO2 can’t cause CAGW, there is no reason to decarbonize. Wind and solar don’t work, they can’t sustain the grid or a modern society. Stop pissing our time, money and resources away on them. Fossil fuel and nuclear do work, they can sustain the grid and a modern society. Build them. It is as simple as that.
But, but, but, (with the applicable hand wave) “It’s got electrolytes!”
And burning hydrocarbon fuels produces what plants crave.
“The cost of wind power just got even more absurd than before.”
It didn’t, of course. This is another Eric puff piece. A single engineer tries to promote an idea he has, which exists only on paper, if that. There is nothing there.
If there is nothing there, would you rather that were pointed out after spending the money, or beforehand?
Or I could ask, are you jealous that some other grifter is trying to horn in on the green grift?
Nobody is going to spend the money. It’s a bit of self promotion.
“Nobody is going to spend
thetheir own money.”Awaiting huge taxpayer-funded subsidies.
Except with socila media and mainstream media get it and generate excitement that this is it, it really workds and look how shiny!
So when will the bills in Australia come down to a consistent 10-13c / kilowatt hour like coal can deliver Nick?
See Utah in the following:
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_5_6_a
Did you not notice the WEF logo/advertising at the end?
Not just ‘a single engineer’ but an engineer with the backing of those who wish to be our unelected overlords
WEF logo upper right, all the way through. Let the Davos crowd pay for it WITHOUT ANY GOVERNMENT FUNDS, directly or indirectly. 2027 flight? Yeah, maybe a scale model.
The WEF is a forum. It does not build planes. It does not fund planes. It is a forum..
“It is a forum..”
Run by billionaires that run the whole grift of the climate scam.
It is a forum for people in line to make billions on the Climate Change hoax!
WEF isn’t a “Forum”, Nick.
It’s a conspiracy cell.
Ok. WEF is a forum. But it is a propaganda forum.
“You will have nothing and you will be happy.”
Of course. Wind power is free, isn’t it, Nick?
The wind is free
But harvesting it is damned expensive, mineral mining intensive and acreage extensive And the fuel source can’t be stored until its needed. Either Nature provides it when you need it OR provides it when you don’t need it OR doesn’t provide it at all when its needed most.
As a fuel Coal might cost more than Wind but Coal can be stored until its needed, added to if more is needed to meet Peak Demand and not sued if demand is low.
…
Coal Power available 24/7/365 on demand
Wind power…about 40% of the time IF nature choses to deliver it to you
So is the coal and the gas…
You just have to dig it up or put down a well.
Wind and solar, over their short, erratic undependable life time, are FAR more environmentally destructive and polluting than coal or gas..
All fuels are free. The costs are what it takes to use the fuel for something beneficial to be done.
Unfortunately Coal and Gas aren’t Free. They are traded as a commodity on the market giving them value and a price per BTU measured in Tonnage or Barrels respectively. If Wind or Solar could be weighed or barrelized for transport I’m certain they wouldn’t be “Free” either.
But using the Latter as a fuel source means you will run out just when its needed most because neither can be stored until needed.
They are free. The first cost is extracting them from the ground. Prior to that, they are free. Once they are extracted they can be traded, bought, sold, etc.
While in the ground, they are free.
A nit, but a valid perspective.
The cost of collecting energy from it is GIGANTIC.
So are useless opinions.
No one is going to fund a losing proposition. Energy generation only 15% of the time at unknown intervals?
Anyone in the USA ever watch that weekend morning TV show called “Getting Green”? It is laughable, and the schemes they show always require lots of FF to do.
High altitude with electricity to ground via the tether?
This is definitely not ready for prime time.
Wow. A bunch of ai generated crap. So impressed. Not!
The Wings of that Transport Plane were ridiculously short for the task of Lifting 3-70 ton blades. 210 tons of blades (considering an Airbus A320 loaded weighs 75 tons) the wings depicted are ridiculously short.
The Antonov An-225 is designed to lift that much weight as cargo but the interior cargo space is still limited to 50 meters or so and so even the Antanov would need to be doubled in size and capacity. But then you’re talking about a plane that weighs over 2800 tons trying to take off and land on dirt runways.
A certain recipe for disaster that even Irwin Allan would be proud of. Perhaps SyFy could make the movie, they certainly did Sharknado proud.
As someone who has been aboard aircraft landing and taking off on dirt/improvised runways I know for a fact these guys are smoking crack. 😉
They’re certainly smoking something out of someone’s crack
Even for this dead-end application a fixed-wing aircraft is a bad fit. A lighter-then-air vehicle like the proposed Airlander 50 would be better.
Except that lighter-than-air craft generally do not tolerate winds greater than about 15 kts. That’s basic wind turbine speed. FWIW.
Depending on the weather.
(Personally, I’d love to see a “Hindenburg” sized zeppelin in the air (I have seen the Goodyear blimp a few times) but, to be honest they’ve gone the way of the auto-gyro.)
That’s it…. You have cracked the problem! Build the three bladed turbine hub as the autogiro lift wing and fly the two hundred metre diameter autogiro there by itself. Hey with modern AI you could do it autonomously too.
I’m off to the patent office to log my latest idea, wind turbine self flying autogiro.
Self constructing wind parks in very remote areas of the world where no one needs the power installed. It has winner written all over it.
Humor – a difficult concept.
— Lt. Saavik
Unless wind and solar become far more efficient and productive than they are now, a plane like this will never reach a production phase because demand for that size of turbine blade will continue to be very limited, if not non-existent. It reminds me of the pipe dreams people have of electric aircraft. Tiny versions might be able to cross a schoolyard, but ones that could make a trans-oceanic flight carrying 250-plus passengers still remain in the environmentalists’ fantasy worlds.
I spent 42 years in the aerospace business. By the time this idea has been designed, developed, tested and certificated, their won’t be a need for it, as wind energy is being shown to be a waste of money.
When we were doing l South America we used the Antonov to transport GE Frame 5 compressor packages. It was an early casualty of the Ukrainian war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_An-225_Mriya
Uhhhhh . . . just wondering how those four large jet engines —probably the General Electric GEnx-2B engines used on some of today’s Boeing 747’s or the General Electric CF6-80C2 engines that power today’s 767 commercial aircraft, some 747s and the current super large C-5M military transport—are going to tolerate ingesting rocks, dirt and dust (and possible tumbleweeds and small ground animals) kicked when that new jet design from “inventor” Mark Lundstrom lands and taxies on graded flat-but-unpaved dirt runways out in the middle of nowhere.
Oh, I should mention:
— list price for a single new GEnx engine is about $22 million USD
— list price for a singe new CF6-80C2 engine is about $20 million USD;
multiply by four and YMMV if you want an order of spare parts to go with that.
Also, it never rains anytime near where wind farms are located, so no need to worry about such a super large jumbo jet getting stuck up to its landing gear axles on a muddy runway, right? /sarc
Buy 4 get one “free”!
Modern composite sailplanes have joins in the wing panels so they may be disassembled and easily transported in a trailer behind a car. Sure it is a little extra weight but I see no reason that this cannot be done for wind turbine blades which makes this whole large aircraft concept unnecessary.
The blades can each be in two or three parts and transported by truck, should anyone be silly enough to want to build wind turbines.
Please don’t ask me to design the joint(s) in a 100′ long fiberglass blade spinning in a 40 mph gust! Fiberglass!!
Yes! To achieve reasonable physical size, mechanical joints between fiberglass or even carbon-fiber-composite parts subject to large bending and twisting forces (such as occur on operational airfoils) need to use metal flanges and bolts to achieve necessary strength and strain mechanical margins. It is very difficult to obtain good, reliable, time-insensitive, adhesive joining of almost any metal to almost any type of fiberglass or CFC part.
Centrifugal force is a bitch.
. . . and high cyclic loading/unloading is even worse.
I’ll take “Expensive, obsurd boondoggles that will never see the light of day” for $500, Alex.
The Air Force’s C-5 Galaxy program cost billions of dollars, and that was almost 60 years ago.
Paul Allen spent the better part of a billion dollars on his StratoLaunch project, and that’s largely a frankenplane made up of scavenged parts.
This project proposes to be a clean sheet design, which usually means the better part of a decade and many billions of dollars on R&D on such an ambitious scale.
And then there’s no mention of the size or costs of the massive strips this will require. Looks real easy to do in the middle of a flat desert. Not so much anywhere else.
Considering all these costs that will have to be amitorized, I think it would be cheaper to build massive blades on-site that to do this. This looks more like a scam to cash in on the trillions of dollars they speak of other people spending on the carbon boogieman.
“Radia’s WindRunner aircraft could redesign how wind turbine blades and oversized cargo reach remote areas, bypassing outdated road infrastructure limits”
Except you have to build a runway the monstrosity can land on….
… then use the road infrastructure.
Best not to built the useless things in the first place.
They can fly 787 fuselages around the country. I suspect they can do this too.
Yet, it does get to the point someone in here made about running out of windy places. If you have to go where roads don’t go to install this your distance from the user increases, leading to more capacity and bigger transmission lines, and eventually higher utility bills.
Yet this Lundstrom guy will “make bank”; his take is guaranteed.
Antonov tried the same thing. There’s only 1 Antonov An-225 capable of flight and, while its cargo weight capacity is sufficient to transport 210 tons of turbine blades the cargo space (fuselage length) is still only half the needed length
I’m working on a new design for a wind turbine*.
My prototype demonstrates building the turbine with the blades in the horizontal position allows for a small cabin to be constructed allowing a specially trained pilot to fly the turbine directly into place in the wind farm.
I just need another $1,000,000,000,000 of funding to make
my life easierthis into reality.My GoFundMe page is called #SendMeOnAnAllExpensesPaidRoundTheWorldCruise
Thank you for investing in this exciting
fantasyproject.*patent pending
Sorry Redge, I only support nuclear fusion startups whose directors claim to have discovered new laws of physics.
. . . and I only support sci-fi by buying movie tickets, streaming services or books.
Ouch! Both you guys made me splurt my coffee out my nose…
Personally I am all in on matter – antimatter reactors. Fusion is so passe.
Just checked the date and no it is not April 1st though this would be a great option if it were.
I noted the WEF are the sponsor of the video and maybe the idea, so clearly credibility is not something the designer or thinker of this bizarre idea is concerned about.
Just a thought. If a wind park was going to be constructed that is so huge it warranted its own airfield, and is so remote only flying the elements of the park is viable, would it not be less cost to just construct the blades on site?
Here is, another idea. build a nuclear power station close to the end users. That way you save the cost of high energy power transmission lines and infrastructure, airfields and unique transport planes to deliver the pointless paraphernalia, oh and the land can then be used by forestry and farming instead of industrial installations mimicking the Eifel Tower hundreds of times over.
What’s not to like of the good old zeppelin? Hydrogen technology avant la lettre. Can carry bulk to any place on the planet for a fraction of the price of a plane. It’s the way to go …
Lust make them out of Lead to avoid the static charges. Then you could truly use your Led Zeppelin to build your Stairway to Heaven