Pulling Power from the Sky: The Story of Makani [Feature Film] 

You know they pretty much ripped everyone off, for nothing right?

I'm a 70 year old that has the background in electronics and aerodynamics to understand what they did and why, and I feel confident that _very few_ people understand what they did or why it was important. Which means the world is NOT in _good hands._

I am right behind you in age and the more I see on RU-vid especially in the comments make me feel confident the the world will be on the hands of a bunch of knuckleheads. But when we die I have no idea where they will live.

Disagree; if you try and fail and you waste other peoples money then Houston, our superannuation accounts have a problem. Especially when an investment manager chooses the risk for you.

@@Ralph_Baric_PhD_C2019 GOOGLE I have to agree with jack. I knew the final result when I was 5years old My kite crashed when the wind died when the wind changed it flew into the trees or power line if I flew it to high the tether broke or the power of the wind broke it. conclusion kites are for fun not work. and mom did not buy me another one if I broke mine.

Wrong, in this regard the main failure in life is being duped into believing that humankind is responsible for any changes in climate, when historically it’s been, and will continue to be, in a state of constant flux. These idiots fooling around with kites isn’t going to do a jot of good. I despair at the level of lunacy going on in the world today, it simply beggars belief. We have tons of cheap energy, trashing it for very expensive alternatives will be mankind’s demise.

@@clivehorridge coal guzzlers instead of petrol guzzlers. That is what we are to believe. Just imagine the shifting of all transport energy to solar/wind. Its not going to happen. So then you have to ask for what other reasons. When you look up world meters, known economical viable reserves of crude run out by 2068. Now ask yourself the COP 26 goal of 2050. That leaves 18 years lee way. But the world is not leaving coal, yes it may have reached its peak of new development but with more than 100 years of current use still in the ground and no viable alternative (because the colored haired kids and germany refuse to keep nuclear as an option) means that all that energy used for transport must be shifted to electricity. So we want to increase electricity demand by a third to one half whilst at the moment 70-80% is still generated from coal. There's gold in them there hills. And only the Jews got rich selling you shovels. Now think of the hardest thing to ween off crude. Airplane travel. That avgas is pretty hard to match. And there are a class of people that want to keep flying. And they are going to want you to keep subsidizing its costs as it gets more expensive due to the availability of crude. So ground transport run on coal is the beginnings of the rationing of that valuable crude. And yes, the more you look into climate variance of the last 2-300 K years, taking nto account the LGM, the younger dryass, melt water pulses etc, increased CO2, decreased ocean ability to neutralize via fresh water river damming. You start to see a picture. Volcanology, planet wobble, and impactors (meteors asteroids) seem to be the triple threats that bring about accelerated climate variance. We serve these whims. Adapt or die.

I really enjoyed the footage & work your teammates put together, it seemed as if it was an exciting time spent building and launching a kite that seemed operational.(Bravo)

What kind of knowledge are they sharing and to what end? Do you really feel that this kind of BS projects can succeed?

@@chinmoy1955 it's really just showing that this is a possibility for the future

@@chinmoy1955 what's BS standing for?

@@heavyweather Bull Shit

@@chinmoy1955 you've not followed the development. The better high altitude technologies are winning now. Like Skysails Power where the generator stays on the ground and the system archives 6000 full load hours/a. That's without a heavy concrete foundation, blades, tower and accompanied transport troubles. Comes in a container and is set up in a day.

Yay... everyone gets a trophy. Yes, documented like the Hindenburg and other dumb ideas.

Beautifully documented epic failure. May future generations learn something ( I doubt it though ). If they has spent a fraction of that time reading about the *climate scam* fake alarmism, they could have saved themselves 13y of wasted effort and done something more meaningful with their considerable skills and money. This insanity is wasting a generation and killing all our futures.

Ha ha. what these people learned individually, will impact all our futures

No... I don't agree with you.

@@Reth_Hard wot cha talkin'bout ,willis?

@@OscarRuiz-gj3mp You are wrong, admit it!

@@Reth_Hard wrong about having fun? Wrong about kiting a 5 meter foil being a workout? Do you even english?

@@Argosh wtf is he talking about?

N,

It entertained them for a time.. but a project that was a waste of money from the start.

@D go build them then

@@spencerdw1 yes. Delusional students spending other people's money for their own enjoyment.

There are others. twitter.com/awesystems

I like your positive vibes you create with our almost poetic words that were uplifting and positive.

Yes. If we stop questioning and testing the obvious (our even if it's a "what if") our "goals for man kind" will never happen.

Great stuff! Only the music makes it annoying!

This brings to mind the quote from Thomas Edison: "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”

it's very expensive

Commendable however the project went way off scope. Simple, cheap electricity........this is not that. There are so many complex factors that mean this isn't viable...I like the concept but I cant see it happening. The simple rise and fall system with the surf kites still seems a system 'on scope'. Also as a noise consultant I think would have a hard time getting this through planning...A craft that sounds like a dive bomber....Id have people complaining within a 5 miles radius....

@@jdickson242 I think they were a bit ahead of some techonological advances. We see now AI driving cars and flying drones, and that AI is/will no longer be that expensive. I think with a push of AI and also some input from aeronautical engineers this could be taken up by an aeronautical company.

@@jdickson242 You are thinking too conventionally. Only 1/4 or so of all present energy use is in the form of electric power. How might things be re-arranged if we had just as much energy, but it was electric power, far offshore? Hmm? Anyway, on the wide open seas, there is nobody around to notice the noise.

@@YodaWhat 😄

And how much power did it generate?

@Chinmoy Mitra exactly no specs at all.

Eventually when “Global Warming” has gotten every other president elected over the past 20 years and nothing has happened yet maybe they can turn a profit on this by allowing rides on their kites 🪁 😃

*were

A lot of money and wasted time (time we don’t have according to the documentary). Your statement belies the notion you really believe the urgency. It’s not about giving you ‘the experience’. Is it?

@@tanner882 "nothing has happened" You aren't paying attention...

@@Studio23Media things haven’t changed since the late 90’s. All the tech we have now we had then, things have been nipped and tucked to appear “New” but nothing is.

Lol

What a woke joke of a project, spanking all that money! Seriously, the waste is criminal. It’s numptys like you the feed the BS projects like this. This is a typical feel good factor going way too far before some has the balls to pulls the hand break on. This project should have never got off the ground. Pun intended!

@@jimchambers8810 Yes Jim, as they lost taxpayer funding all this proof they accumulated couldn't attract a single private investor and none of those so-called engineers or researchers were willing to dig into their own pockets.

It's a pile of shit mate .the whole idea was stupid from the begining .

If NASA can drive around on the moon and Mars… and, moreover fly over Mars, Makani WILL succeed!

@@georgej.robinson4316 If NASA is able to put men on the moon, you sure should be able to lick your own elbow... what a nonsense argument

@@tristancraven3685 YeahNO. I can see YOU aren't a sailplane pilot...

I'm sorry, this statement will come off cocky as heck here on RU-vid where we all should applaud/commend great efforts, cheer for one another, and simply root for trying (right?). However, as an engineer involved in the tech community, I had huge conceptual doubts about this project from the start. I predicted what a massive waste of funding and resources it would likely turn out to be, and needless to say, unfortunately all of my predictions turned out to be right in line with my initial sarcasms about the project. It was one of the biggest wastes of resources I've seen in years. It was as if they chose a group of some inexperienced children just wanting to toy with investment money to create, well, a giant toy for them to play with on other people's wallets, regardless of the results. No engineer that I know had any actual expectations for these "kites" to do anything worthwhile--especially on the big current stage of current wind harnessing designs existing. The whole project came off as a practical joke, on a giant scale. It's ok to have ideas, concepts, etc., but when those concepts depict immediate modes of likely problems and failures, good scientists know when to cut the project and change course. These guys just didn't care, they wanted to be correct, refusing to admit defeat, when defeat was inevitable. What energy committee would honestly get together and believe there would be huge-scale operations of these things deployed across great areas of landscapes (I.E. deployed in large numbers) and expect a successful deployment on such a scale that there wouldn't be more unit downtime, crashes, and maintenance of these devices to overcome the costs to keep the others running and consistently deploying? This was an engineering nightmare in its full glory from the get-go, and I hope many learned to watch what they throw investment money at in the future. The failures taught more about hideous designs than the small amounts of up-time taught about ever trying such a disaster again. As I said before, I am sorry to have to be so honest and blunt about this project, but a nightmare project it truly was. It never had the slightest chance at defeating the common wind generators for up-time and low maintenance abilities, it should have been shut down long before it ever reached such scales of failure. Some folks just aren't cut out for the work they do; they operate on internal bias to try and force the unobtainable. Unfortunately, this group of folks fell into that category. Never knowing when to simply pull out and start a new path to a new project. Fortunately for some, we got to learn that bad ideas on large scales can still exist that allude the general public into buying into hocus pocus and sleight of hands, only to be fooled and used in the long-run for their lack of knowledge on the subjects at play. I hope many of you view future projects with a much finer toothed comb before crossing fingers and emptying wallets towards donations. This is a project that to a degree has really angered and upset many fellow engineers including myself as something that amounted to nearly a prank on the ones who really are making great strides in the fields of renewable energy sources, only at the cost of their much harder work, devotion, and common-sense attitudes about what to do when failure is inevitably on the horizon due to bad initial ideas. I hope these "kite junkies" picked up a lot of what never to repeat in the future when real world engineering is on the front-line. Sometimes, better ideas simply already exist in implementation, and a good scientist will quickly recognize such fact. But, we are all human with emotional flaws sometimes tied to our work, and great failures are often great learning lessons in disguise to those too young to realize how much of our work is fundamentally flawed by such evolutionary traits. To that I say, God speed humanity; don't give up forever, just allow good and bad experiences to keep shaping our brains and thought processes, continuously evolving our future endeavors for the advancement of this great race found here on planet Earth. 😉 After All, we're only a few hundred thousand years into our discoveries--a blink of time on the cosmic scale. Imagine humanity after a few hundred thousand more years building upon our discoveries. Eventually, we won't be chasing the wind, we will be creating it. I find great pleasure imagining that distant future for us--no matter how many times humanity may have to reboot through that lengthy process. We will get there, one day, we will get there.

Heartbreaking to a lot of people here from what I’ve read. But if you’re a level headed engineer you understand how impractical this is from the very beginning, and you are not surprised at all by the sad ending. As an R&D engineer with a good measure of success, before starting a project you need to investigate the limits, Elon musk talks about this a lot, but it is not a new idea as I was practicing this methodology some many decades ago. Cursory analysis by qualified mechanical engineers would doom this product from the get go because it doesn’t scale up, we don’t have the strength of materials for such dynamic stresses so as to make big enough kite turbines to compete with existing standard windmills. I like seeing people work hard and really innovate, but I hate to see them waste a decade on a doomed project.

Really? It's tethered.. a tether would make a great roadway for those helpful little electrons.

You’re listening comprehension isn’t very good because they explained it all what do you mean how are they going to get it to the Ground silly it’s tied to the ground

someone forward this to trump for a trump narration of its process ala his "shjjj... shjjj..." cancerous windmill explanation. maybe both hands going in circles with a "shj. shj. shj. shj." maybe the noise causes 8 types of cancer this time.

@@MrDarchangelomni Better: Attach him firmly to a blade of a regular giant machine and let it spin for a few weeks.

@@YodaWhat why? Do you wish people tortured? Do you believe it justified? What must one do to deserve such treatment? Would you personally execute and complete your previously written/described assault, if given legal opportunity? Or do you just like to talk out your starfish on the internet..

@@philip2774 "He" isn't "people". "He" has killed hundreds of thousands of people. "He" is also a traitor, having committed High Treason. But none of the Parties will mete out appropriate punishment, fearing their own _just desserts._

@@YodaWhat Wow, someone drank the Kool-aid

how could they posssibly not know this was going to fail when they completely abandoned the original premise of the kite design - simplicity.

It wasn't outside the box at all. This is an OLD concept. What is NEW are the electronics and control techniques.

It is dead. There won't be anything anymore. You can just watch the last 5 minutes of the video.

You need to edit your post if you mean "funded". Yeah, they were milking that tit for all it was worth. And some of them deserve contempt- the broad running the lathe wearing a _long sleeve sweatshirt,_ for instance. But overall, I'd say it was pretty damned impressive.

Try thousands of years- think sailboats and windmills grinding flour. Stuff like this pisses me off,what a ridiculous waste of time,money,fossil fuels etc- I would love to know the carbon footprint this monstrosity left in its wake....

With those bald heads have you ever been called a pair of tits?

@@suedenim6590 u must be fun at parties

@@syedzuhairkhalid8515 I know that must seem a horribly excessive burn to someone with zero experience of a party and all the pessimism towards jovialilty that that ensues but it really isn't. It's a joke because two bald heads look like breasts which is also something you may experience if your horrible attitude improves

You are obviously not Dutch. Ten years ago there was a similar Dutch project. This video looks very very familiar. I hope they succeed to conquer the entire world. Google Wubbo Ockels + Laddermill.

Enerkite in Germany - but the kites are much smaller.

Amazingly,t hat's all they have accomplished... 13 years of wasted time and money

@@duanesalstrand7361 You couldn't be more wrong if you tried. The amount of knowledge and experience that was gained from such a massive and long-running project probably wouldn't even fit into a masters degree. Look up the papers they published for a small taste. Even if this project didn't work out as intended, the lessons learned here are already being used by others in the scientific community. This is proof that the science works!

@@DaniDipp Science does work but it doesn't take 13 years and tons of cash to understand the lessons you say were learned. Really? 13 years to figure out that

@@DaniDipp I agree, science does work. But it doesn't take a scientist to understand that a kite isn't going to solve any energy needs. Any educated mech engineer can tell you that you didn't need top spend that kind of wasted time and money to "learn" what these people wasted their time on. Too invested in a bad idea from the get go to make it a worthwhile endeavor. Road to hell is paved with good intentions and this is the epitome of that. It's desirable to try new things, it's foolish to not understand that you don't need to spend 13 years and tons of money on something that won't solve the stated objective...and the science already exists, engineering wise, they did't break any new ground.

@@duanesalstrand7361 From how you write, it's very clear that you DON'T understand how the scientific process works and have no capacity to do research before opening your mouth. That's quite unfortunate but luckily for me, it's not my duty to teach you :D So get your of my replies and go troll someone else, please and thank you 👋

how old are you,3?., this is a total waste of time & money. 13 yrs,& they achieved what,.nothing.. free energy is available,, but its free,. so you cant have it..

It's a wonderful film for audiences that have heads full of slop.

Why are you still living with your parents..

If you want to move away from this climate situation just get in your car and move. Easy.

You said her or him, it's actually him or her. Him alway's comes first.

​@@patman0250 My condolences to your wife...

@@solarmande7280 Phh! I ain't got no ball and chain buddy. Keep them jars away from my nuts.

Hey, I also Amit I Singh sometime's

Hey, don't make fun of someone's name

​@@meteorfive6 If the guy had really really thin skin and was severely injured by that guys goofy sense of humor that appears as though it was not insulting in the slightest, he would be able to speak for himself. Here is the long boring story, but maybe you suffer from a short attention span and are unable to read fast nor install a browser plugin for reading aloud selected portions of text? If it was me, I'd tell you to chillax, remain calm, and stop trying to inflate a hurt feelings and emotions thing into any kind of huge victimhood conflict that could elevate into more serious conflict or physical injury as seems always to be the plan with cultural Marxism enthusiasts that fail to realize that Marxism was tried many times and no one competent was able to pull it off because the revolutionaries murdered everyone competent in those societies. 200 plus million people were murdered due to Marxist dialectic materialism prompted by the removal of religion so that humans were NOT made in the image of some deity so cold be summarily murdered for political power gain, etc, IE., that immorality could rain free of any constraints of a higher power. As well, the axioms, presuppositions, conclusions, policies, ideology, are deliberately biased by viewing everything through a distorted lens. Also each person is an individual not merely a clone of everyone in their various group memberships so that they think in ways that can be different especially if they are divergent from their socially engineered Prussian education system that intends that cookie cutter copies are made so that everyone has predictable consumer behaviors that can be swayed by advertising to buy the latest fad thing, or adopt the latest fad ideology, or whatever else. Leftism likes to blame all woes of individuals who made their own life choices on other innocent, uninvolved parties. Recall Jacobinism was the precursor to Marxism. It drove the French revolution that saw mostly trouble making based mostly on envy of those who had higher levels of competence who were able to make and save some money to have any. It was using Hebrew Israelite Biblical "sins of the father" kind of punishment of death on those trying to make a happy life, etc, even though Jacobins were atheistic and supposedly shunned religious stuff. "THE IMPERIAL FRENCH CAUSE" "IN DEFENSE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE" Fascifist Turns out the Jacobins were funded by their supposed enemies--an extremely wealthy banking dynasty who eventually funded internationally the forces of many countries to oppose Napoleon Bonaparte who determined who was at the actual root of trouble making turmoil. Instead, if you are talented, then go out and start a business. You'll soon learn that the oppressed versus oppressor narrative is utterly a false one unless you get backers with unlimited deep pockets that would support you in the high burn rate years until you gained some kind of monopoly market share or whatever, that is just not going to happen typically. I was at one time a lefty too. It usually is very unhelpful to issue criticism upon comedians who were attempting to be amusing rather than hurtful. Having thin skin is a sure way to elevate minor issues into huge trouble making that could cause revolutions, and wars over simple misunderstandings or poor senses of humor. Life is too short to have it wasted being thin skinned, stirring up trouble and trouble making. In high school bullies there would punch me in the face, break my nose, having it bleeding--real physical injury--I just turned around and walked away from the fools and did not say anything. That is real tolerance of someone who is being deliberately annoying and violent. Everyone taught in schools to be SJWs is NOT a good plan so that the long march through the institutions of society of the Frankfurt school and Antonio Gramsci cultural hegemony are doing their task to make the world a much worse place due to making young naive propaganda unquestioning into domestic enemies of everyone else who is innocent and just trying to live their lives free from real tyrannical fascism. See kgb defector yuri bezmenov cultural subversion Learned a new thing a few hours ago from very nice older black female university lecturer about slavery about the way Eastern Europeans from slavic countries (from where the word slave was derived) sold many of their children into slavery even prior to 500 BC. That is a very long history of slavery, if you ask me. See ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-8iZDapgQdFo.html Why White People are Called Caucasian (Illustrated) Skip the long introduction by the old man there, then watch and listen to the older black lady scholar from Princeton University all the way until the end. Some people have cited news that these same peoples are still victims of slavery by having the young females tricked into thinking that they have been offered a well paying office job in Western Europe only to find themselves in the sex industry in brothels, turning many tricks per day, etc. The system of enslavement is being run by ethnic mafia kinds of dudes. This is true injustice rather than just a poor sense of humor. Some have said that this form of human trafficking has been facilitated by nefarious members of the elite people who run most of the countries around the world. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-bpBX-32mkL0.html Chief Counsel Robert David Steele. ITNJ.org Seating Hearings on international human trafficking, pedophilia rings, organized crime sex enslavement, etc.

Whatever! They spent 13 years and didn't produce a final working product. Maybe because the project kept going bigger and more complex for greater power generation. I see it every time. "The gravity light", imo, was/is a far greater success which continues bringing benefit to individual people. What produced this failure were the investors, unlike the gravity light which stopped and got what it had developed out into the world. Google was never interested in developing a product that can be sold and will benefit the people's power needs. It was interested in getting a product that it will own and sell the power generated to the grid who then sells that power to the people. What they started with was derailed by the deep pockets they accepted money from early on. Just my opinion. Cheers.

@@sailingsolar I think you're right. A small project that could bring power to one town or village might have had traction.

@@sailingsolar Depends what you call a final product, product design tends to keep renewing and keep being improved.

@@sailingsolar Never heard of that one - I just tripped over this in my feed. This also isn't a zero-sum game: this team's accomplishments didn't lessen "the gravity light's" accomplishments, did it?

Even though they didnt finish with a final product, their research and product development will still help future endeavours on the subject. This is first and foremost a film about the story of the company as a whole, not just the tech or that they "didnt deliver". They certainly delivered; if this was a university doing the research and publishing papers on it, it would (imo) be highly praised by the scientific society. Maybe even Siemens would dip their toe into it. That remaims to be seen. (I just finished this video when writing this. Havent read more on the subject if there has been further development by other teams after Mekani)

You should apply for a spot on the team.

That’s sad... You must not have watched very many. This was a TERRIBLE example, and all they engineered was a shit drone attached to what is essentially a winch, to try and create energy. REAL Engineers have been down this road long ago. There’s a reason we went with huge wind turbines in valleys.

I know right! Whenever I've been around wind turbines I know my only thought is "This could be heavily improved upon by a constant loud droning whirring noise constantly". Dare to dream

Sky Sails did not piggyback off their tech. They understood what simplicity meant from the get-go and are now a profitable going concern.

@@benwatkins7032 Well, they have also tried and failed before. Their technology was originally meant to power large scale maritime cargo ships for reducing carbon emissions of the biggest pulluters. But they came up with the solution right at the time of the crises of this entire industry. Hundreds of cargo ships, if not thousands, have been scrapped, while barely the biggest companies have survived. Noone was ready for paying a new technology. Sky Sails went bankrupt and was bought out and has continued with the mobile energy generation solution.

@@benwatkins7032 But yes. Simplicity is crucial sometimes. Amazing technology Makani has developed with such a giant powered kite. Unfortunately extremely difficult to be proven stabile in a long time autonomous flight mode even enduring very high wind gusts like at places with the best wind resources have to face. And the cost and safety risks are sadly high in case of loss of control.

And how many million birds has it killed?

@@maxwaters1461 😂

Why impractical? There are container ships and oil ships right now that use figure 8 kites to give the ship extra power to reduce transport cost

@@royaldecreeforthechurchofm8409 Motored ship going against the wind may use more energy with a kite dragging behind.

They are putting them up offshore now too. They work just fine

@@ALTINSEA1 yea

@@royaldecreeforthechurchofm8409 yeah I'd imagine it's hugely popular... not.

what would you say if found out this is all a big joke?

jahjah_light - I know, right! I can’t believe people are buying this BS! “Let’s make a windmill as complicated as an airplane, and get $150M or so of funding!” ($15M before X bought them). Never produced a MVP (Minimum Viable Product). I’m guessing they pulled a dummy load to be able to say they “pulled power from the sky”, since their tether seems much too small to be carrying power....a better name would be “throwing money at the Sky”.

I want to know who the mastermind behind the stewardship of this farce was. Absolute Legend. “Hey look man do you want to change the world? Just cut me a cheque, I’m like the dude!” Like wow. 13 years of guzzling cool aid and spanking all that dosh, whilst kids in Africa read at night with bloody candle. What a bunch of over educated self-entitled tossers. Now they all have jobs with the likes of BP. Hahahahaha

@@slfriend The tether conducts electric power both ways, at high voltage, much like the electric grid. That eliminates the need for heavy wires. If you knew the first thing about electric power, you would not shoot off your mouth/finger in ignorance.

@@YodaWhat Yes, the tether conducts high voltage, so what? What's the outcome of all that BS? Millions pilfered for the sake of fun time! Right from the beginning of the video I could tell that it was a dead project, just a means of fooling the sponsors. How could a technology giant like google bite the hook? Unbelievable!

They need to sell the idea to the defense department. It would be perfect for autonomous rechargeable drones

There's a sucker born every minute. Look in the mirror for proof.

Layman's

@@DakarNick Don't lament correcting her, she'll never learn

I totally agree. I felt exactly the same! Perhaps you said it in fewer words!

Indeed a powerful story. Alphabet probably wanted something a little more for their millions of dollars though than a powerful story and a far too complicated design.

@@benwatkins7032 The should have sought crowd funding and we all would have helped!

Yeah, reminds me of that Truman meets his father scene in Truman Show, audience manipulation technics never change, yet people keep falling for them just the same.