 |
Dundee council stops investigation
Mabel Rush will
hit the road in 2004
Head Start gets a
jump start to a new building in Newberg
| A
vision for the future |
Software engineer Wayne Germans says tethered
airfoils could be used in applications ranging from
generating electricity to pulling ships |
By Gunnal Olson, Newberg Graphic
reporter
E-mail Gunnar at golson@eaglenewspapers.com
|
 When Wayne German was in grade school he
developed a doorbell and entered it in a science fair. The judges, however, didn’t
believe he could have made something so complex, implying that his parents had helped, and
he was disqualified.
German, now in his 50s, still faces such disbelief in some people. Only the
concepts he’s working with are much more complex: tethered airfoils. Think of them as
super kites.
“These are pretty far out and esoteric, these ideas and concepts,”
said German, a software engineer who tinkers with aerodynamic engineering. His concepts
are so radical, he said, he feels a kinship with the Wright brothers before they made
their historical flight.
“Before Orville and Wilbur flew, imagine anyone talking about going to
the moon,” German said. “And yet, that was only 80 years later that that
happened.”
A complete outline of his ideas can be found in a paper titled,
“Tethered Airfoils: An Enabling Technology.” In introduction, he writes:
“Occasionally, new technologies are developed that meet global needs and
generate considerable revenues in the process. Widely recognized examples are the light
bulb, transistor, radio, television, computer, automobile and airplane. The intent of this
paper is to introduce another technology, tethered airfoils, whose potential to generate
revenue exceeds all of these.”
To put it in simple terms, a tethered airfoil is a big kite on a long string.
But German’s kites would be “aerodynamically efficient,”
“inflatable,” and “have a lift-to-drag ratios of 10-to-1 or greater.”
They’ll also be able to be precision guided.
German has five goals for tethered airfoils, of which he’s been dreaming
for 25 years. The first is to simply make one, and the rest would grow out if it: to make
electricity, to pull ships, to make flying machines that don’t use fuel and to
harvest power from the jet stream.
The greatest way in which these technologies would help people, he said, is
to save them money. For example, if tethered airfoils could successfully pull freight
ships across the ocean, it could save the shipping industry $15 billion annually in fuel
expenses.
He admitted his ideas appear to be “pie in the sky” to the less
than technology savvy.
“People are so buffaloed by technology, they don’t know whether to
believe or not to believe things can be done,” he said. But to those who understand
aerodynamics, his ideas seem possible.
The people at the Flight Research Institute, a nonprofit offshoot of Boeing,
understood. On the strength of his paper he was invited to become a project leader at the
institute, and was joined by two retired retired Boeing executives to help.
However, all of the requests they made for funding came back negative. German
said funding is not available for researchers without a track record.
He expressed a bewilderment in companies sponsoring athletes, whose glory is
temporary, when they could invest in technology that could help all of mankind.
German said he would like to hear from others in the area with the skills or
resources so they might pool their efforts to speed up this project.
“It’s a concern to me that this gets developed,” he said. If
it doesn’t, he fears it might go another century before people begin researching the
possibilities of kites.
He said it was 176 years ago that people figured out they could pull
boats with kites, though they were less precise instruments then.
But technology today is far improved. With the software programs available
today for the price of some video game systems, German said the Wright brothers could have
built a moon rocket. German’s trying to build super kites.
“To my mind, it’s not whether this can be done or not,” German
said. “It’s whether it will be done in my lifetime.” |
|
From Dec. 3,
2003, Newberg Graphic
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