Quote:
Originally Posted by ConnClark
If you don't buy that in the 80's nasa put wing tip turbines on a piper aircraft and showed you could generate electricity while reducing drag.
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The basic squarish wingtip design of the day created vortices and was so inefficient that the wingtip pods bettered it so much, it still reduced drag despite the turbines.
Wingtip Vortex Turbine Investigation for Vortex Energy Recovery
The inefficiency was already built into the baseline vehicle.
This experiment won back some of that energy.
It's better to avoid the inefficiency to start with, rather than try to recover some of the wasted energy later.