The Moonshot Podcast The Moonshot Podcast S2, Episode 3: Chasing the Wind, Storing the Sun
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Apr 8, 2026 Fort Felker, a wind-energy engineer who led Makani’s airborne wind system, and Raj Apte, an engineer from X’s RapidEval who helped develop Project Malta, join to share radical energy ideas. They explore kite-like flight for harvesting wind and a thermo-mechanical approach for time-shifting renewable energy. Short, vivid stories and technical challenges keep the conversation lively.
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Why Fort Joined Makani And Early Prototyping
- Fort Felker joined Makani because he saw a chance to 10x wind economics by replacing massive towers with lightweight, tethered aircraft.
- The team hand-built carbon-fiber wings, iterated at Alameda and China Lake, and even constructed Container Henge to enable landing tests.
Limitations Of Conventional Wind Turbines
- Conventional wind turbines are enormous, weighing hundreds of tons with towers and blades as long as a football field, limiting siting and requiring massive cranes.
- That scale blocks deployment on islands, mountaintops and deep water, creating opportunity for much lighter airborne systems.
Design To Fail Fast And Learn Faster
- Expect and permit early catastrophic failures to accelerate learning; Astro Teller urged Fort to 'crash at least five aircraft' to speed development.
- Fort said embracing crash-driven iteration empowered bolder designs and faster progress.
