This article first appeared on How We Get to Next

An excerpt from Wind Turbines in the Sky Will Power Remote Regions

Ben Glass wanted to be a rocket scientist, but his career took him to the skies by way of a different path. A study about high-altitude winds released during his senior year at MIT suggested there’s enough energy in the upper reaches to power 100 Earths.

“Which is a nice phrase, but the takeaway is that there’s a lot of energy up there,” said Glass. “We just don’t have a good way of harvesting it and bringing it back down to the ground.” So Glass took his degree in aeronautics and set to work developing a floating wind turbine that could fill the void. Thus, Altaeros Energies was born.