[Maarten88]

I'm sure that kite design will be very stable in the air. But I guess the triangular wings are not very efficient and disturb each others airflow.

I wonder how the tetrahedral design compares with the Cody kite design, from the same era. That design looks more efficient to me, and has been proven to scale big enough to lift people in the air.

As a kid I built several small Cody kites and they fly amazingly well. We combined several and flew with up to 1km of line, hundreds of meters high.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Franklin_Cody

[Retric]

"tetrahedral beings were flown both unmanned and manned during a five year period from 1907 until 1912" So, according to the article they did carry people.

An important consideration is these kites where lighter per lifting area so they needed less wind and would also fall slower without wind making them somewhat safer. The added redundancy is also an important consideration.

PS: It's actually fairly easy to build a kite that can lift a person in a strong wind as even a simple parachute will work. see: parasailing which can work at even 15mph. The problem is finding a design that fails safely.