Cross-wind forces cannot be exploited if you are travelling directly downwind.
So you agree that my second quote is more apposite than the quote you provided. Hurray!
Unless you also want to say Tao said that sailboats can go faster than light.
Tao obviously intends his analysis to apply whenever Newtonian dynamics is a good approximation, so bringing relativity into it is ignoratio elenchi. You asserted that Tao said that it is impossible to sail downwind faster than the wind; in fact he offered a theoretical approach for doing exactly that.
No he didn’t, as I’ve explained at least 3 times in this thread already, including in the comment you just replied to. He wrote:
“it became possible for sails to provide a lift force which is essentially perpendicular to the (apparent) wind velocity, in contrast to the drag force that is parallel to that velocity.”
So you agree that my second quote is more apposite than the quote you provided. Hurray!
Tao obviously intends his analysis to apply whenever Newtonian dynamics is a good approximation, so bringing relativity into it is ignoratio elenchi. You asserted that Tao said that it is impossible to sail downwind faster than the wind; in fact he offered a theoretical approach for doing exactly that.
No he didn’t, as I’ve explained at least 3 times in this thread already, including in the comment you just replied to. He wrote:
“it became possible for sails to provide a lift force which is essentially perpendicular to the (apparent) wind velocity, in contrast to the drag force that is parallel to that velocity.”
Perpendicular to the apparent wind velocity.