[erdosjr]

Apart from being fun, there is a good amount of engineering in designing kites.

For example, NASA has been experimenting with designing simple parachutes [1] and it turned out that the parawings (or Rogallo wings) are pretty good traction kites, too. The NPW kites are still popular kites as they are cheap to make and long-wearing in use.

[1] http://2e5.com/kite/nasa/reports/