Methinks this would make an excellent platform for a kite-antenna.
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.
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.
https://i.stack.imgur.com/rnHbB.jpg
(edit: and these: http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/weapons/q0261.shtml )
Drag will vary greatly based on weather and wind, so it is likely not something one would want to count on.
I was thinking of "we don't want to rely on drag as a function of descent" rather than "drag doesn't matter, because the control system is fully advanced and capable enough to deal with any variance brought on by drag"