[HN Gopher] MIT engineers fly first-ever plane with no moving pa... ___________________________________________________________________ MIT engineers fly first-ever plane with no moving parts (2018) Author : pen2l Score : 323 points Date : 2022-06-30 13:59 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (news.mit.edu) (TXT) w3m dump (news.mit.edu) | WalterBright wrote: | I bet I could make an airplane to fly 60 meters with no moving | parts using a solid fuel rocket motor. | | Just take a glider and attach an Estes engine! | culanuchachamim wrote: | How much energy it needs to fly vs energy needed by propelled | plane? | djtriptych wrote: | I've been birding over the pandemic and learning about how they | fly. Watching them, it starts to become clear just how skilled | and efficient they are. | | This tech demo is amazing, but my mind immediately compares it to | things like the ruby-throated hummingbird migration, in which a 5 | gram bird[0] flies 500+ MILES nonstop over open water, on maybe 2 | grams of fat storage. | | Then they feed by hovering so accurately that they can reliably | thread a 1/8" beak into a moving 1/4" target. | | They can do this directly into 20 mph headwinds [0]. Also in | rainstorms where they are constantly getting pelted with their | bodyweight in wet missiles every few seconds. | | They can also fly 30mph in level flight, which in body lengths / | second is ~4x times faster than an SR-71. | | [0] US nickels weigh 5 grams, for comparison. | | [1] https://www.kqed.org/science/28759/what-happens-when-you- | put... | Gordonjcp wrote: | The other one that amazes me is the Petrel family, that digest | fish and process oil from them and store it in their foregut. | This allows them to fly long distances - like, Falkland Islands | to Svalbard kind of distances - without really stopping. | | The thing that gets me about it is they brew this fish oil into | something with the energy density of *diesel* that they can | then digest, and I have this mental picture of some kind of | Endura-DI Shearwater flapping, clattering and smoking, all the | way across the Atlantic in search of its breeding grounds... | hinkley wrote: | While hummingbirds are amazing, I think we will have to model | out systems more closely to birds of prey. Most birds can't | carry much extra weight, until you get to raptors and some sea | birds. | | We would be after something that can carry a payload such as a | salmon, a coconut, or a human. | Amhurst wrote: | Or a moose. My sister was bitten by a moose once. | samvher wrote: | You might enjoy this book: | https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/simple-science-flight-revised... | | (I did, a lot.) | jcims wrote: | Cool six minute video from SmarterEveryDay on dragonfly | flight mechanics - | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxrLYv0QXa4 | | If you don't watch the whole thing, fast forward to the slow | mo at ~4:35. I still remember watching this for the first | time 9 years ago...geez. | jamiek88 wrote: | There is a crappy pdf of this floating around that I read | before buying this. Deffo worth it but for those who want to | try before you buy it's worth 'binging' it. | dragosmocrii wrote: | Thank you, this definitely goes on my reading list! | djtriptych wrote: | oh wow. thanks! | jacquesm wrote: | Nature is lightyears ahead of tech when it comes to power | efficiency. | worik wrote: | This is awesome. | | I am disappointed at the "MIT are boasting, nothing really to | show" comments here. | | This is not Earth shattering. But it is an achievement worthy of | our respect. | | This vehicle is self contained, has no external power supply, | unlike all the other examples quoted. | | I am very impressed | dr_dshiv wrote: | I've been curious about using high heat combustion plus RF to | create denser plasmas (ionized air) plus pulsed magnets to push | the air. It seems impossible for earthly flight, but maybe with | lightweight super conductors. | | I've also been curious about using very large-area weak ionizers | for future zeppelins. | | Plasma propulsion has been used for zeppelin flight at a small | scale. Plasmas are also used for flow control on wings and | propellers. There doesn't seem to be much unclassified research | in the area, though. | dr_orpheus wrote: | Nothing earthbound that I know of, but it sounds like you are | describing something similar to the electric propulsion | thrusters that PhaseFour makes: https://phasefour.io/rf- | thruster/ | api_or_ipa wrote: | Sounds cool, but the headline is pretty bait-y. First, the | aircraft has no control surfaces, so it's limited to flying in a | straight line. So the headline should read "MIT engineers fly | first-ever plane with no moving parts in propulsion". And then, | even that's not true, since ramjets[0] have been a thing for a | long time. | | 0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramjet | beanjuice wrote: | There is a comment from Pubpeer [0] on this research [1] if | anyone is curious: | | "This is not the first flight of an ion-drive aircraft. Seversky | was patenting and flying ionocraft in the 1960s [2], hobbyists | have been building them for decades under the name "lifter", and | a self-contained device that carries its own power supply was | developed by Ethan Krauss in 2006. | | MIT's device may be the first ionocraft to use wings for lift, | however. The previous devices behaved more like helicopters than | airplanes, and did not need wings to stay aloft." | | [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0707-9 | | [1] | https://pubpeer.com/publications/020C19C112F2605CEC4B34CA320... | | [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GijJmIz1G7U | CSSer wrote: | So is this just MIT being MIT (overhyping everything) or did | this guy and his team somehow miss all of this? Is our | scientific knowledge really that scattered? | aj7 wrote: | See this 2013 article. https://news.mit.edu/2013/ionic- | thrusters-0403 In the 2018 article this submission is based | on, you're seeing 5 years of progress. | Beldin wrote: | I dunno about the findings from the 60s, but non-moving | rotors would not keep a helicopter in the air... so at least | some progress. | | It's not clear whether this thing can steer (by changing ion | balance?), if this prototype can't but the concept might, or | if it's forward only. If they can steer (change direction at | will) without moving parts, that definitely sounds | innovative. | portyllo wrote: | This made it to the cover of Nature with a similar headline | [0]. I guess that they are also "overhyping everything". | | [0] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DsmahXYXoAAkaoI?format=jpg&na | me=... | lupire wrote: | That same Nature cover has an overyhyped BS headline about | quantum computers and cryptocurrency. | lupire wrote: | The OP article explains. | | The new device flies with no moving parts and with onboard | power. | scarby2 wrote: | Well the headline i believe is technically accurate. Given | that lifter type devices are aircraft but not aeroplanes. | | It's certainly an iteration rather than a complete revolution | but seems like an important step. Certainly something like | this would have more practical application, a basically | silent drone that could fly over a battlefield would be a | huge win. | pclmulqdq wrote: | I'm not sure that the guy who patented this is considered a | "serious" scientist. After all, he did patent a technology | from the 60's. | | Otherwise, this just seems to be MIT being MIT: creating a | trivial improvement on an old technology (in this case, | moving the boost converter onto the airplane to avoid a | tether wire), and publicizing the hell out of it because it's | cool. | tytso wrote: | Keep in mind that the MIT Press office != the professors at | MIT. It's actually quite common for any University's press | office to be clueless about the research being done at the | university, and it is their job to make as big of a splash | as possible. | | This is much like the oft-cited issue that the reporters | aren't responsible for the headlines --- that is picked by | the editors to make as big of a splash as possible. | | As far as "patenting a technology from the 60's", even an | incremental improvement on an old idea is still patentable. | The real test is whether the patent cited the prior art, | and you can bet that MIT Press Office didn't read the | patent application before breathlessly sending out the | press release. | pclmulqdq wrote: | That is a good point. MIT professors are usually very | aware of the context of their work and the actual | contributions they are making. Nevertheless, the MIT | press office is a particularly egregious organization in | terms of its tendency to exaggerate - my dad's lab cured | cancer about 10 times in the early 2000's if you believe | the press releases. | | In this case, I'm not sure the MIT professor was aware of | the "crackpot" invention that effectively pre-empted him. | Many professors don't read patents (and there are lots of | reasons why they shouldn't), and I'm not sure there was a | paper. | | One thing about patents is that if an invention is | obvious in light of other inventions, it might not be | patentable. In this case, I'm pretty sure that this | combination of a technology from the 60's, a boost | converter, and a LiPo battery may be "obvious" given the | prevalence of other drones: it is a combination of two | past inventions that fit together naturally (a drone + a | propulsion technology). Of course, it will take millions | of dollars worth of arguing for someone to say either | way. | lupire wrote: | Where is the "breathless" part? | Dylan16807 wrote: | Making it work on its own without a tether wire sounds like | a substantial improvement to me. | goatcode wrote: | Or perhaps, as is becoming pretty ubiquitous in tech: the | people who communicate things don't have nearly as much | understanding as the people who do them. It was not always | this way, but it seems the communication department in an | organization is becoming the dumping ground for people who | flunked out of doing the hands-on hard work but for one | reason or another, have some support to retain them. | | Note: I'm not criticizing tech writing. Just what tech | writing has become. | vpribish wrote: | I'm baffled that MIT's PR is so cringeworthy. They had a | priceless, universally recognized and irreplaceable brand and | they are just trashing it with a sustained campaign of cheap | clickbait seemingly aimed at a technologically ignorant | audience. WTF? WHY? The Fools! | frognumber wrote: | University reputations have a few decades lag. MIT did it's | greatest work in the 20th century. It's since brought in | people attracted to fame, power, fortune, and, again, fame. | | I don't think it will dig itself out again. | pen2l wrote: | Harvard and MIT have a lot of clout, and it's partly | because of how incredibly massive they are. The Harvard | network has more professors than some universities have | pupils, (above two-thousand). Consequently just the | _amount_ of output due to a large number of people | working there gets it placed high up in rating indices | and such. | | It's tough to say if it can keep up with its reputation. | In some ways this phenomenon is comparable to | gentrification: the beauty and soul of a place sometimes | dies when the people who made that place what it is are | displaced, like how Somerville and Berlin changed/are | changing. It makes no sense for someone to remain | committed in an academic career track when they're paying | the kind of rent they do when around MIT/Harvard area | with the income they make, so I agree with you that it's | no longer attracting the kind of people that made MIT | what it once was. | | There are some institutions, that not many know about | yet, that I'm confident in a couple of decades everyone | will know about like U of Copenhagen and KIT & U of | Stuttgart in Germany, and I think some in the midwest | (Purdue, UMich, etc.) will one day have their day to | shine too. | april_22 wrote: | TU Munich is also getting really strong, they've been | winning Elon Musk's Hyperloop for the past years I think | nosianu wrote: | Just an aside on the topic of German research. | | In Germany a lot of research is not done at the | universities but at various institutes such as Max- | Planck, Fraunhofer, Helmholtz, Leibniz and a lot more. | | General overview, research institutes being one item: | https://www.research-in-germany.org/en/research- | landscape.ht... | | Ca. 400 universities - but ca. 1,000 publicly funded | research institutions (https://www.research-in- | germany.org/en/research-landscape/re...). | | So, the ranking of the universities overall may not be | completely comparable. | divbzero wrote: | MIT was established 161 years ago and Harvard was | established 386 years ago, both young relative to | Cambridge established 813 years ago and Oxford | established 926 years ago. The clout of universities will | ebb and flow, but I wouldn't bet on 100+ year | institutions losing their ability to attract talent | anytime soon. | admiral33 wrote: | I agree - network effects predate the internet after all. | As long as good universities keep producing talented | graduates it will be hard to undermine their reputation. | And I don't think ambitious people being driven towards | certain universities for clout is a negative. I say this | as someone who went to an increasingly recognized yet | still underdog state school. Maybe instead of discarding | MIT's reputation a nudge in the direction of increasing | editorial oversight can suffice. Though sensationalism | seems to be a prerequisite for visibility these days | tytso wrote: | I very much doubt whether the MIT Press Office cares about | what Hacker News thinks of their brand. What they do care | about is what Sarah J. Student's parents think when they | are trying to encourage their progency to attend Harvard vs | Yale vs Stanford. And positive press is good towards | achieving that mission, even if it is a bit click-baity. | And since all universities are playing this game to one | degree or another, it's asking quite a lot for one | univesity to unilaterally agree to disarm. | | The other "brand" that universities care about is the their | reputation by their professor's peers when it comes to | hiring the best talent for their departments, and with the | granting agencies who are deciding which research proposals | they should fund. And here, what matters is the peer- | reviewed publications at various academic journals and | conferences. Whether a university's press office puts out a | press release, which then gets mangled by various | newspapers, doesn't really have negative or positive effect | when it comes to how a university's research work is | measured by the People Who Really Matter --- namely, other | professors and the people who dispense the cash. Hacker | News falls into neither of these two categories. | vilhelm_s wrote: | I'd absolutely expect the guy and his team to know about | prior work, but the article comes from the university "news | office". In my experience university PR releases are always | extremely overhyped, particularly from the elite | universities. | closetohome wrote: | Grad student: Look guys I built a little plane | | News office: MIT SUPER-SCIENTIST INVENTS AIR TRAVEL | rcstank wrote: | Did any of these have moving parts? | [deleted] | nomel wrote: | The one I built when I was a kid didn't. I don't know of any | designs that do. | zxexz wrote: | I did the same! IIRC, I went off a design from the first | edition of Electronic Gadgets for the Evil Genius[0]. | Excellent book for the budding electronics hacker. | | [0] https://www.abebooks.com/signed-first- | edition/Electronic-Gad... | jolmg wrote: | At least the one from 1964 in the linked YouTube video | doesn't. | hinkley wrote: | Lifters typically have a tether don't they? So I think it | depends on whether you consider the tether a moving part. | It has to move for the craft to move... | | A self contained unit like the MIT one is an improvement on | the lifter, because the ion drive is itself an improvement | on the lifter. Or at least, a production version of one. | What they've done is get the mass to thrust ratio below a | threshold that allows for flight in atmosphere. That's | definitely worth some points, but not all the points. | nomel wrote: | The tether is there to supply power and hold it down. | Lifters require a power to weight ratio greater than one, | which probably isn't possible with an on-board power | supply. This MIT plane integrates the power supply and | uses wing lift to reduce the required power, just as all | planes do, and as the ionic propulsion planes did before | (as others have linked to). | | This is just the MIT press department embarrassing | themselves again, or perhaps proving that sensationalism | is a required part of science/funding these days. | toast0 wrote: | > This is just the MIT press department embarrassing | themselves again. | | Is the MIT press department capable of being embarrassed? | Maybe they embarrass MIT, or at least people associated | with MIT, but I don't think they embarrass themselves or | they'd have changed their behavior. | hinkley wrote: | One is self propelled and the other is a toy that was | abandoned 60 years ago as unworkable. | | That doesn't sound the same to me. | nomel wrote: | I think you misread. I wasn't comparing the lifter to a | plane, I was comparing other ionic propulsion planes to | their plane. | | > and as the ionic propulsion planes did before (as | others have linked to). | hinkley wrote: | Ground effect planes and to a lesser extent gliders are | cheating and we can't forget that. | | But taking an ion propulsion system that previously only | worked in vacuum and making it work at sea level is not | nothing. I haven't seen anything here to convince me it's | pure parlor trick. It's part parlor trick for sure, but | the sort that opens wallets. | nomel wrote: | > to a lesser extent gliders are cheating | | How were they cheating? Lifters don't use ground effect | at all. With a proper power supply, they have a | power/weight ratio much greater than one. Does a | helicopter or F22 Raptor cheat to fly? | | > taking an ion propulsion system that previously only | worked in vacuum | | You misunderstand what this is. This ionizes air and | accelerates it towards a surface with opposite charge. | This design will _not_ work in a vacuum, since it | requires atmosphere [1] as a propellant. I built one of | these thrusters when I was a kid using an old TV power | supply. It takes some wire, aluminum foil, tens of | thousands of volts, and a stomach for inefficiency (for | example, the mentioned plane has a thrust of 6.25N /kW, | the motor/prop on a drone is nearly 10x that). The only | difference between a lifter and this is the direction of | thrust, and the use of wings to supply lift, which all | aircraft with a power to weight ratio less than 1.0 | necessarily do. The accomplishment, and it is impressive, | is the engineering to make it all light/efficient, given | the terrible efficiency of these types of motors, while | using the advancements in the energy density of batteries | to allow it to be integrated. | | > I haven't seen anything here to convince me it's pure | parlor trick | | I don't understand this. I don't think anyone is saying | it's a parlor trick. It's impressive engineering. I just | don't think it's accurate to say it's the first [2]. 20 | years ago, there were sites with people attaching these | to gliders (although, I can't find them anymore). | | 1. Theory of operation for the generation of the thrust: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion- | propelled_aircraft#Electro... | | 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion- | propelled_aircraft#cite_no... | pen2l wrote: | I like the video in the article quite a lot! The gentleman | speaking in it is one of the scientists working on the project, | and manages to convey an excitement and basic idea that the | layman can kind of understand, as well as some fun history. Wish | more articles could have this kind of interviews! | c0n5pir4cy wrote: | Older news as other people have mentioned, if you want to see how | it works and see it flying here is a YouTube link: | https://youtu.be/boB6qu5dcCw?t=85 | nico wrote: | That video is 3 years old. | | Do you know if there's anything new with this | project/technology? | dr_dshiv wrote: | Here's the latest: https://newatlas.com/drones/ion- | propulsion-drone/ | birktj wrote: | That looks pretty impressive, but I am quite skeptical of | the fact that this craft uses ion propulsion for any | significant proton of its thrust. A reddit user [1] | suggests that it uses ducted fans which I am way more | inclined to believe. The very high pitched noise is typical | of a high velocity propeller blowing high velocity air. | Which seems wildly incompatible with those large grids | where one would expect relatively low velocity air with | very little noise. There are also four very suspicious | tubes running along the body of the craft. | | [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/o6h1bc/com | ment/... | memco wrote: | Interesting to see the development over the past few years | and how theory is comparing to practice. One of the | theorized benefits from the MIT video was quieter drones. | This article says the ionic propulsion demoed is about 85db | which sounds like it's just as loud as current drones. | bentcorner wrote: | From that page here's a video of their ionic drone: | https://youtu.be/iihprC5Huf4 | | Interesting that it sounds pretty much like a regular | drone. | moffkalast wrote: | Ok holy shit that is on another level, the original had | barely enough thrust to sustain flight of that almost | lighter than air glider, this lifts up fuckin vertically | with no moving parts. | | But I suspect the time it flies in the video is the time it | takes to completely empty the batteries, as is the usual | caveat. | hahamrfunnyguy wrote: | That thing is still pretty noisy! It looks like it's | pushing the ionized air through some kind of jet? | jdlshore wrote: | Are you sure that's the same group? The design is | completely different and it appears to be a company based | in Florida. | nashashmi wrote: | Ionizing the air? Couldn't that be used for hypersonic flight to | eliminate air friction plus eliminate sonic boom? | gorjusborg wrote: | Is the viscosity of ionized air lower than air? | | My understanding is that the ionized air is used in tandem with | electric field to accelerate plain air (non-ionized) by | collision/friction. In other words, the ionized air is being | used as a gaseous propeller. | nomel wrote: | I thought about doing this when I was playing with lifters a | couple decades ago. The idea was that you could ionize the | boundary layer, to make it somewhat "self repulsive", to thin | it, to try to reduce the skin friction drag [1]. | | I remember doing some napkin math, and the added weight/power | would be a net loss. | | 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_friction_drag | mrfusion wrote: | I believe people have found ways to reduce drag with lasers | and microwaves so you might be on to something. | jameshart wrote: | Accelerating the 'plain air' isn't really necessary to the | propulsion. Once you've accelerated the ions you've already | accomplished a momentum transfer - if those ions then go and | share that momentum with some non ionized air molecules | that's their own business. | | I guess maybe the non ionized air acts to keep the ions | around between the two charged grids for longer, which means | that for each ion you create you can maybe exploit its | attractive/repulsive force for longer? | dr_dshiv wrote: | Look for plasma flow control for work related to this question. | mrfusion wrote: | It could be a new type of scram jet, right? A normal jet engine | has to slow down supersonic air to subsonic to combust it which | is inefficient. | [deleted] | joshgroban wrote: | tom-thistime wrote: | Ok, one moving part. | NiceWayToDoIT wrote: | 25 years ago there was a site Kely Net or something similar, also | I think there is JLN labs that is still alive, there was lot of | over-unity things, BS and scams, but I distinctively remember few | of the technologies back then that now popping up as mainstream | wonder ... Aluminium oxide engine, brown gas, mighty engine, ion | lifter, metal latices fusion ... it is kind of odd how long we | need to start exploring new tech. | baltimore wrote: | Can this tech be used to make a (quieter) room fan? | learn_more wrote: | Yes. Sharper Image sold one called the "Ionic Breeze". They | generate ozone, which is a problem however. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_ioniser | ohhhhhh wrote: | First thing when i saw this. Would these airplanes just be | flying cancer sprayers? lol | adolph wrote: | _Unlike turbine-powered planes, the aircraft does not depend on | fossil fuels to fly. And unlike propeller-driven drones, the new | design is completely silent._ | | I suspect that the design is silent due to its low power and that | something with enough thrust to perform some useful task would be | louder even if the noise is that of wind only. | dr_dshiv wrote: | Indeed, at a larger scale it is loud: | | https://newatlas.com/drones/ion-propulsion-drone/ | tqkxzugoaupvwqr wrote: | It's extremely loud, something I didn't expect, and sounds | very much like a high speed fan. Together with the black box | it made me suspicious if we aren't being deceived. Two | comments under the article think the same. | JKCalhoun wrote: | Yeah, lot to be skeptical of here. | amelius wrote: | Does this produce ozone? | make3 wrote: | I guess the question would be if this is more harmful than a | plane of similar pulling power | CSSer wrote: | I can't imagine how it wouldn't. | stym06 wrote: | It's a 2018 piece. | peter303 wrote: | How does the efficiency of ion-drive compared to electric motors? | CSSer wrote: | I tried to find a more precise answer but technically an ion- | drive is an electric motor, so I'm guessing it's comparable. | The thing is that based on the couple demos I watched the | flight seems really erratic. It makes me wonder if the fuel | supply is somewhat inconsistent i.e. air turbulence makes the | actual theoretical energy efficiency moot. | tom-thistime wrote: | An ion drive isn't really physically similar to a normal | electric motor using an electromagnet. | justusthane wrote: | I'm having trouble understanding why it would necessarily be | comparable to a traditional electric motor in efficiency. | Whether or not it's "technically" an electric motor, it's | operating on completely different principles. The first | things that come to mind are there are no moving parts to | generate friction and heat, and it requires much higher | voltage. Wouldn't those aspects alone swing the efficiency | one way or the other? | brianpan wrote: | Both use electromagnetic force to move something. They are | much more similar to each other than combustion, which is a | chemical reaction. | | https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/brushless-motor.htm | CSSer wrote: | It was a big guess for sure. To be clear, I don't know. I | did find this in my search, which suggests it's not | exponential[0], so it seems you're correct. There's a drop- | off at higher exhaust speeds, but it's unclear to me why | that is. | | [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster#Energy_effi | ciency | anonymousiam wrote: | These were popular decades ago, and were the focus of many an | argument over the basis in theory of how they worked. Many did | not understand that they depend on atmosphere to operate. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzZy1Aqleno | moron4hire wrote: | Oh man, I was just coming here to say that. | | I seem to remember first hearing about these "lifters" in | highschool, so that would have been late 1990s. But that | recollection is based solely on remembering the dumb friend I | had who thought it would be a good idea to try to make one, not | knowing anything about high voltage electricity. | | Luckily, we were also too distracted by video games to go | dumpster diving for a CRT or microwave transformer. | marginalia_nu wrote: | I can show MIT how to fold a sheet of paper to make a plane with | no moving parts. | xnorswap wrote: | That's a very "just used a pencil" type punchline. | Dylan16807 wrote: | I'd say a glider is more like having the words pre-printed on | the paper. Most of the elements of writing are there, but in | the wrong way. | nixpulvis wrote: | Would a paper airplane in a tornado (or nice thermal) count? | jacquesm wrote: | You can 'fly' semis in tornados, so no. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WABqwKjQM_c | judge2020 wrote: | This was done in 50's and 60's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion- | propelled_aircraft | | > The use of EHD propulsion for lift was studied by American | aircraft designer Major Alexander Prokofieff de Seversky in the | 1950s and 1960s. He filed a patent for an "ionocraft" in 1959. He | built and flew a model VTOL ionocraft capable of sideways | manoeuvring by varying the voltages applied in different areas, | although the heavy power supply remained external. | beanjuice wrote: | Heres an old video of one such example: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GijJmIz1G7U | teraflop wrote: | I think there's a big _qualitative_ difference between an | aircraft that can carry its own power source, and one that | needs to be tethered to the ground. | YeBanKo wrote: | Well, there is also a huge advancement in small power sources | since 60s | samizdis wrote: | Wow. Seversky was the guy advocating for long-range air power | in WWII. He wrote _Victory Through Air Power_ , which inspired | Disney to finance an animated film on the subject out of his | own pocket. Seversky appears in person in the film to introduce | some concepts. The film is just amazing. It was available as | part of a Disney DVD compilation quite a few years ago (Disney | in the Trenches? [edit to correct title of box set: it was | "Walt Disney Treasures - On the Front Lines"]). The standalone | film is on archive.org: | | https://archive.org/details/VictoryThroughAirPower | | Edit to add: Here's the Wikipedia page about _Victory Through | Air Power_ | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Through_Air_Power | | From the page: | | _Filmmaker Walt Disney read the book, and felt that its | message was so important that he would personally finance a | partly-animated short, also called Victory Through Air Power, | which was released in July 1943.[3] Disney 's purpose for | creating the film was to promote Seversky's theories to | government officials and the public. After seeing the film, | Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt decided that | Seversky knew what he was talking about, changing the course of | the war._ | danielmorozoff wrote: | This is exactly right, when I was in grad school we also | explored new ionization designs to reduce the voltage | requirements to achieve this. In our explorations, biggest | problems were weight and voltage issues. | | Very cool to see though, you can make this at home with a very | basic high voltage generator and a set of needles. | | Here's another design for DIY: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGq7LfjDyZM | thehappypm wrote: | Does this work because of the mass difference between electrons | and protons? | | If you separate an electron from an atom, charge is conserved, | mass in conserved. Apply an electric field, then you shoot the | ion one way and the electron the other. The heavy ion then acts | like propellant. Mass still conserved, charge still conserved. At | some point the electron is absorbed into some random ion | elsewhere and the ion grabs an electron from elsewhere. | pvaldes wrote: | Interesting. | | I wonder if this stuff would attract lightning | dwighttk wrote: | Hope it doesn't crash into anything | make3 wrote: | the video is really not convincing lol, it doesn't look like it's | doing much more than gliding from the initial launch force, which | is due to an external (moving) force. | | EDIT: ok this one is more convincing | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iihprC5Huf4 | jacquesm wrote: | I'm not buying that, that whine sounds just like a ducted fan | and there is a giant hole in the support base just where the | ducted fan needs to blow the air to avoid having that air | pushed sideways, if the lift was generated by the ionized air | it would be nearly silent. | thehappypm wrote: | The first video shows unpowered, just a little glide. Second | shows how it goes way further when powered | make3 wrote: | couldn't see those on my phone. Wish I could delete my | comment. | okasaki wrote: | Presumably there are moving parts involved, they are just too | small to see. | jdlshore wrote: | It operates by using a high voltage to strip electrons from | nitrogen atoms, then the opposite current to attract those ions | to the front surface of a wing. The movement of the ions causes | the air to move, which generates lift over the wing. | | So no, there's no moving parts involved in generating the lift. | strongpigeon wrote: | I think GP was making a joke that the ions are the moving | part. | ajoseps wrote: | this news is from 2018 | jonplackett wrote: | Ok but does it make enough lift for a flying saucer | exhilaration wrote: | Apparently, yes! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iihprC5Huf4 | jonplackett wrote: | Awesome! | anonu wrote: | Article from 2018 - how has the progress on this tech been over | the last 4 years? | | CUrious whether the physics can support much larger payloads. | makeworld wrote: | (2018) ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-06-30 23:00 UTC)