Imagine an aircraft engine with no moving parts; no prop, no turbine, no contrails. Engineers at MIT have been working on a means of propulsion that sucks in air molecules, gives them an electric charge and then fires them out the back. Steven Barrett, the engineer pushing the concept, has already come up with a design that has flown 200 at 11 mph.
Scientific America-
“Before we started the test flights I thought it had maybe a 50–50 chance,” he says. “My colleague at MIT thought it was more like a 1 percent chance it would work.”
But unlike its predecessors, which had tumbled to the ground, Version 2 sailed nearly 200 feet through the air at roughly 11 miles per hour (17 kilometers per hour). With no visible exhaust and no roaring jet or whirling propeller—no moving parts at all, in fact—the aircraft seemed silently animated by an ethereal source. “It was very exciting,” Barrett says. “Then it crashed into the wall, which wasn’t ideal.”
There sure are some clever, creative people out there. Not everything works, but they are out there trying.
If humans could make obama a president, they’re capable of anything.
Ion thruster drive is an old idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster .
“Origins : The first person to mention the idea publicly was Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1911.[6] However, the first document to consider electric propulsion is Robert H. Goddard’s handwritten notebook in an entry dated September 6, 1906.[7]
The first experiments with ion thrusters were carried out by Goddard at Clark University from 1916–1917.[8] The technique was recommended for near-vacuum conditions at high altitude, but thrust was demonstrated with ionized air streams at atmospheric pressure.
The idea appeared again in Hermann Oberth’s “Wege zur Raumschiffahrt” (Ways to Spaceflight), published in 1923, where he explained his thoughts on the mass savings of electric propulsion, predicted its use in spacecraft propulsion and attitude control, and advocated electrostatic acceleration of charged gasses.[6]..”
I doubt Harley-Davidson has an R&D team investigating it’s future use for motorcycles.
Should work very well for clearing insects out of the flight path too.
Not to throw the damp towel, but are they sure it wasn’t just a great big glider? Could they actually measure thrust from the engine exhaust?
“It was very exciting,” Barrett says. “Then it crashed into the wall, which wasn’t ideal.”
Love it.
Hey Wally! I hoid it quit cuz of a loose Homotron.
Whutz a Homotron Beave?
A Homotron is a Gay electron that runs around blowing fuses.
Already been done.
https://www.videoranch3d.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=1000-013