Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Engineers at the Massachusetts University of Technology have built an ion-powered plane that flies without propellers or turbines, and requires no fossil fuel.
Instead, the plane is powered by an "ionic wind", or electro-aerodynamic thrust. This comes from the movement of ions – electrically charged atoms or molecules.
In a world first, the MIT team flew their plane, which has no moving parts and looks like a glider, across a 60-metre gym.
The gif they provide does not show it flying across the 60m gym, but a few yards only. This is still impressive, but hardly as dramatic as 60m.
Looked like it was launched off the stand. There's a couple of vertical brackets it sits on that seem to propel it hard enough to glide as far as it did. Even a simple glider would go farther.
Ion propulsion is extremely weak and probably has no practical use except for very, very light craft (on the order of balsa model aircraft) or in space.
Well, first of all, if you were to have an actual aircraft, you would have other moving parts for example ailerons and stabilizer surfaces. So the accurate title would be "airplane propulsion system without moving parts".
Secondly, the ramjet also has no moving parts (as far as I know) and it was invented in 1913 (per Wikipedia, so you know it's guaranteed accurate) and made practical around 1939 or so.
Looked like it was launched off the stand. There's a couple of vertical brackets it sits on that seem to propel it hard enough to glide as far as it did. Even a simple glider would go farther.
Voodoo science.
Early technological inventions are always going to seem impractical and/or dubious.
Early technological inventions are always going to seem impractical and/or dubious.
Very dubious when the actual propulsion seems to be a catapult. Show me the same little plane balanced on the end of a platform "flying" under it's own power off the end of it and not falling straight down.
Suspend it from a horizontal bar with string and turn it on. If it moves, okay. If not, Voodoo.
Early technological inventions are always going to seem impractical and/or dubious.
Ion propulsion is hardly new. It's been around for at least 50 years. And it was long ago discovered to have so little propulsive force that it's only good for maneuvering spacecraft. Small ones. That someone managed to make a very small, very light plane move with it doesn't really mean much.
Early technological inventions are always going to seem impractical and/or dubious.
Yes, and some of them remain so.
For example, the human powered aircraft. It will remain a barely-achievable item only functioning at the level of expensive prototypes under perfect conditions, until someone manages to increase the long term sustainable power output of a human from 1/4HP to something more like 15 HP, or until the laws of physics change.
Be interesting to watch. The question is one of materials and such. Containing high voltage fields in small areas is a hard problem. That stuff gets treacherous as you get up to fields capable of accelerating the ions to suitable energy levels. I would guess however they will be able to fly small things...but can they get to propulsion densities that would support larger devices?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
