First ever plane with no moving parts takes flight

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] First ever plane with no moving parts takes flight
> Date: November 22, 2018 at 11:29:58 AM GMT+9
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> First ever plane with no moving parts takes flight
> Flight represents breakthrough that could lead eventually to carbon-neutral air travel
> By Alex Hern
> Nov 21 2018
> <https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/nov/21/first-ever-plane-with-no-moving-parts-takes-flight>
>
> The first ever “solid state” plane, with no moving parts in its propulsion system, has successfully flown for a 
> distance of 60 metres, proving that heavier-than-air flight is possible without jets or propellers.
>
> The flight represents a breakthrough in “ionic wind” technology, which uses a powerful electric field to generate 
> charged nitrogen ions, which are then expelled from the back of the aircraft, generating thrust.
>
> Steven Barrett, an aeronautics professor at MIT and the lead author of the study published in the journal Nature, 
> said the inspiration for the project came straight from the science fiction of his childhood. “I was a big fan of 
> Star Trek, and at that point I thought that the future looked like it should be planes that fly silently, with no 
> moving parts – and maybe have a blue glow. But certainly no propellers or turbines or anything like that. So I 
> started looking into what physics might make flight with no moving parts possible, and came across a concept known as 
> the ionic wind, with was first investigated in the 1920s.
>
> “This didn’t make much progress in that time. It was looked at again in the 1950s, and researchers concluded that it 
> couldn’t work for aeroplanes. But I started looking into this and went through a period of about five years, working 
> with a series of graduate students to improve fundamental understanding of how you could reduce ionic winds 
> efficiently, and how that could be optimised.”
>
> In the prototype plane, wires at the leading edge of the wing have 600 watts of electrical power pumped through them 
> at 40,000 volts. This is enough to induce “electron cascades”, ultimately charging air molecules near the wire. Those 
> charged molecules then flow along the electrical field towards a second wire at the back of the wing, bumping into 
> neutral air molecules on the way, and imparting energy to them. Those neutral air molecules then stream out of the 
> back of the plane, providing thrust.
>
> The end result is a propulsion system that is entirely electrically powered, almost silent, and with a 
> thrust-to-power ratio comparable to that achieved by conventional systems such as jet engines.
>
> Prof Guy Gratton, an aerospace engineer and visiting professor at Cranfield University, said: “It’s clearly very 
> early days: but the team at MIT have done something we never previously knew was possible in using accelerated 
> ionised gas to propel an aircraft. Aeronautical engineers around the world are already trying hard to find ways to 
> use electric propulsion, and this technology will offer something else that in the future may allow manned and 
> unmanned aircraft to be more efficient, and non-polluting. In particular, the fact that they have already got this 
> out of the laboratory, and flown a battery driven model aircraft – albeit so far on a very small and controlled scale 
> – is very exciting.”
>
> The successful flight of the plane – which has no name beyond the uninspiring “Version Two” – owes as much to the 
> engineering prowess required to make it as thin and light as possible as it does to the propulsion method itself. The 
> plane weighs just 2.45kg, but manages to fit in a five-metre wingspan, battery stack, and a high-voltage power 
> converter.
>
> In the immediate future, the MIT team hope to increase the range and speed of the plane, primarily by scaling up the 
> size of the overall machine. Potential applications in the short term include unmanned drones, where silent flight 
> may be beneficial, and high-altitude solar-powered flight, where the lack of moving parts could allow such a plane to 
> soar for years on end, acting as a pseudo-satellite.
>
> [snip]
>
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