Case file · Government program
MIT's ion-wind aeroplane
Steven Barrett's team at MIT flew a 5-metre glider about 60 metres indoors on electrohydrodynamic thrust: the first sustained flight with no moving propulsion parts (Nature, November 2018).
2018 CE · 42.36, -71.09 · status: explained
The account
It is a real descendant of the force Brown measured, explained by ions pushing air rather than by gravity. Barrett said it was 'still some way away from an aircraft that could perform a useful mission'. The 2020 Zheng review cites Masuyama and Barrett (2013), the MIT group's earlier analysis, for EHD thrust-to-power ratios of tens of newtons per kilowatt, higher than jet engines in that one measure, even though overall energy efficiency is low (p.14).
Connections in the atlas
- Thomas Townsend Brown
- The Coolidge tube that seemed to change weight
- The 'gravitator' patent and the Biefeld–Brown effect
- Naval Research Laboratory and the S-48 gravity expedition
- Project Winterhaven
- Tests in Paris for SNCASO
- The 'gravitics' boom and the Electrogravitics Systems report
- Brown founds NICAP
- The Bahnson laboratory (Whitehall-Rand)
- The electrokinetic patents
- Rock electricity on Catalina Island
- The lifter tests: ARL, NASA and Tajmar