Ion drive for aircraft imminent.

In sci.physics mike wrote:
On 11/2/2016 1:33 AM, Robert Baer wrote:
Robert Clark wrote:
Nanotechnology makes possible an "ion drive" for air vehicles analogous
to the famous ion drive of NASA's deep space probes:

Carbon nanotubes for "Ionic Wind" Craft or "Ionocraft".
Clark R*
Department of Mathematics, Widener University, USA
Review Article
Volume 1 Issue 2 / Received Date: September 26, 2016 / Published Date:
October 20, 2016
Abstract
Peter Thiel of the Founders Fund once famously said, "We wanted flying
cars, and we got 140 characters."But nanotechnology now does make
possible the long desired flying cars. It's a different propulsion
method though than propellers or jets however. It's propulsion by
electric fields known as electrohydrodynamic propulsion (EHD). It works
by ionizing air then using electric fields to propel the charged air
molecules rearward, thus producing thrust. It's quite analogous to the
famous space ion drive of NASA. EHD has been known at least since the
sixties. Its problem is, as with ion drive, the thrust is so low. So far
the EHD craft have not been able to lift both themselves and their power
supplies. The ones made so far leave the power supply on the ground and
connect to the craft through power cables. But the equations of EHD
suggest the thrust for the power required gets larger for thinner
ionizing wires. In fact if the wires are at the nanoscale then this
important thrust-to-power ratio can be a hundred times higher than for
the craft constructed so far. This would be enough to lift the craft and
the power supply. This research is to prove what the mathematics
suggests. Note that if it works then all propeller and rotor driven
craft become obsolete. Also, intermediate range automobile travel would
be taken over by the EHD craft, so a large proportion of
carbon-emissions would be eliminated, replaced by this zero-emission
travel method. In regards to space propulsion, since EHD is so similar
to ion drive, using components at the nanoscale may also work to improve
the thrust of ion drive. This would be important to shortening the
flight times of spacecraft using such drives. This is important not just
for robotic spacecraft but also satellites that use such ion drives to
reach their final GEO destinations. As it is now, the ion drives used
have such low thrust it takes months for such satellites to reach GEO,
resulting in millions of dollars of lost revenue to the satellite
companies. Being able to increase the thrust of these drives would
reduce the flight time, and therefore reduce this lost revenue.
Keywords: Electrohydrodynamic propulsion; Carbon nanotubes; Nanowires;
Ionic wind; Ionocraft; Plasma drive
https://medwinpublishers.com/NNOA/vo...=23&issueId=63

Bob Clark

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Finally, nanotechnology can now fulfill its potential to revolutionize
21st-century technology, from the space elevator, to private, orbital
launchers, to 'flying cars'.
This crowdfunding campaign is to prove it:

Nanotech: from air to space.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/n...ce/x/13319568/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


What is the Isp?

What good is ion drive?
If you want to get from here to there, you need an energy source
sufficient to accelerate/maintain/decelerate some mass.
Doesn't matter how you do it, you can't get there on less energy,
given current physics.

If you're in space with low friction losses, you can use an electric field
to accelerate a small mass to high velocity to generate thrust.
But you still have to have the energy source to drive it.
If you're not in a hurry and are close to a star, no problem.

A terrestrial vehicle like a flying car does not sound well
suited to ion drive. Just lifting it off the ground with
anything resembling thrust is a deal breaker in so many ways.

Being near an ion drive would literally be a hair raising experience
and likely to generate RFI far in excess of FCC standards.


--
Jim Pennino

In sci.physics Robert Clark wrote:
The commonly used name for these EHD devices made by amateurs is "lifters".
The problem with their not being able to fly independently is the power
supplies are so heavy. Look for example at the lifter he

How to: "Lifter" Power Supply.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfdsEVjBpBU

Quite commonly the lifters weigh, and the thrust they can produce, is in the
range of grams but the power supplies weigh in the range of kilograms. So
how do you solve that problem?

Let me give an analogy. Many people are aware of the technical innovations
the Wright brothers made to be able to develop a successful flying machine.
They made their own wind tunnel. They tested various air foils to find
efficient ones of high lift. They developed a warping wing technique for
steering.

However, not as well known is the one key innovation they made for which all
those other innovations would have been worthless. When many scientists of
the time after doing a mathematical analysis asserted that no heavier-than
air flying machine could work, oddly enough they were *right*. But the
problem was, they were basing this on the power sources widely known at the
time, steam engines. But the steam engines were so inefficient they could
not supply sufficient power for their weight. They were too heavy.

Around the time of the Wright brothers though the internal combustion
gasoline engine was coming into use for automobiles, but they were still too
heavy for the Wright brothers use. So the one *key* innovation the Wright
brothers made was that they designed and built their OWN lightweight
internal combustion engine.

Now, back to the EHD propulsion method. The power supplies are too heavy, so
what can we do about that? Well, you can make them out of lightweight
materials. That's a possible route to follow, but most amateur and even
professional experimenters have used ready made power supplies or used ready
made parts to build them. The result is they are all pretty standard weight
for the power they put out.

But let's analyze this further, *why* are the power supplies so heavy? It
turns out the reason they are so heavy is the voltage needed for the ion
propulsion method is in the range of tens of thousands of volts, frequently
as high as 50,000 volts. This then requires heavy transformers to produce
voltage this high. Alright then, can we find a way to reduce the required
voltage?

Yes! It turns out if you reduce the diameter of the wires doing the
ionization of the air then the required voltage is reduced. In fact,
according to the math if the wires are at the nanoscale then the required
voltage might be reduced to only tens of volts instead of tens of thousands
of volts. For the small-scale lifters, if you used now wires at the
nanoscale, it may be they could be powered by a couple of 9-volt batteries
connected in series.

So that's the key point, for nanowires the voltage required for ionization
is severely reduced. This is the content of Peek's Law:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peek%27s_law


Bob Clark

The total power required is fixed by physics which means nanoscale
wires in the power supply will melt due to I^2*R losses unless they
are also superconductors.

--
Jim Pennino

In sci.physics Robert Clark wrote:
Yes, that's a good example. Electric, battery-powered airplanes and
helicopters already exist.

As toys and research projects, but not as practical machines.

snip

--
Jim Pennino

"Robert Clark" wrote in
:

As mentioned previously, battery-powered airplanes and
helicopters do exist. The ionic propulsion will likewise be
battery-powered but at a more efficient power usage, if the
ionizing wires are at the nanoscale.

The greater efficiency for ionic propulsion with nanoscale wires
can be confirmed with any wires at the nanoscale, not just
carbon nanotubes. For example, the intense fields created by
nanoscale wires in microcircuitry boards is well-known to those
in the field. So anyone who has familiarity working with
microcircuitry boards with nanoscale wiring could confirm this.

And that's all that's required. That in itself would be the game
changer. Even if it's only done on a model the size of a model
airplane, once it's shown that nanoscale wiring for ionic
propulsion produced better power-to-thrust ratio than
helicopters, that would be sufficient for this to supplant
helicopters as a hovering transport method.

Bob Clark


-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Finally, nanotechnology can now fulfill its potential to
revolutionize 21st-century technology, from the space elevator,
to private, orbital launchers, to 'flying cars'.
This crowdfunding campaign is to prove it:

Nanotech: from air to space.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/n...r-to-space/x/1
3319568/
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy" wrote in message
...

"Robert Clark" wrote in
:

Nanotechnology makes possible an "ion drive" for air vehicles
analogous to the famous ion drive of NASA's deep space probes:

Carbon nanotubes for "Ionic Wind" Craft or "Ionocraft".
Clark R*
Department of Mathematics, Widener University, USA
Review Article
Volume 1 Issue 2 / Received Date: September 26, 2016 /
Published Date: October 20, 2016
Abstract
Peter Thiel of the Founders Fund once famously said, "We wanted
flying cars, and we got 140 characters."But nanotechnology now
does make possible the long desired flying cars.

The reason we don't have flying cars has nothing to do with the
method of propulsion. We've *had* flying cars for decades. And
this will do nothing to make them a) cheaper, b) easier to fly,
or c) safer when there are tens of millions of them in the air
at once.

Note that if it works then all propeller
and rotor driven craft become obsolete.

Just like all propeller and rotor drive craft became obsolete
when jet engeins were invented. Sure.

Also, intermediate range
automobile travel would be taken over by the EHD craft,

Effectively, jet powered cars? Because it sounds like there will
be a high speed exhaust of _some_ kind behind the vehicle. Which
makes it . . . unlikely.

Plus, two orders of magnitude increase in thrust to weight from
current ion engines isn't even close to what a car needs.

so a
large proportion of carbon-emissions would be eliminated,
replaced by this zero-emission travel method.

The electricity has to come from _somewhere_.

As is usual, nearly universal, with all announcement of
revolutionary new technologies, this reads more like a
prospectus for investors than anything else. Which is to say, he
wants to invest a whole lof of other people's money into finding
out if it works.

If he really believed it would work, he'd invest his own money,
and keep _all_ the profits himself.

None of that adds up to flying cars. Again, the reason we don't
have flying cars has nothing to do with propulsion systems. We've
*had* flying cars for nearly a century.

--
Terry Austin

Vacation photos from Iceland:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/collection/QaXQkB

"Terry Austin: like the polio vaccine, only with more asshole."
-- David Bilek

Jesus forgives sinners, not criminals.

On Thu, 3 Nov 2016 09:16:52 -0400, "Robert Clark"
wrote:

....

Get back to us when Honda is selling flying cars.

And note that top-posting is an email thing, discouraged on usenet.




--
* Windows Live Mail just can't quote! Luckily, I have found this:
* http://www.dusko-lolic.from.hr/wlmquote/

I was using, lamentably, Windows Live Mail, for my newsreader. This
unfortunately does not allow you to put
a '' symbol before quoted responses. This makes it harder to understand
which part in the message is your response
and which is the previous post. So I was top-posting because my signature
line made it easier to distinguish the two.

However, after doing a web search and finding many people having the same
complaint about Windows Live Mail, I
found a work-around at the site http://www.dusko-lolic.from.hr/wlmquote/.

Bob Clark

I was using, lamentably, Windows Live Mail, for my newsreader. This
unfortunately does not allow you to put
a '' symbol before quoted responses. This makes it harder to understand
which part in the message is your response
and which is the previous post. So I was top-posting because my signature
line made it easier to distinguish the two.

However, after doing a web search and finding many people having the same
complaint about Windows Live Mail, I
found a work-around at the site http://www.dusko-lolic.from.hr/wlmquote/.

Bob Clark

---


Unfortunately I just realized the default version of this script does not
include your signature file.
So I'll have to customize it. More work.

Bob Clark


--

* Windows Live Mail just can't quote! Luckily, I have found this:
* http://www.dusko-lolic.from.hr/wlmquote/

"Robert Clark" wrote:


I was using, lamentably, Windows Live Mail, for my newsreader. This
unfortunately does not allow you to put
a '' symbol before quoted responses. This makes it harder to understand
which part in the message is your response
and which is the previous post. So I was top-posting because my signature
line made it easier to distinguish the two.

However, after doing a web search and finding many people having the same
complaint about Windows Live Mail, I
found a work-around at the site http://www.dusko-lolic.from.hr/wlmquote/.


Unfortunately I just realized the default version of this script does not
include your signature file.
So I'll have to customize it. More work.


Wouldn't it be simpler to just get a real newsreader? It's not like
they're all that hard to find.


--
"Some people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory."
--G. Behn

....

What is the Isp?

---

Quite slow if you're thinking in comparison to ion space drives. it's in the
range of a few tens of meters per second, recalling from memory for the
"lifters" that have been made by amateur experimenters.

Bob Clark

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally, nanotechnology can now fulfill its potential to revolutionize
21st-century technology, from the space elevator, to private, orbital
launchers, to 'flying cars'.
This crowdfunding campaign is to prove it:

Nanotech: from air to space.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/n...ce/x/13319568/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On 11/3/2016 10:41 AM, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 3 Nov 2016 09:48:31 -0400, "Robert Clark"
wrote:

The commonly used name for these EHD devices made by amateurs is
"lifters". The problem with their not being able to fly
independently is the power supplies are so heavy. Look for example
at the lifter he

How to: "Lifter" Power Supply.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfdsEVjBpBU

Quite commonly the lifters weigh, and the thrust they can produce,
is in the range of grams but the power supplies weigh in the range
of kilograms. So how do you solve that problem?




Now, back to the EHD propulsion method. The power supplies are too
heavy, so what can we do about that? Well, you can make them out of
lightweight materials. That's a possible route to follow, but most
amateur and even professional experimenters have used ready made
power supplies or used ready made parts to build them. The result
is they are all pretty standard weight for the power they put out.

But let's analyze this further, *why* are the power supplies so
heavy? It turns out the reason they are so heavy is the voltage
needed for the ion propulsion method is in the range of tens of
thousands of volts, frequently as high as 50,000 volts. This then
requires heavy transformers to produce voltage this high. Alright
then, can we find a way to reduce the required voltage?

High-voltage power supplies don't need heavy transformers. But they
do need a source of power. I doubt that an ion thruster could lift
its own batteries for five minutes even if the power converter
weighs zero.



Yes! It turns out if you reduce the diameter of the wires doing the
ionization of the air then the required voltage is reduced. In
fact, according to the math if the wires are at the nanoscale then
the required voltage might be reduced to only tens of volts instead
of tens of thousands of volts. For the small-scale lifters, if you
used now wires at the nanoscale, it may be they could be powered by
a couple of 9-volt batteries connected in series.

Again, you won't get enough lift to support those two batteries, and
they would be dead in minutes anyhow.

The tiny tips would erode rapidly, too.

Don't top post on usenet.

An ion thruster is a form of electric propulsion used for spacecraft
propulsion. It creates thrust by accelerating ions with electricity.
The term refers strictly to gridded electrostatic ion thrusters, but
may more loosely be applied to all electric propulsion systems that
accelerate plasma, since plasma consists of ions.


wiki (note the last line)
Ion thrusters are categorized by how they accelerate the ions, using
either electrostatic or electromagnetic force. Electrostatic thrusters
use the Coulomb force and accelerate the ions in the direction of the
electric field. Electromagnetic thrusters use the Lorentz force. In
either case, when an ion passes through an electrostatic grid engine,
the potential difference of the electric field converts to the ion's
kinetic energy.

Ion thrusters have an input power spanning 1–7 kW, exhaust velocity
20–50 km/s, thrust 25–250 millinewtons and efficiency 65–80%.[1][2]

The Deep Space 1 spacecraft, powered by an ion thruster, changed
velocity by 4300 m/s while consuming less than 74 kilograms of xenon.
The Dawn spacecraft broke the record, reaching 10,000 m/s.[1][2]

Applications include control of the orientation and position of orbiting
satellites (some satellites have dozens of low-power ion thrusters) and
use as a main propulsion engine for low-mass robotic space vehicles (for
example Deep Space 1 and Dawn).[1][2]

The ion thruster is not the most promising type of electrically powered
spacecraft propulsion (although the most successful in practice).[2] An
ion drive would require two days to accelerate a car to highway speed.
The technical characteristics, especially thrust, are considerably
inferior to the prototypes described in literature,[1][2] technical
capabilities are limited by the space charge created by ions. This
limits the thrust density (force per cross-sectional area of the
engine).[2] Ion thrusters create small thrust levels (the thrust of Deep
Space 1 is approximately equal to the weight of one sheet of paper[2])
compared to conventional chemical rockets, but achieve high specific
impulse, or propellant mass efficiency, by accelerating the exhaust to
high speed. The power imparted to the exhaust increases with the square
of exhaust velocity while thrust increase is linear. Conversely,
chemical rockets provide high thrust, but are limited in total impulse
by the small amount of energy that can be stored chemically in the
propellants.[3] Given the practical weight of suitable power sources,
the acceleration from an ion thruster is frequently less than one
thousandth of standard gravity. However, since they operate as electric
(or electrostatic) motors, they convert a greater fraction of input
power into kinetic exhaust power. Chemical rockets operate as heat
engines, and Carnot's theorem limits the exhaust velocity.

Ion thrust engines are practical only in the vacuum of space and cannot
take vehicles through the atmosphere because ion engines do not work in
the presence of ions outside the engine. Spacecraft rely on conventional
chemical rockets to initially reach orbit.



It's analogous to ion drive in that it ionizes a gas then uses electric
fields to direct the charged gas molecules backwards to provide thrust.

For ion space drives you want the propellant to accelerate to high speed to
achieve high exhaust velocity. This means you can achieve high speed for the
spacecraft with a small amount of propellant according to the rocket
equation. This requires though a high amount of power to generate those high
exhaust speeds.

For the corresponding air vehicle propulsion you don't want the air
accelerated speeds to be high because you would be going at slow speed for
the vehicle or just hovering. This can generate higher thrust with a reduced
exhaust velocity.

This video explains their operation:

How Ion Propulsion, Lifters and Ionocrafts Work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01F8V5IhB5k

I like this one because the experimenter attached the ion drive device to a
model of the Enterprise(!)

Bob Clark

--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally, nanotechnology can now fulfill its potential to revolutionize
21st-century technology, from the space elevator, to private, orbital
launchers, to 'flying cars'.
This crowdfunding campaign is to prove it:

Nanotech: from air to space.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/n...ce/x/13319568/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In sci.physics Robert Clark wrote:

snip

It's analogous to ion drive in that it ionizes a gas then uses electric
fields to direct the charged gas molecules backwards to provide thrust.

For ion space drives you want the propellant to accelerate to high speed to
achieve high exhaust velocity. This means you can achieve high speed for the
spacecraft with a small amount of propellant according to the rocket
equation. This requires though a high amount of power to generate those high
exhaust speeds.

For the corresponding air vehicle propulsion you don't want the air
accelerated speeds to be high because you would be going at slow speed for
the vehicle or just hovering. This can generate higher thrust with a reduced
exhaust velocity.

The power required to fly by aircraft is the same no matter the motive
source.

A small 4 place aircraft typically has about a 140 kW engine, a small
2 place helicopter double that.

--
Jim Pennino