Ion drive for aircraft imminent.

"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.



Using the Windows newsreader mostly out of familiarity. What do you
recommend for a newsreader?

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:
As mentioned previously, battery-powered airplanes and helicopters do
exist.

As research toys; there are not as yet any electric airplanes or
helicopters
that could be called practical in any sense of the word.

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.

An intense field does not automatically means motive power.

Are you saying microcircuitry boards have to be lashed down to keep
them from flying away?

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.

Yeah, sure.

You do know the tips of such ion generators burn away and the smaller the
tip the faster they burn?

Bob Clark



In regards to the mode of operation, the lifters don't operate via electron
emission. The air molecule ion production is due to the intense electric
fields around the high voltage wires, a known phenomenon among electrical
engineers called corona discharge or electrical breakdown. The wires are
usually horizontal for most lifters and the corona field is generated around
the length of the horizontal wires, not at the tips of the wires. There
versions of the lifters that use the ionization around the end tips or
wires, but this is also due to the intense field strength there, not
electron emission.

The corona in small diameter wires in electronic devices is limited by the
coatings placed on the wires. In the lifters, the wires used are uncoated.

A recent paper showed for nanowires at diameters in the range of 100 nm, the
corona discharge in air arises at voltages of only about 100 V/m. This is
compared to the 3,000,000 V/m normally found in air for macroscale wires:

Nanoscale Res Lett. 2016; 11: 90.
Published online 2016 Feb 16. doi: 10.1186/s11671-015-1217-4
ZnO Nanowire-Based Corona Discharge Devices Operated Under Hundreds of
Volts.
Wenming Yang, Rong Zhu,corresponding author and Xianli Zong
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4754239/ [free full text]

This doesn’t show you can get thrust at these lower voltages, but the
results on the air ionization are in accordance to what the mathematics
predicts. And the air ionization is what generates the thrust.
New ideas should be subjected to critical review. But that critical review
should include testing to see if they actually work.

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:
In sci.physics Robert Clark wrote:
As mentioned previously, battery-powered airplanes and helicopters do
exist.

As research toys; there are not as yet any electric airplanes or
helicopters
that could be called practical in any sense of the word.

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.

An intense field does not automatically means motive power.

Are you saying microcircuitry boards have to be lashed down to keep
them from flying away?

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.

Yeah, sure.

You do know the tips of such ion generators burn away and the smaller the
tip the faster they burn?

Bob Clark



In regards to the mode of operation, the lifters don't operate via electron
emission. The air molecule ion production is due to the intense electric
fields around the high voltage wires, a known phenomenon among electrical
engineers called corona discharge or electrical breakdown. The wires are
usually horizontal for most lifters and the corona field is generated around
the length of the horizontal wires, not at the tips of the wires. There
versions of the lifters that use the ionization around the end tips or
wires, but this is also due to the intense field strength there, not
electron emission.

Also the end tips of sewing needles as they have a tiny tip and being
steel more resistant to end erosion and are cheap.

The corona in small diameter wires in electronic devices is limited by the
coatings placed on the wires. In the lifters, the wires used are uncoated.

If you have corona you have electron emmision by definition and with
electron emmision you get tip erosion.

A recent paper showed for nanowires at diameters in the range of 100 nm, the
corona discharge in air arises at voltages of only about 100 V/m. This is
compared to the 3,000,000 V/m normally found in air for macroscale wires:

Hardly a surprise.

Why do you think Van de Graaff generators are topped by a big, round,
smooth ball?

Did you ever do the high school experiment where you scotch tape a
thumbtack to a Van de Graaff generator?

Nanoscale Res Lett. 2016; 11: 90.
Published online 2016 Feb 16. doi: 10.1186/s11671-015-1217-4
ZnO Nanowire-Based Corona Discharge Devices Operated Under Hundreds of
Volts.
Wenming Yang, Rong Zhu,corresponding author and Xianli Zong
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4754239/ [free full text]

This doesnt show you can get thrust at these lower voltages, but the
results on the air ionization are in accordance to what the mathematics
predicts. And the air ionization is what generates the thrust.
New ideas should be subjected to critical review. But that critical review
should include testing to see if they actually work.

Bob Clark

Again, tip erosion, RFI, and total power required.


--
Jim Pennino

In article ,
says...

Using the Windows newsreader mostly out of familiarity. What do you
recommend for a newsreader?

I'm using MicroPlanet Gravity as my newsreader. It is o.k. The
"killfile" is called the "bozo bin", but that's pretty self explanatory.
It displays messages in a threaded hierarchy, which is nice. Quotes
properly for a newsreader. And was fairly easy to set up and get used
to.

Jeff
--
All opinions posted by me on Usenet News are mine, and mine alone.
These posts do not reflect the opinions of my family, friends,
employer, or any organization that I am a member of.

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?

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?

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.



If you know of a means to provide 50,000 V at *lightweight* then you will
have solved the problem of an independently flying lifter, using the
macrosized wires currently used. You would need about a power to weight
ratio for the power source of better than 1 watt per gram, while being able
to provide these ca. 50,000 V voltages.

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

If you know of a means to provide 50,000 V at *lightweight* then you will
have solved the problem of an independently flying lifter, using the
macrosized wires currently used. You would need about a power to weight
ratio for the power source of better than 1 watt per gram, while being able
to provide these ca. 50,000 V voltages.

Bob Clark

Trivial; look at any camera flash unit built in the last several decades.

However you have totally missed the point; voltage and the weight of the
converter is irrelevant as it is the total power that determines the
weight of it all.

BTW, here are some real world power to weight ratios:

Boeing 777 engine 10 kW/kg
1985 Chevy Celebrity 300 W/kg
Lithium-ion battery 85 W/kg
nickel-metal battery 116 W/kg
zinc air fuel cell 500 W/kg


--
Jim Pennino

On 11/07/2016 01:37 PM, wrote:
In sci.physics Robert Clark wrote:

snip

If you know of a means to provide 50,000 V at *lightweight* then you will
have solved the problem of an independently flying lifter, using the
macrosized wires currently used. You would need about a power to weight
ratio for the power source of better than 1 watt per gram, while being able
to provide these ca. 50,000 V voltages.

Bob Clark

Trivial; look at any camera flash unit built in the last several decades.

However you have totally missed the point; voltage and the weight of the
converter is irrelevant as it is the total power that determines the
weight of it all.

BTW, here are some real world power to weight ratios:

Boeing 777 engine 10 kW/kg
1985 Chevy Celebrity 300 W/kg -- So for a 1000 kg car, that's 402
horsepower? Sign me up!

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

In sci.physics Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 11/07/2016 01:37 PM, wrote:
In sci.physics Robert Clark wrote:

snip

If you know of a means to provide 50,000 V at *lightweight* then you will
have solved the problem of an independently flying lifter, using the
macrosized wires currently used. You would need about a power to weight
ratio for the power source of better than 1 watt per gram, while being able
to provide these ca. 50,000 V voltages.

Bob Clark

Trivial; look at any camera flash unit built in the last several decades.

However you have totally missed the point; voltage and the weight of the
converter is irrelevant as it is the total power that determines the
weight of it all.

BTW, here are some real world power to weight ratios:

Boeing 777 engine 10 kW/kg
1985 Chevy Celebrity 300 W/kg -- So for a 1000 kg car, that's 402
horsepower? Sign me up!

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

No, that is the power to weight ratio of the engine, not the power to
weight ratio of the car.


--
Jim Pennino

On 11/7/2016 1:46 PM, wrote:
In sci.physics Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 11/07/2016 01:37 PM, wrote:
In sci.physics Robert Clark wrote:

snip

If you know of a means to provide 50,000 V at *lightweight* then you will
have solved the problem of an independently flying lifter, using the
macrosized wires currently used. You would need about a power to weight
ratio for the power source of better than 1 watt per gram, while being able
to provide these ca. 50,000 V voltages.

Bob Clark

Trivial; look at any camera flash unit built in the last several decades.

However you have totally missed the point; voltage and the weight of the
converter is irrelevant as it is the total power that determines the
weight of it all.

BTW, here are some real world power to weight ratios:

Boeing 777 engine 10 kW/kg
1985 Chevy Celebrity 300 W/kg -- So for a 1000 kg car, that's 402
horsepower? Sign me up!

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

No, that is the power to weight ratio of the engine, not the power to
weight ratio of the car.


Power is a red herring. What's important is the total energy produced
by the
engine AND the fuel supply.
It doesn't get the least bit interesting until the engine can lift
itself and a FULL tank of whatever powers it AND the vehicle AND the
payload to reach the destination.
I can't imagine that ever happening 1000 feet off the ground on this ole
earth at a cost anywhere near the cost of other forms of transportation.

Stick it in space where you have solar or nuclear energy and you don't
care how
long it takes to get there or what it costs and you have something.

In sci.physics mike wrote:
On 11/7/2016 1:46 PM, wrote:
In sci.physics Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 11/07/2016 01:37 PM, wrote:
In sci.physics Robert Clark wrote:

snip

If you know of a means to provide 50,000 V at *lightweight* then you will
have solved the problem of an independently flying lifter, using the
macrosized wires currently used. You would need about a power to weight
ratio for the power source of better than 1 watt per gram, while being able
to provide these ca. 50,000 V voltages.

Bob Clark

Trivial; look at any camera flash unit built in the last several decades.

However you have totally missed the point; voltage and the weight of the
converter is irrelevant as it is the total power that determines the
weight of it all.

BTW, here are some real world power to weight ratios:

Boeing 777 engine 10 kW/kg
1985 Chevy Celebrity 300 W/kg -- So for a 1000 kg car, that's 402
horsepower? Sign me up!

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

No, that is the power to weight ratio of the engine, not the power to
weight ratio of the car.


Power is a red herring. What's important is the total energy produced
by the
engine AND the fuel supply.
It doesn't get the least bit interesting until the engine can lift
itself and a FULL tank of whatever powers it AND the vehicle AND the
payload to reach the destination.
I can't imagine that ever happening 1000 feet off the ground on this ole
earth at a cost anywhere near the cost of other forms of transportation.

Are you trying to say airplanes aren't going to make it in the commercial
world?


--
Jim Pennino