Talk:Ionocraft

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[edit] Future plans

This is a project of mine, I will be adding to it over the next few months in small pieces. Please bear with me as I have to learn many new ways of writing to build this page. Any suggestions and or questions are welcome. Any offers of help are also welcome.--JetJon 06:51, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

Well done, JetJon. Glad to see a scientific treatment of these neat toys, rather than more of Naudin's pseudoscience. --Ben 18.4.2.3 (talk • contribs)

[edit] Rename

Can it be renamed lifter (device) or lifter (ionic) or something shorter? — Omegatron 12:29, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

lifter (device) is too ambiguous, but I like lifter (ionic). -- Scott eiπ 07:46, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
I made a small edit at the start of the article to imply "Lifter" as that is what they tend to be called. Alan2here 15:02, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
86.198.119.155 really needs to LOG IN before making big edits. somone else (not me) reverted his edit, was a bid odd for the article to change so much twice in such a short time. Alan2here 15:23, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

or Lifter (propulsion) or Lifter (thruster), or ... — Omegatron 20:23, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

or even Ionocraft? Or is that a specific subtype? — Omegatron 16:30, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

The term Ionocraft has been well established and in use as from 1960's and so is the best to replace the lifter term. The lifter shape (triangle) falls within the scope of De Severski's Ionocraft patent. The term lifter is quite umbiguous, and is highly related to the (now defunct??) Transdimensional technology, and to JLN's lifters, both of whom own websites are aimed at promoting the lifter as an antigravity device, which goes against the content of Wiki's lifter page. — Blaze Labs Research 16:56, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

It's not perfect, but I would agree with moving Lifter (ionic propulsion device) to Ionocraft. If no one objects, I'll do it in a few days. — Omegatron 18:00, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
It looks like T T Brown's patents predated DeSeversky by 30 years, though. — Omegatron 19:49, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
We could use NASA's "Asymmetrical Capacitor Thruster", but I don't like that name, either. It's not really a capacitor. — Omegatron 19:54, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
There are 2 problems with T T Brown's patents : (1) In most of them he gives no explanation for the effect, and describes it as an unknown effect. This can be clearly understood from other (patented) experiments he wrote in the same period. Remember EHD studies were yet to begin during those years, and Brown was one of the first people who explored the yet unclear electrokinetic effect. (2) He did not actually give any qualitative name or functional description to these devices.
It was not until DeSeversky that Brown's devices had been totally explained in terms of hydrodynamics.
I am totally against the asymmetrical cap thruster description. Believe it or not, at the time of print of that patent, NASA was still confused on the effect (thanks to American antigravity press-panic), and was still preparing to carry out it's own vacuum test to see whether the so called lifter or their own asymmetric device would work in vacuum. (due to their obvious interest to use such devices for space propulsion). Read this : http://blazelabs.com/nasatest.pdf
The asymmetric feature is an inherent part of any air ioniser, and does not necessarily result in any EHD thrust (for example in a wire to cylinder configuration). At least, following our own hard vacuum test, together with their own test, the right conclusion was accepted by Nasa, but they had left the somewhat ellusive patent hanging around. So, the first qualitative description and proper naming of the device was actually given by De Severski with the Ionocraft term. - Blaze Labs Research 06:41, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
NASA's understanding of the effect is irrelevant to the use of the term, and their vacuum test is just as appropriate as your own (trying to reproduce an experiment is a good thing, especially when previous experiments have inconclusively reported anomalous results).
But I don't like the term "asymmetrical capacitor" because, from an electrical engineer's perspective, it's not a capacitor. Capacitors have an insulating dielectric between the electrodes, while the thrusters allow a current to flow between them. But maybe from a physicist's perspective, any two conductors form a capacitor, regardless of whether a current can flow between them?
Ionocraft still sounds like the best title so far. — Omegatron 16:23, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

There was an excellent write up on ionocrafts in August 1964 issue of Popular Mechanics. I'm trying to retreive this article, in order to make it accessible to the general public, so if anybody still has access to the original copy, kindly let me know. - Blaze Labs Research 07:26, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

A google search finds this copy. — Omegatron 15:15, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Shooting down and Ionocraft

Incidentally, they claim the grid of electrodes would be less susceptible to damage, comparing it to broken helicopter blades, but wouldn't an aircraft like this be trivial to knock down by shooting conductive strings at it? Carbon fiber bombs were supposedly used to short out power plants and substations in Iraq. — Omegatron 15:15, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

In fact that's the only site you will find most of its content. About 6 years ago, Mark (the owner of that site) had a full scan of the whole article online but he had to remove it due to high traffic. Today I have ordered an original copy of the '64 issue,which should arrive here in a week or so. Shooting conductive strings could surely get the craft in trouble. The remedy for such a situation is to split the power to ionocraft into sectors, so that damage or short circuiting to one sector does not effect the rest. Also, I think that in the context of that article he means that since it's not a solid body, a missile can pass straight through it, without completely destroying the craft. Also, other flying machines like a helicopter have multiple vulnerable localised parts, like the 2 blades, the fuel tank, the body.... whilst an ionocraft might take a lot of shooting before one either hits its power supply or completely shorts out its electrodes. Also, new high power UV lasers might be used to replace the corona wires, which will make the 'electrodes' virtually indestructible. - Blaze Labs Research 12:18, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

You're right; a UV laser could be much better at shorting out the electrodes and shooting down the aircraft.  ;-) — Omegatron 13:00, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
You must have really impressive warrior skills :-) - Blaze Labs Research 16:35, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
In real life, of course, they'd just use the same missiles they use to hit jets. Yeah, maybe a bullet would slip through the electrodes with no problem, but it would slip through the rotors of a helicopter, too. The problem is when an guided missile explodes in the general vicinity of the cockpit or power source. Electrode arrays instead of rotors aren't going to help much. But this is all besides the point. Back to the article. — Omegatron 17:28, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

The article looks much better now, even though some things still appear twice. Shouldn't we take off the rename/move notice shown at the top of this discussion page? - Blaze Labs Research 20:53, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Recent Developments

Research at the University of Memphis have shown that the device works in a vacuum just as it would in air. New data needs to be added, as the current information has become outdated. I will do some research on the matter, and make some calls. Hopefully I can get enough information to add to Wiki.

Breakdecks (talk • contribs)

To me this sounds very unlikely since numerious independent investigations have shown that it does not work in a vacuum. Probably the most prominant is one done by R.L.Talley for the U.S. Air Force in 1991 called 'The Twenty First Century Propulsion Concept'. This included extensive investigation into specific asymmetrical capacitor design and found that at 19kV there was no detectable thrust in a vacuum.
There is also a more recent investigation led by Dr Jonathan W.Campbell into NACAP design published in 2004 for NASA at the Marshell Space Flight Centre called 'Barrel-Shaped Asymmetrical Capacitor'. This found that in both soft (1 torr) and hard (10E-7 torr) vacuum conditions, no performance was observed. Even upto potentials above 50kV. ---Michael Rodriguez 194.247.243.165 (talk • contribs)

[edit] Future projections - autonomous thrusters

Just to clarify, there has been a bit of edit-jockeying over the following claim: "a fully autonomous EHD thruster is theoretically possible, and possibly already conceived". Fans of ionic propulsion take note: exciting though this phemomena might be, this kind of speculation is worthless. I can conceive of a future where all disease is cureable. Conception is one thing, application another! Please don't make vague assumptions like this on WP. Beerathon 21:33, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Blaze Labs recently added an "autonomous" thruster that uses helium to balance out the weight of the supply. I'm going to remove it.
The thruster and power supply could be removed completely and the device would still float upwards if you put enough helium in it. It's cheating, in other words, and not what is meant by the term "autonomous". — Omegatron 18:18, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Omegatron. I agree with your edits. This page still needs a lot of clean up and better grammar. Please note that when I mentioned the 'autonomous' thruster, I clearly specified it was a hybrid model (original quote : One such hybrid remote controlled model was developed in year 2002 by Blaze Labs Research which used helium to balance the weight of its lightweight on-board power supply, and a rotating EHD thrust panel to lift and manouver the thruster). So, I wouldn't declare it as cheating, but still, I will agree with you, to reserve the term 'autonomous' to the non-hybrid version that would hopefully be developed in future - just to eliminate any confusion, as there is enough confusion on this subject as a whole.

Now, about the dubious part, whether or not, an autonomous thruster is at all possibly conceivable. I am glad more people want to discuss this issue seriously. The answer can be logically concluded this way: present single stage ionocrafts are known to work at an efficiency level of 1gramme force/watt (1gF/W) and that half of the thrust is used to lift the thruster structure. So this means that in order to achieve a non-hybrid, 100% EHD single stage thruster, we have to power it by a power source having a capacity of 2W/g. Taking an off-the-shelf LiPo battery available from model shops, we get 3.7v 500mA (=1.85W at 8C discharge rate) batteries weighing just 1.4grammes, that is equivalent to 1.32W/g (or 0.76g/Watt), not so far from the required 2W/g. At this point, saying that is is theoretically possible to have better batteries giving 2W/g is not so farfetched, and I bet, they are available for the military market. So, a battery pack of such batteries in series giving 50kV would theoretically be able to power a single stage autonomous thruster for a couple of minutes.

Now, if one is still not happy with my bet, and wants to use the off-the-shelf available batteries, that is the 1.32W/g LiPo units mentioned above, you have the option to go to a lower electric field gradient in order to increase the efficiency level of the EHD thruster. For example, if the air gap is set to give an average E field of 0.2Mv/m, you will get a thruster at an efficiency level of about 2.55g/W, which requires a battery pack having a minimal capacity of 0.39W/g. Now, as already mentioned, a balsa model weighs 1/2 the weight of its total thrusting force, so for a balsa unit powered by LiPo cells at a voltage gradient of 0.2Mv/m, you actually need just about 0.8W/g, which can be supplied by the 0.76g/Watt batteries one can buy from a model shop. As you see, it's just a matter of selecting the proper E-field value, the proper batteries and size of the thruster,....and a lot of money, and you'll get a real autonomous unit. Hope this is now clear enough to delete the dubious tag from the article. If not we shall discuss it until you are well convinced of it. Omegatron, if you private e-mail me, I would be glad to send you an excel work sheet to follow my efficiency calculations. and by the way, thanks for getting rid of the 172.186... anon. Regards - Blaze Labs Research 15:44, 21 August 2006 (UTC)


but still, I will agree with you, to reserve the term 'autonomous' to the non-hybrid version that would hopefully be developed in future - just to eliminate any confusion, as there is enough confusion on this subject as a whole.

Excellent. I'm glad you agree.

Hope this is now clear enough to delete the dubious tag from the article

The tag is mostly about the sentences saying there is "no limit to shape, size, payload or thrust-to-power ratio". There are of course some limits.
As for your calculations about an autonomous thruster, we can probably put something like that directly into the article, as its just high school physics and WP:NOR has an allowance for "descriptive claims the accuracy of which is easily verifiable by any reasonable adult without specialist knowledge", which allows for short mathematical proofs without citation and the like, but it would be better if you have an essay about the possibility of autonomous thrusters on your own site and we linked to it as a reference. If not, doesn't that sound like something you would want to write, anyway?  ;-)
Also, there are more recent EHD designs that don't have the lifter name attached, which probably have much better thrust performance. For instance, Kronos claims 600 cubic feet per minute for an EHD-based fan replacement. Some of their patents are listed here.
And here they claim "850 cubic feet per minute (volume) of air flow at speeds up to 1,700 feet per minute (velocity)" With an air density of 1.29 kg/m3, that's [http://www.google.com/search?q=850+cubic+feet+per+minute+*+1%2C700+feet+per+minute+*+1.29+kg%2Fm%5E3 4.5 N of thrust. I don't know how that compares to lifters. — Omegatron 16:18, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi Omegatron, note that the dubious tag, in its position forces the reader to doubt on the possibility of the autonomous design. It simply contradicts the statement which it is following. Note also, that I have changed the statement 'no limits' to no 'theoretical limits'. Its the same like saying that theoretically there is no limits for the amount of money one can earn, even though we know that one cannot be infinitely rich. Of course, we all know that in practice everything has limits, but in the EHD design, these are only set by the design configuration. For example no one would go for a design having some ridiculously big cross sectional area, even though it is theoretically possible. So, if you agree with my arguments, the dubious tag may be taken off. I will try to find some time to put the mathematics for the efficiency level within the article within the next couple of days. As to Kronos designs, I would not mention them on the ionocraft page, since ionocrafts are defined to be propulsion devices. While Kronos design is still an EHD thrusting method, it's not meant as a propulsion device, so I think they would fit more onto the EHD thrusters page. - Blaze Labs Research 17:38, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Its the same like saying that theoretically there is no limits for the amount of money one can earn, even though we know that one cannot be infinitely rich. Of course, we all know that in practice everything has limits,
If that is the extent of the truth, there's no point in saying it in the article, just like, as in your example, the wages article doesn't say "there is no limit to the amount someone can earn". There's no point in talking about it unless there are limits.
I still think there are practical, technical, physical limits, however. There is a maximum voltage before breakdown, for instance, so it seems like there would be a maximum amount of thrust that could be created by a given pair of conductors, and therefore a maximum amount of thrust per unit area that could conceivably be achieved even given all kinds of fanciful future designs. — Omegatron 18:10, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Of course, all limits you mention do exist and should of course be always taken into account into the design parameters. (Note that there is no maximum voltage across the electrodes before breakdown, but only a maximum voltage gradient, that is a higher voltage can be handled by having a bigger gap). However, since you probably meant that the no-limits statement could actually be misunderstood as no theoretical limit for breakdown voltage, (and maybe other parameters which DO have a theoretical limit) I took it off. So the dubious tag has now been cleared as well. - Blaze Labs Research 19:02, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Recent anon edits and the Death of the "pedia" Part of "Wikipedia"

FYI, the ipt.aol.com proxy anon has recently used the IPs (AOL proxys):

  1. 172.186.205.240 (talk • contribs)
  2. 172.187.237.249 (talk • contribs) (definitely a proxy)
  3. 172.206.151.63 (talk • contribs)
  4. 172.211.53.10 (talk • contribs)
  5. 172.210.140.244 (talk • contribs)
  6. 172.211.245.151 (talk • contribs)
  7. 172.211.251.8 (talk • contribs)

and more. This is the same user who has been making persisent POV-pushing edits of Biefeld-Brown effect, which has also received similar edits from

  1. 81.249.163.111 (talk • contribs) (the abo.wanadoo.fr anon; this machine is geolocated near Paris)

The abo.wanadoo.fr anon may be associated with the link to futura-sciences.com which is apparently registered to an individual who evidently also resides near Paris.

Wikipedia must ban anon edits; the anons as a group are way more trouble than they are worth. ---CH 18:57, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

You're not the only one who thinks so, but it's not going to happen. — Omegatron 20:24, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
Our benevolent not-quite-dictator, Jimbo himself, voiced his opinion to extend semi protection policy (a recent post on wikiEN-l). But he is mainly thinking about biographies, which would give the most obvious legal troubles. --Pjacobi 21:56, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Omegatron, I fear you are correct, but if so this will ensure the death by a zillion bad edits of Wikipedia, or at least of the goal of creating an encyclopedia. Wikipedia needs to decide whether it is essentially a public forum for the little guy, or essentially an encyclopedia. To some extent it can try to be both, but when push comes to shove it needs to know where its priorities are, and it needs to be able to enforce some rules. Banning anon edits is only the first in a long sequence of policy changes (I don't have a specific sequence in mind, I just recognize that many changes and possibly some backtracking will be needed) which are urgently needed if Wikipedia is to have any chance of providing a free on-line universal encyclopedia offering reliable and unbiased information. ---CH 00:22, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Pjacobi, you're probably right. As we grow larger, the incentive to allow anon editing diminishes, as there is a smaller ratio of people to revert bad edits, and more content already in existence that doesn't need editing. I'm glad that the ideology is flexible. It bothers me a little that we're being bullied into it by the threat of lawsuits, though.
CH, as I say to most people who think the Wikipedia is doomed to failure: The software and its content are completely open source. We have guides on this very site to helping others start their own sites with exactly the same content or exactly the same software. Anyone who wants to can copy our content verbatim as it currently is, and create their own version of the pedia with their own rules and content policies. Yet no one who has tried has reached any comparable level of popularity or size. — Omegatron 00:37, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
I think anon edits should in general be banned, except for asking questions and making comments. It costs nothing to register, and most of us are trying to collect and expand human knowledge, but vandals are impeding our progress. Dessydes 02:42, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Omegatron, you pointed out correctly that Wikimedia is available to all. Indeed, many groups now keep private wikis to document within their organizations. I have considered doing this myself. As you also pointed out, none of the public wikis yet come close to rivaling Wikipedia in size or editor pool, although some project like Digital Universe may yet get off the ground. However, your point is by no means inconsistent with mine. I am saying that if

  1. Wikipedia fails to drastically reform its policies to curb cruft (banning anons is only the beginning)
  2. no other equally popular wiki which better controls cruft appears

then the original concept of a public wiki will have been shown to be fatally flawed. In that case, I predict that

  1. Wikipedia will continue as a social club and effectively a free universal webhost providing a homepage/blog for All the Worlds Citizens, but it will never be taken seriously as an encyclopedia by the mainstream, and will gradually come to be used for this purpose much more infrequently than is currently the case,
  2. wikis will continue to flourish, but they will be used within organizations as a kind of internal newsletter/blog/documentation source.

---CH 04:37, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

See also Talk:John Hutchison for the possible identity of our vandal. ---CH 01:53, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Has the Biefeld/Lifter anon ever edited John Hutchison from the same IP? I've never seen it. — Omegatron 02:01, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I was just checking that out. Not yet clear, and agree that the vn.shawcable.net anon from Vancouver was probably talking through his hat. The vn.shawcable.net anon seems too volatile to be the ipt.aol.com proxy anon.---CH 02:14, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup

It's a decent article, but needs to be rearranged and re-sectioned. The sections have too broad headings, and overlap in content. There's not even a mention of the vacuum controversy. NASA explains as follows:

His report is the only written report we have found from the last half-century that describes a measurement of a force while in a vacuum chamber. Talley ultimately attributed the force that he observed to the electrostatic interaction between the chamber and the device. Talley wrote, “Direct experimental results show that under high vacuum conditions… no detectable propulsive force was electrostatically induced by applying a static potential difference… between test device electrodes…” Talley concluded (page 91 of his report5), “If such a force still exists and lies below the threshold of measurements in this program, then the force may be too small to be attractive for many, if not most, space propulsion applications.”

Coronal Blowers

There are many variants of the original patent where high-voltage capacitors create thrust, many of which claim that the thrust is a new effect akin to antigravity. These go by such terms as: Biefeld–Brown effect, lifters, electrostatic antigravity, electrogravity, and asymmetric capacitors. To date, all rigorous experimental tests indicate that the observed thrust is attributable to coronal wind. Quoting from one such finding: “… their operation is fully explained by a very simple theory that uses only electrostatic forces and the transfer of momentum by multiple collisions [with air molecules].”

— Omegatron 20:10, 21 August 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Ion wind force vs EHD force

One should be very careful when using terms like corona blowers, ion wind, etc... I've seen these definitions mis-used to describe EHD effects which take place in ionocrafts, even in reputable papers (including some NASA reports). Unfortunately this is due to the fact that 'ion wind' has been loosely defined over the past, and sometimes is used to describe EHD. However, if one takes a simple ionocraft, such as the 3 sided lifter, and do both ionic wind and EHD force calculations, he would find a BIG difference in the expected thrust, and if not careful enough, one would easiely get the wrong conclusion, as probably happened to a lot of people. Lets analyse the situation for one such device:

Consider a small ionocraft/lifter powered at 30kV, consuming 3.33mA (100Watts), having an air gap of 3cm.

  • Ion wind calculation

The speed of single charged particle with mass m and charge e accelerated between two electrodes with voltage V is: v= sqrt(2*V*e/m) Momentum of single particle is p=m*v = m*sqrt(2*V*e/m)

To calculate the number of particles flying at given power per second, we divide total passed charge by the charge of single particle n=Q/(e*t)=i/e current i we obtain from power P as i=P/V so n=P/(V*e)

Total force applied is equal to total exchanged momentum per unit time (assuming the ideal case where all momentum of accelerated particle is used for propulsion).

As result we have: F=n*p=m*sqrt(2*V*e/m)*P/(e*V)

If you put m=me=9.1093897E-31kg (electron mass) that gives an ion wind force of about 1.95E-6 N at P=100Watt, V=30kV. This is the kind of thrust one would get from an ionic thruster.

  • EHD calculation

On the other hand, the EHD thrust is given by the well established equation F=id/k (Refer to Sigmond's scientific papers), k=ion mobility coefficient (in air=2E-4), d=air gap, i=current F= 3.33E-3*0.03/2E-4 = 0.5N, which is what one actually gets from an ionocraft tested in air. If one wants to find the EHD thrust in oil, just replace k, by the ion mobility in oil.

The above calculations show the difference between an ionic thruster and an EHD thruster. The lack of knowledge and of a precise definition of ion wind, has led many people (including early tests from army research labs, universities,...) to arrive at the wrong conclusion that the measured thrust is too high to be ion wind.

This is the same reason for which people trying to measure ionic wind (using ion counters) underneath an ionocraft get much lower values than those measuring the actual air pressure. Only the actual air pressure reading will equate to the observed EHD thrust. - Blaze Labs Research 07:33, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Ion wind
EHD thruster
We actually had a discussion about this by email last October, but never finished it. You claimed that both forms of thrust were present in a "lifter" (and possibly a third?), but I maintained that only one was present, especially in an autonomous thruster, simply because of conservation of mass. Are you now agreeing that the EHD thrust (moving particles imparting momentum on neutral air/won't work in a vacuum) is the only effect present?
Do you have a reference stating that "ion wind" only applies to the one type of thrust? If it's used inconsistently by different people, it seems like it's simply an inconsistent term. Who was the first person to use the term? Has an authoritative source ever defined it for only one meaning? — Omegatron 16:45, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

The ion wind term dates back to the 18th century. As I said, it is a loosely defined term, which resulted in its inconsistent use. As far as I know, no authorative source has ever defined its proper meaning. However, most EHD researchers I know, reserve its use for the recoil force a plasma jet produces as it is expelled from the source. This is the way you'll find it used in most authorative literature. Theoretically, such ion wind can achieve supersonic speeds. This force is only present at the ionising top wire of an ionocraft, where plasma jets form. However, this force accounts only for a very small percentage of the total thrust, so small, that it can usually be neglected. You can see one such jets from a positive corona wire on the left wire in this picture (the wire on the right is a negative corona wire):

http://blazelabs.com/pics/corona1.jpg

As to EHD thrust, we always agreed on that, is the main thrust in these devices. The maximum theoretical speed of EHD is much lower than the above mentioned ion wind, because EHD speed is based on the drift velocity of ion clouds. Plasma jets are in fact NOT a desired feature in a properly designed thruster, since they reduce the conversion efficiency, and are likely to develop into an arcing spot.

The 3rd effect, is even smaller than the ion jet force, much smaller in fact, and is the only one capable of producing any force in vacuum. In fact one could say that it's only possible in vacuum. This is the radiation pressure, which is generated when electrons leaving the ionising wire, are accelerated in vacuum, hit the lower foil, and generate X-rays. I think that this effect was also covered in one of Brown's patents. Here again, Brown was exploring new grounds, as it was only in 1871 that electromagnetic radiation pressure was deduced theoretically by the father of electromagnetic theory James Clerk Maxwell, and later on, proven experimentally by Lebedev in 1900 and by Nichols and Hull in 1901. However, this force is so small, that is considered to be virtually useless for any practical use. Also, ionocrafts/lifters are not the optimal design to take full advantage of this radiation pressure. An open X-ray tube design would perform much better (in vacuum).

Conclusion: The main thrust (almost 100%) from ionocrafts is due to EHD. The rest are just negligible forces, which can be fully explained and calculated in terms of ionic jets (in air/vacuum) and radiation pressure (in vacuum). - Blaze Labs Research 18:13, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok. My only contention is that an autonomous thruster couldn't have continuous plasma jets, simple from conservation of charge. If it's constantly throwing off charged particles, it would need a source to replenish the lost charge. If the power supply is tethered to earth, the charge is being supplied from the earth, and the ions ejected from the plasma jets are eventually neutralizing by contacting the earth, but this isn't a desired effect and wouldn't be applicable to an untethered device. — Omegatron 15:21, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
This is true for an isolated autonomous thruster. However, in practice, and especially in the case of tethered ionocrafts/lifters, in which the power supply ground is at the same potential of the surrounding environment, the ionocraft cannot be considered as a truly closed system, and charges are not conserved within the ionocraft, because of multiple ion return paths to the power supply ground through the surrounding objects. This can easiely be confirmed by measuring a current imbalance between the flow of current at the corona wire, and the flow of current at its collector. This imbalance varies with the proximity of nearby objects and the actual ionocraft design, (amongst other things). However it's true that this imbalance is much lower for an autonomous thruster, in which case the system is much closer to a closed system. - Blaze Labs Research 12:42, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
Good. Then we agree. — Omegatron 13:01, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] History & Patents

This page needs a history section (instead of a list of patents). Include T. T. Brown, De Seversky, Naudin, etc. — Omegatron 13:11, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

I would keep it nice and clean with no detailed history. It's history involves lot more people, I can give you more patents on the same subject. It would probably be subjective and surely will create unnecessary hot debates and vandalism. However regarding the large number of patents under the heading "Below are patents and publications related to lifters, electrokinetics, electrohydrodynamics, and the Biefeld-Brown effect", note that Wiki now has seperate pages for ionocrafts, electrokinetics/ehd, and B-B effect, so I see no reason why we should have such a comprehensive list on this page. The listed patents should only be those specifically related to the use of electrokinetics/ehd for flying machines. All the rest have to be moved to their relevant Wiki entrance, and perhaps patents that are more relevant should be added. - Blaze Labs Research 14:05, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

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