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Ion drive: The first flight

nature video · 2.4M views · 2018-11-21 · 5:06

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Overview

Nature video showing MIT researchers flying the first plane with no moving parts, powered by an ion drive that creates an ionic wind from high-powered electrodes. The 5m-wide craft flies across a sports hall.

On Hacker News

Linked as a quick demonstration of the ion plane in threads about silent aircraft and flying cars.

Recommended by 1 HN people across 1 months · HN mentions 2018–2022

Topics

Aviation & aerospace engineeringEveryday physics & science demos
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ion drivemitionic windsilent dronesaircraft

What people said

c0n5pir4cy · 2022-06 · Recommendation

Older news as other people have mentioned, if you want to see how it works and see it flying here is a YouTube link: [VIDEO]

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vanderZwan · 2020-06 · Reference

Don't ion drives have ozone as a side-effect? Balloons with solar-powered ion drives might do the trick then - they don't even need to be lighter than air, the ion drive should give it enough thrust [VIDEO] [LINK]

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qqn · 2019-08 · Reference

Thanks for the commentary guys, it’s been fascinating churning over all this even more. Thoughts: - Safety is the same issue as always, only it’s being ironed out faster than before. Controlled vertical landings, 3D space, and redundancy help a lot. I don’t foresee many flying high enough to get really hurt. Maybe things like undercarriage cushions or redirected waterways underneath major traffic flows could help even more. - Noise cancellation tech is already out there, as well as near-silent aircraft without moving parts: [VIDEO] - Main arteries will be less condensed, but much more, much smaller traffic will appear and that’s going to be a new problem. The death knell for intracity public transport? - Well-made points about “actual” flying cars not actually being used. Maybe it would have been the same for cars if someone made motorized horses instead of the automobile? Thank you for all the resources. I really liked the random touchdown point, underlining how exact our tech already is. I've polished the post quite a bit, adding a lot of these extra things to it. If anyone can clarify the paper bag problem @brownbat mentioned and what @blunte meant by "s/trans/tele" I'd really appreciate it.

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Sources

Video by nature video, played through YouTube.

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