Silent and Simple Ion Engine Powers a Plane with No Moving Parts

Re:Silent and Simple Ion Engine Powers a Plane with No Movin... by superkuh on Wednesday November 21, 2018 @12:59PM (#18504607)

Thanks for providing that. It does prove my point though. That plane is not flying at all. It is falling with style. The initial forward momentum is from the launch rail, not from the electrostatic propulsion.

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Re:Silent and Simple Ion Engine Powers a Plane with No Movin... by erbium on Wednesday November 21, 2018 @01:05PM (#18504684)

At 2:11 you can see it moving in a straight line.

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Re:Silent and Simple Ion Engine Powers a Plane with No Movin... by superkuh on Wednesday November 21, 2018 @01:07PM (#18504694)

Not shown: all the momentum imparted by the launch itself.

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Re:Silent and Simple Ion Engine Powers a Plane with No Movin... by thinkcontext on Wednesday November 21, 2018 @01:39PM (#18504904)

For the Nature paper they compared unpowered vs powered flight. Unpowered got about 10m, powered got to 60m, the length of their test facility.

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Re:Silent and Simple Ion Engine Powers a Plane with No Movin... by tzs on Thursday November 22, 2018 @12:27AM (#18508061)

In that clip it is not slowing down, showing that the ion drive is generating sufficient thrust to sustain flight. It's irrelevant that it used assistance to initially reach that speed.

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