Science MIT shows prototype plane that has no moving parts - No snarky subtitle, this is legit cool

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https://www.itv.com/news/2018-11-23/worlds-first-plane-with-no-moving-parts-takes-flight/

A team of scientists have built and flown a Star Trek-inspired plane with no moving parts for the first time

The silent, lightweight aircraft does not depend on fossil fuels and is seen as a major next step in aviation technology.

The light aircraft is powered by an “ionic wind”, a silent but strong flow of ions (charged atom or molecule) that generate enough thrust to propel the plane.

Traditional aircraft are kept in the air by propellers, turbine blades, and fans, which are powered by the combustion of fossil fuels or battery packs.

Steven Barrett, an associate professor of aeronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said the inspiration for his team’s ion plane came partly from Star Trek which he watched avidly as a kid.

He said the futuristic shuttlecrafts featured in the show made him think that planes did not need to have propellers and turbines.

“They should be more like the shuttles in ‘Star Trek,’ that have just a blue glow and silently glide,” he said.

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A new MIT plane is propelled via ionic wind. Credit: Christine Y. He
The plane had "potentially opened new and unexplored possibilities for aircraft which are quieter, mechanically simpler, and do not emit combustion emissions," Professor Barrett said.

In the near future, ion wind propulsion systems could be used to fly less noisy drones, he predicted, while looking even further ahead, he said ion propulsion technology could be paired with more conventional combustion systems to create more fuel-efficient, hybrid passenger planes and other large aircraft.

The team flew the plane 60 metres in multiple test flights across a gymnasium and found the plane produced enough ionic thrust to sustain flight the entire time.

The aircraft, which weighs about five pounds and has a five metre wingspan, carries thin wires along and beneath the front end of the wing.

These wires act as positively charged electrodes, while similarly arranged thicker wires, running along the back of the plane’s wing, serve as negative electrodes.

The fuselage of the plane holds lithium-polymer batteries designed a sufficiently high voltage to propel the plane, supplying electricity at 40,000 volts to positively charge the wires via a lightweight power converter.
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If you're very quiet you can hear Saudi Arabia REEEEEEEE.
 
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Oh, that's real neat. I can definitely see some applications in long endurance designs.
 
Cute toy. Good thing there's no cube-square anything that will make upsizing it to a useful size challenging, eh?
 
This tech isn't going to go anywhere. Just because it came from MIT doesn't mean it's worth anything.
Batteries are heavy and inefficient compared to fossil fuels and batteries also degrade. The design won't scale for shit either.

This thing is pretty much a few bladeless fans powered by batteries built into a kite. This is the same shit as when they were trying to peddle a dehumidifier as a free water device. I could have made this and I'm a fucking retard.
 
If I got a nickle for every "revolutionary invention" I'd probably have a big pile o' nickles I can buy a no moving parts star trek toy with
 
Too bad they'd have to prove that it can lift a packed plane loaded with people, that batteries last long enough in flight, and that it won't fail in flight. There's a reason most planes bigger than civil aviation aircraft have two engines as a minimum, and it took years and years before governments finally allowed planes with two engines to fly for extended time periods over the sea (older jet aircraft had 3 or 4 engines).

It'd take years and years to convince them this is a good idea and as of now the industry seems set on moving towards electric powered aircraft and more fuel efficient engines instead, and even electric aircraft will have the range and battery capacity problem that would limit it to shorter routes until they can come up with better batteries. There's also the problem with batteries in flight, the 787 launch was dotted by battery fires.
 
Y'all are missing the interesting (albiet not new) part of the project. You can replace the battery with a little hybrid motor or motorbike engine; the interesting part is that they're using ionic charge propulsion.

Of course, Mythbusters literally flew one of these ten years ago, but they're still neat pieces of kit.
 
I can see this working for drones but not huge manned aircrafts that have to be in the air for hours at a time.
 
Big Bad Fish said:
This tech isn't going to go anywhere. Just because it came from MIT doesn't mean it's worth anything.
Batteries are heavy and inefficient compared to fossil fuels and batteries also degrade. The design won't scale for shit either.

This thing is pretty much a few bladeless fans powered by batteries built into a kite. This is the same shit as when they were trying to peddle a dehumidifier as a free water device. I could have made this and I'm a fucking exceptional individual.
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its really bizarre how MIT has become so much about scientism and 'wow that's so cool' marketability rather than any actual interesting developments. what happened?
 
How much weight can it lift this way? And can it take off/land this way, or does it only work once its already in the air?

It says they flew the toy across a gymnasium, but it doesn’t describe how it got into the air. From what I understand the most energy intensive part of an aircraft is the takeoff and landing.
 
AnOminous said:
Looks like it would be great for drones. You could probably make them invisible to radar and almost invisible visually. They'd be great for surveillance and delivering small payloads.
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The issue is range and scale. Anything battery powered isn't going to get far without a fuckhuge battery so it'd have to be deployed pretty damn close to the target. You'd need to have more of these "ionic wind" motors to pull air to compensate for the weight of the batteries and then even more to compensate for the payload. Battery powered anything doesn't just doesn't scale well.
What you'd get is a heavy, slow drone with poor range.
Here's a good article on energy density in batteries. It's about cars, but it's applicable to aircraft too.
https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201208/backpage.cfm
 
Tranhuviya said:
Oh, that's real neat. I can definitely see some applications in long endurance designs.
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I cannot. Slap a little electric hobby motor and a prop on it and you get far more thrust. Notice they don't mention anything about efficiency in this design. This is like those ships Flettner built that used the Magnus effect for propulsion. Cool tech demonstrators but not practical.

xxXDxx said:
Y'all are missing the interesting (albiet not new) part of the project. You can replace the battery with a little hybrid motor or motorbike engine; the interesting part is that they're using ionic charge propulsion.

Of course, Mythbusters literally flew one of these ten years ago, but they're still neat pieces of kit.
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And that is better than a little Rotax swinging a prop how, exactly? The electric part? People have been building ultra-lights with electric motors for quite some time.

Before anybody mentions stealth, that ionic drive is going to be noisier than a cat in heat on the EM spectrum.
 
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