There are some minor mistakes in the video. The potential difference between the two electrodes (wire and wing) is 40kV, since the wire is charged to +20kV and the wing to -20kV. The voltage type is also DC and not AC. The DC voltage of the battery is converted to AC by a H-bridge circuit. This AC is transformed to a higher voltage level and finally converted to a high voltage DC by the Cockroft-Walton generator.

I love that you dont push for that 10min mark

Love how the ion propelled plane looks remarkably similar to the right brothers plane of over 100 years ago.

Yall realize this is the first step in building a "twin ion engine" or TIE Fighter.

Rare footage of TIE Fighter prototype being tested

Much as I know the physics, this is still magic to me

Ion Engine: I am the first aircraft engine with no moving parts! Ramjets: Am I a joke to you? Scramjet: WTF dude?!

When I was developing atmospheric plasma systems for thin film deposition, I came accross the way one could make very dense plasmas (requiring a lot of amps but not many volts) in standard atmospheric conditions in air. This principle is used in plasma cutters: you make your initial spark using high voltage / low amperage and then, since your plasma is already conductive, you apply a second power source with a lot of amps. When you have a dense plasma in atmorpheric pressure, you can go WAAAY beyond the thrust density you see in MIT's prototype. I though it was a nice invention but then came the bad news: since you ionise air, you leave behind nitric acid, ozone and a bunch of other toxic stuff. It's a pitty we cannot use this engine, even if MIT gets it at some point. I may put it on my channel at some point because it certainly looks great when you see it (plasma is always amazing...)...

I remember reading about ion engines in grade school 50 years ago. Seems they haven’t come nearly as far as those books authors predicted. Reminds me of the nuclear fusion joke; it’s always 30 years away. (Yes, I’m aware they play a very small roll in satellites)

No moving parts?! 😰

2018: The Plane With No Moving Parts 2028: The Plane With No Cabin Or Wings

3:49 "Here on earth it has a completely different set of challenges, Here on earth planes pose a completely different challenge"

8:27 That SleeK hand Shake THO

I see you've been playing Kerbal Space Program.

What happens when you put a negative Ion generator into the atmosphere? I somehow think you will have more energy than expected. It will find you lightning fast.

That thing looks remarkably similar to some of those dawn of flight era designs

You missed one of the HIGHEST benefits of Xenon, low ionization energy. Low ionization energy means less of the total energy input is used ionizing and more is used for acceleration.

Woo! Trying skill share to start the new year. Unfortunately, my life has moving parts, but we're giving it a go.

Everybody gangsta until one of the plane’s parts starts moving

Your hands down my favorite channel. Keep up the amazing work.

TIE FIGHTERS ARE ALMOST APON US!!! Twin Ion Engine

Paper airplanes: *am I a joke to you?*

8:28 this dude in the left being ignored lol

@RealEngineering I take notes sometimes watching your videos😅. Great work as always. Cheers

*_Wendover Productions wants to know your location_*

'Having no moving parts is a benefit that can not be overstated" is what he should have said.

This. This is how jet packs. I better be alive for mass produced, silent, affordable, jet packs Jetsons style.

Thank you for producing excellent videos. You help bring excitement back to engineering.

RealLifeLore = Toyota Corolla Wendover Productions = Airplane Real Engineering = -Rockets- also airplanes?

"no moving parts" but... but ... but... that's the opposite direction to making Mechas...

This Valuable Content Well Resumed in less than 10 mins is Priceless Thank you for Sharing

US ARMY : "Alright now how do we turn it into an ion bomb" 🤔

When you have 1000000 patience in KSP

Always thought EHD aircraft were a neat idea, but it's really amazing to see them becoming something more than a novelty. ...On that note, it'd be neat to see a short on variable-buoyancy propulsion, and the submersible vehicles (e.g. Slocum Thermal) and aircraft (UK's Phoenix drone) that use it.

I'm working on a design with only 1 moving part (related to the propulsion), and research led me here, very cool thank you for sharing

Amazing bro and sweetest tone

What is your view on nuclear fission power on a global scale? I think we should build more modern designed reactors. Or even thorium molten salt reactors.

But steel is heavier than feathers.

There are about 40 videos of the first and only solely ion propelled aircrafts that specifically are patented for having onboard power on my channel (since 2014). They are capable of VTOL flight for up to about 2 minutes and are tremendously more efficient. They were patented in 2014, and widely published and verified, for lifting their power supplies against Earth's gravity.

Great channel. Most informative and inspiring!

When an ion engine can carry a person as far as the Wright brothers flew on their first flight I will sit up and take notice, but it's a start.

"The Plane With No Moving Parts", so how do you get inside it?

This is so exciting , this is just the beginning. The progression of this is going to take people's breath away , along with the simple rather than the complicated : )

"It will never lead to anything viable"... spoke I, 110 years ago, as I watched the silly Wrights toy with their useless aeroplane!!!

I remember this from the 90s where people made floating triangles

science channels : masters of sponsorship segways

Great. Very clear and no music bothering. :-)

I wonder if you could optimize the core ion drive structure using AI. Build it from the ground up and optimizing every aspect of it like the air gap and voltage needed to produce the optimal thrust and overcome drag enough for a sustained lift. Could produce a cool hover board like green goblin.

your major mistake is to think of this in terms of improvement on existing applications. instead you shoould think abaout new applications that can be achived by this technic

When the nitrogen is ionised, does it react with the oxygen in the air and does the plane leave a trail of nitric acid vapor behind?

that was a terrific segue!

Segue skills on point

This propulsion system was comprised in 1967 on STAR TREK series and a working prototype engine created in 1979. with lithium battery and pulse generator. Look out here comes the Enterprise.😀light speed ...no problem!

Art Bell did a levitating ion drive "drone" years ago. It takes a metric crapton of electricity, and it produces a crapton of ozone. This may be a greatly refined version of that, but I'm still very skeptical.

I like the way you make the airfoil asymmetric

You sound like a hybrid of DCU Mecatronics and Trinity Theoretical Physics. The vid is great, keep it up!!

Could this be used to keep air passing over a stalling wing going smoothly without much power or drag, allowing for higher angles of attack?

Don't usually comment on videos unless I have a lot of respect for the creator and think I can help the community. I'm an aerospace engineer currently working on manned EVOTL. What you said about power required scaling as the square of mass is not correct and the equation at 7:36 is misleading and taken out of context. I'm not commenting to flame mental superiority, it's just that you're removing interest a technology that will soon greatly improve the world by telling your 1.5M subscribers that electric aviation doesn't scale when the truth is that is scales really well.

Battery motors are going to be great for gliders and powered hang gliders in which you only want to get up into the thermals and/or get yourself out of a tight situation when you have misjudged the wind currents.

this is the greatest explanation i have seen

I love the comment, no moving parts, I want to move my seat, we need more humor in our lives, good job

so expect ion planes 30 years after commercial fusion, self driving cars, the manned mission to Europa and quantum computing in desktops?

I love the Wright brother's analogy with this latest tech. Yes isn't a big leap over other ion drives but still in it's infancy. The future looks bright!

Absolutely Fabulous 💯

me: ohhhhhhhhhhhhh, so that's how they do it mom later: so what did you learn on the computer? me: uhhhhhhhh

'who knows where we'll be in 100 years time?' -I do - dead.

I love the engineering mindset: get excited, explore the possibilities, then swiftly shit on it for all its issues....good, keep staying hopeful but grounded in reality. Cheers from another engineer

In the last century we called it "lifter" and we built it out of skewers, wire and aluminum foil. The model started vertically. The power source was a TV high-voltage transformer (30-50kV) and a rectifier (there is an error in the video because it cannot work on AC). This home ion engine with an area of about 1m2 raised the egg. Horizontal flight was impossible because the model was tethered because of external power supply with two-wire high-voltage power supply.

4:40 So it's just an h bridge and a few cockroft walton voltage multipliers. Hardly cutting edge. This stuff's been around for decades.

Gotta try this in KSP

Japanese were also conducting ion engine research since long back. How much have they succeeded is no known. Thanks for this clip.

Loved the video.

Dear Real Engineering, may i ask how you guys are so up to date with the latest technology, is there any particular website or because of relationship with top researchers. Thank you so much and have a nice day

Idk what is more impressive. Xenon fueled propulsion or A.I. engineered geometry. Wouldn't mind dabbling in either subject.

It sounds like polarized haul's of ships like star trek, in which various energy signiture's could be promoted on such haul's. This would allow intake and out take of energy ions. This would allow possible communication signiture's and shielding potential off the haul to be emitted. It's neat that electric propelled planes move, in a earth atmosphere. With the right tuning, it could possibly move it through other environment's like outer space. This would allow a vessel, or object to thrust movement entirely all at once from a polarized haul. Or entirely all at once, to have communication signal's emitted from the whole polarized haul. This in theory, should also work for nano bot's as well, as they could mimic that feature of polarized haul's. Nano bot's could move around and through environment's. As they thrust, or hover through environment's. Also if nano bot's emitted the right energy signiture's, or signal's. They could be detected from devices and communication with them from other devices would be possible. Cloaking would be possible as well, for those polarized haul's. As they could be blending in microwaves and other possible background noises, to have it appear normal. The only thing really, is to have polarized haul's charged well enough. For strong energy field dynamics of interaction's to be in the environment. Everything is like torus Field's, or alternating current fluctuation's. I like another name for this, force balance.

I love this video thank you

Having played hundreds of hours of Kerbal Space Program, I know how hard it can be to make an ion plane. The difference being, I can't even manage that in KSP, and here these guys did in in real life where the rules of (and problems with) it are literally on a different magnitude o_o

The first heavier than air ion propelled aircraft of any kind to carry its power supply has already been flown long before the MIT craft... The earlier ion propelled aircraft can lift its complete onboard power supply vertically from the ground for about 2 minutes.... You can see the 5 public videos of the patented invention in flight, by clicking on the purple channel icon to the left.

Please note, there is a much earlier patented ion propelled aircraft with onboard power. If you're interested, please google US Patent 10,119,527 for more details. This earlier series of aircrafts can fly vertically or horizontally with their onboard power supplies for about 2 minutes.

overstated

US Patent Number 10,119,527. Please see it fly with onboard power using only ion propulsion before the MIT version.

Amazing engineering! This shows that there are Edison, Tesla, and Einstein intellects in our generation.

One day people will except that we mastered Electro gravitics in the late 40's.

Great content ..Where do you get your stock footage from and what tools you use to make videos. Could you please provide some pointers?

I can't wait until we can combine ion propulsion with a kind of railgun mass driver to launch sky jumper ships that could reach low orbit. Lok

"No moving parts"…? Dude, the _whole plane_ moves.

I saw this in the 1960's, in a "Popular Mechanics" magazine... I made one (Model Plane) myself in the same year... Humans can't cross Galaxies in Minutes, but you can by accessing "The Processing System of LIFE", and use the Technologies available, through "The Processing System of LIFE", involving Programming...

It appears to me as a layperson, we are in the 'propellor' phase of ionic thurst. When the 'jet/turbo' phase arrives, it will be transformative.

Wendover Productions is playing at some T-Series shenanigans and trying to overtake me in Instagram followers. Can't let him win. instagram.com/brianjamesmcmanus/

Much better technology will be out soon. I just need to work on my flux capacitor.

This is a dream planes for high/mid dense populated area!

I've always wanted to build one of these

It's old technology, its already mentioned in indian Book of The Aerodynamics "Vimana Shashtra". Description of More than 500 types planes with 500 varieties means 2,50,000 types planes. More Research is needed to have gravity free planes or space crafts.

7:51 isn´t the v in the drag formula squarded ?

Nice meta-segue at the end there

0:57 in sophisticated warfare, aircrafts are spotted 10s of kilometers away with radar technology. Stealth aircrafts main focus is to be shaped in a way that radar is less effective, sound factor is very miniscule.

That technology will be very unfull on Titan or other planets with high atmospheric density!

"a plane with no moving parts" Me, an intellectual: Paper airplane.

My grandfather was born before the first flight and he flew once on a 747. He saw the birth of cars, radio, telephone, refrigerators, electricity, television, CDs, movies, color film, and going to the moon. Also indoor plumbing. Amazing when you think about it.

That's so crazy!!