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No Worries! We'll all be driving flying saucers soon!

Discussions of conventional and alternative energy production technologies.

No Worries! We'll all be driving flying saucers soon!

Unread postby Commanding_Heights » Wed 09 Jul 2008, 16:43:53

/realityoff

The World's First Flying Saucer: Made Right Here on Earth

A University of Florida researcher has plans on the drawing board for a saucer-shaped aircraft that turns the surrounding air into fuel

link to article on Scientific American

/realityon
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Re: No Worries! We'll all be driving flying saucers soon!

Unread postby jlw61 » Wed 09 Jul 2008, 16:56:43

Commanding_Heights wrote:/realityoff

The World's First Flying Saucer: Made Right Here on Earth

A University of Florida researcher has plans on the drawing board for a saucer-shaped aircraft that turns the surrounding air into fuel

link to article on Scientific American

/realityon


Actually if you produce 1.2 GW from something the size and weight of a coffee maker, you could probably make a car fly. The key line in the story was that the power supply will make or break it.

I vote break.
When somebody makes a statement you don't understand, don't tell him he's crazy. Ask him what he means. -- Otto Harkaman, Space Viking
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Re: No Worries! We'll all be driving flying saucers soon!

Unread postby neocone » Wed 09 Jul 2008, 19:27:15

The energy issue always makes me think of

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Re: No Worries! We'll all be driving flying saucers soon!

Unread postby mos6507 » Thu 10 Jul 2008, 02:09:03

It's a solid state helicopter, not antigravity as most people will think of it. I'll like those lifter projects. Unlikely to scale up. Nothing to see here. Move along.
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Re: No Worries! We'll all be driving flying saucers soon!

Unread postby Peleg » Thu 10 Jul 2008, 02:57:22

mos6507 wrote:It's a solid state helicopter, not antigravity as most people will think of it. I'll like those lifter projects. Unlikely to scale up. Nothing to see here. Move along.


Now see how does a peak oil bloke like yourself get that so easily, but these guys in the 'alternative science community' insist that they have all discovered anti-gravity in their garage.

Of course lifters are classical technology. Now we need to take the next step and start messing with geometries and high current flows to see if we can't come up with something truly novel. Of course it will be an environmentalists nightmare, giving off UV and possibly x-rays, but hey talk about the coolness factor.

So the idea is take you typical lifter, attach it to a monstrous powersource that moves current like in the range of tens of thousands of amps and you could probably lift something. The thing is, alot of guys now are talking about these craft as depending somehow on ion pressure against neutral air. I think it is probably more conservation of momentum but then the lifters you typically build in your basement are so light that and expanding air mass below them could carry them aloft.

The equation that seems to govern thrust to me is simply

d/dt Mv[1] = d/dt mv[2]

Where M is the mass of the lifter, m is the mass of the ion cloud (nitrogen molecules deprived of a valence electron).

It's Newton all over again. The exact thrust get's a little more complicated since you have particles in transit. It is really only the relative motion you need to care about. However, lifters do produce byproducts like ozone that could be harmful if inhaled so try to experiment in a well ventilated room.

Also notice that the necessary voltage across, though some claim it must be a function of the dielectric gap (and it is), must also be a function of the energy needed to strip particular electrons out of the nitrogen molecule. Around 17kV is where all the action begins. Since nitrogen is 78% of the mixture we call air and it's most available electron comes off at about 17kV you get a nice little ion cloud. But now the problem becomes how do you move that cloud effectively across the gap to the collector realizing that it is a plasma and does not want to congeal but rather expand, and you want to be able to clear out that cloud from the emitter and get some fresh air in to that area to produce more ions. And of course the goal is to get the lifter to lift. Those are the questions that once answered well could open up a door like this professor seems to be tinkering with.

In my own experiments I notice that placing non-conductors in the dielectric gap at the right place could greatly enhance the flow of ions from the emitter to the collector. That is a start. Next you want to get super high current, or higher and higher voltages that rip deeper and deeper electrons out of the molecules thus multiplying the force felt by both the ions and the collector and of course resulting in greater relative motion.

So those are the issues as I see it. In no way do I feel lifters have been researched enough (at least not as far as we know wink wink.)

If I ever get the financial means I intend to get back into that stuff, just for fun of course. It is really fun to hook up some wire and tinfoil to an old computer monitor and watch it start to float. Then you turn off the lights and there is this delicate blue glow.
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I Have Seen the Future’s Best-Selling Autonomous Vehicle, an

Unread postby AdamB » Sun 28 Jan 2018, 01:06:07


The race to make fully autonomous vehicles is on. Technology companies like Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG)(NASDAQ:GOOGL), Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), and Intel (NASDAQ:INTC); ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft; and seemingly every auto manufacturer are putting in serious work to get a self-driving car on the road. While all eyes in the U.S. are on promising projects -- like the Chevy Bolt that doesn't have a steering wheel, announced by General Motors (NYSE:GM) last week -- the best-selling autonomous vehicle of the future may not be what you think. The best-seller isn't a car at all It's the motorcycle -- probably not the first mode of transport you think of when imagining AI-powered driving technology. For most Americans, it's not a method of transport at all. That didn't stop Honda (NYSE:HMC) from unveiling self-leveling rider-assist technology for its motorcycles at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2017 in Las


I Have Seen the Future’s Best-Selling Autonomous Vehicle, and It’s Not What You Think
Plant Thu 27 Jul 2023 "Personally I think the IEA is exactly right when they predict peak oil in the 2020s, especially because it matches my own predictions."

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Re: No Worries! We'll all be driving flying saucers soon!

Unread postby AdamB » Sun 28 Jan 2018, 01:08:08

Not flying saucers maybe,, but something better!! Although I doubt we'll all be doing this with them.

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Plant Thu 27 Jul 2023 "Personally I think the IEA is exactly right when they predict peak oil in the 2020s, especially because it matches my own predictions."

Plant Wed 11 Apr 2007 "I think Deffeyes might have nailed it, and we are just past the overall peak in oil production. (Thanksgiving 2005)"
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Re: No Worries! We'll all be driving flying saucers soon!

Unread postby Plantagenet » Sun 28 Jan 2018, 01:43:45

I was just reading about autonomous luggage, i.e. EV luggage with little wheels and AI that will follow you around at airports so you don't have to carry it or roll it along behind you.

This reminded me of the magic "luggage" in the Terry Pratchett Discworld books that followed after Rincewind the wizard everywhere he went.

And that reminded me of the famous saying by Arthur C. Clarke that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

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Its true---AI EV autonomous luggage that will follow you through an airport is much like the magic luggage that followed behind Rincewind in the Terry Pratchett books.

Cheers!
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Re: No Worries! We'll all be driving flying saucers soon!

Unread postby Tanada » Sun 28 Jan 2018, 12:10:32

How much energy will be wasted in self guided and propelled luggage manufacturing because people don't want to haul their own weight?
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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Re: No Worries! We'll all be driving flying saucers soon!

Unread postby diemos » Sun 28 Jan 2018, 12:20:24

Commanding_Heights wrote:
The World's First Flying Saucer: Made Right Here on Earth
link to article on Scientific American



You do notice that the article is from July 2008. I'm guessing with the benefit of hindsight that it didn't work.
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