That looks pretty impressive, but I am quite skeptical of the fact that this craft uses ion propulsion for any significant proton of its thrust. A reddit user [1] suggests that it uses ducted fans which I am way more inclined to believe. The very high pitched noise is typical of a high velocity propeller blowing high velocity air. Which seems wildly incompatible with those large grids where one would expect relatively low velocity air with very little noise. There are also four very suspicious tubes running along the body of the craft.
Ok holy shit that is on another level, the original had barely enough thrust to sustain flight of that almost lighter than air glider, this lifts up fuckin vertically with no moving parts.
But I suspect the time it flies in the video is the time it takes to completely empty the batteries, as is the usual caveat.
Interesting to see the development over the past few years and how theory is comparing to practice. One of the theorized benefits from the MIT video was quieter drones. This article says the ionic propulsion demoed is about 85db which sounds like it’s just as loud as current drones.
