> The use of EHD propulsion for lift was studied by American aircraft designer Major Alexander Prokofieff de Seversky in the 1950s and 1960s. He filed a patent for an "ionocraft" in 1959. He built and flew a model VTOL ionocraft capable of sideways manoeuvring by varying the voltages applied in different areas, although the heavy power supply remained external.
Wow. Seversky was the guy advocating for long-range air power in WWII. He wrote Victory Through Air Power, which inspired Disney to finance an animated film on the subject out of his own pocket. Seversky appears in person in the film to introduce some concepts. The film is just amazing. It was available as part of a Disney DVD compilation quite a few years ago (Disney in the Trenches? [edit to correct title of box set: it was "Walt Disney Treasures - On the Front Lines"]). The standalone film is on archive.org:
Filmmaker Walt Disney read the book, and felt that its message was so important that he would personally finance a partly-animated short, also called Victory Through Air Power, which was released in July 1943.[3] Disney's purpose for creating the film was to promote Seversky's theories to government officials and the public. After seeing the film, Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt decided that Seversky knew what he was talking about, changing the course of the war.
This is exactly right, when I was in grad school we also explored new ionization designs to reduce the voltage requirements to achieve this. In our explorations, biggest problems were weight and voltage issues.
Very cool to see though, you can make this at home with a very basic high voltage generator and a set of needles.
> The use of EHD propulsion for lift was studied by American aircraft designer Major Alexander Prokofieff de Seversky in the 1950s and 1960s. He filed a patent for an "ionocraft" in 1959. He built and flew a model VTOL ionocraft capable of sideways manoeuvring by varying the voltages applied in different areas, although the heavy power supply remained external.