A new airplane uses charged molecules, not propellers or turbines, to fly
The nearly silent aircraft weighs about as much as a Chihuahua
By
Laurel Hamers
1:00pm, November 21, 2018
A newly designed airplane prototype does away with noisy propellers and turbines.
Instead, it’s powered by ionic wind: charged molecules, or ions, flowing in one direction and pushing the plane in the other. That setup makes the aircraft nearly silent. Such stealth planes could be useful for monitoring environmental conditions or capturing aerial imagery without disturbing natural habitats below.
The aircraft is the first of its kind to be propelled in this way, researchers report in the Nov. 22 Nature. In 10 indoor test flights the small plane, which weighs about as much as a Chihuahua, traveled 40 to 45 meters for almost 10 seconds at a steady height, even gaining about half a meter of altitude over the course of a flight.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/airplane-charged-molecules-ionic-wind