The ‘Sky-Whales’ and floating buildings in my Singularity’s Children books use the cool futuristic technology of Electro-Hydro-Dynamics. Instead of old-fashioned propellers batting the air with their silly paddles, an Electro-Hydro-Dynamic thruster employs electric fields to move negatively charged air to produce propulsive thrust…
This small demonstrator is claimed to be the first solid-state, heavier-than-air vehicle to successfully demonstrate this technique to fly untethered.
The same techniques can also be used to change the aerodynamics of an object by smoothing the airflow or deliberately ruffling it up to make the vehicle turn without using physical control surfaces. It can also slow the air being ingested by super-, or even hyper-sonic scram-jets, allowing planes to achieve orbital velocities within the atmosphere…
Both Russia (Ayaks) and the US (Aurora) are rumoured to have this tech flying.
I first came across this technology reading and watching videos from the ‘Lifter‘ community, which are cool, but do tend to drift towards the ‘UFO conspiracy theory’ end of the intellectual spectrum…
Full video of the first flight:
Also interesting:
https://www.netl.doe.gov/File%20Library/Events/2014/MHD/2-1-MPGW-NASA-IBlanksonPresentation10012014.pdf
Techcrunch Article here:
https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/21/with-no-moving-parts-this-plane-flies-on-the-ionic-wind/
