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When I was young and foolish, I remember running into that same website through UFO conspiracy theory sites. Theory was/is, the ion wind 'lifter' tech was figu

by ColanR 8y ago

When I was young and foolish, I remember running into that same website through UFO conspiracy theory sites. Theory was/is, the ion wind 'lifter' tech was figured out many decades ago and that's how those pesky flying saucers get around.

lightedman 8y ago
Well, kinda, yea. About 25 years ago we had confidential demos from a company I worked for where we made substantially heavier (compared to now) solar cells literally float in the air using self-generated ionic thrust. Problem was, that was all the power you could get, and even then it wasn't enough to keep the cell afloat. Back then, we were using 10%-ish efficiency cells. Where I work now, we just toss 21+% monocrystalline cells which are 1/8th the mass of the originals around and don't care if they break, because as long as you can still put a bus ribbon on them all the way, they will produce full rated power, even if it looks like they were nailed with a sawed-off shotgun on the EL image. “You want to play with 40,000 volts on an aircraft? That technology didn’t exist. Steve [Barrett] found a clever way to get that efficient conversion.” So, the technology existed (when you do PWM with DC it mostly acts like AC so you can run it through a basic transformer) but they figured out the circuitry to make it efficient (nevermind solar efficiency now is enough to do what we want today without the basic transformer tech from almost 20 years ago.) Still neat, but this really hints of amateurs that never checked some basic math which hinted at this possibility, and existed back in the 70s, which was before I was even born. EDIT: added the second half after re-reading, edited again to make the PWM DC statement more clear.
ColanR 8y ago
Why is the comment by lightedman dead?
- grzm 8y ago
  Likely because at some point 'lightedman was banned. If you feel the comment is worthy, you can vouch for it by clicking the timestamp of the comment and clicking "vouch".

by ColanR 8y ago

lightedman 8y ago

Well, kinda, yea. About 25 years ago we had confidential demos from a company I worked for where we made substantially heavier (compared to now) solar cells literally float in the air using self-generated ionic thrust. Problem was, that was all the power you could get, and even then it wasn't enough to keep the cell afloat. Back then, we were using 10%-ish efficiency cells. Where I work now, we just toss 21+% monocrystalline cells which are 1/8th the mass of the originals around and don't care if they break, because as long as you can still put a bus ribbon on them all the way, they will produce full rated power, even if it looks like they were nailed with a sawed-off shotgun on the EL image. “You want to play with 40,000 volts on an aircraft? That technology didn’t exist. Steve [Barrett] found a clever way to get that efficient conversion.” So, the technology existed (when you do PWM with DC it mostly acts like AC so you can run it through a basic transformer) but they figured out the circuitry to make it efficient (nevermind solar efficiency now is enough to do what we want today without the basic transformer tech from almost 20 years ago.) Still neat, but this really hints of amateurs that never checked some basic math which hinted at this possibility, and existed back in the 70s, which was before I was even born. EDIT: added the second half after re-reading, edited again to make the PWM DC statement more clear.

ColanR 8y ago

Why is the comment by lightedman dead?

grzm 8y ago
Likely because at some point 'lightedman was banned. If you feel the comment is worthy, you can vouch for it by clicking the timestamp of the comment and clicking "vouch".