Regarding flying spheres, there's also electro(static) lift caused by Earth's electric field pointing upwards. The drag is microscopic, but some tiny insects ha

Regarding flying spheres, there's also electro(static) lift caused by Earth's electric field pointing upwards. The drag is microscopic, but some tiny insects have figured how to use it for flying. I wonder if a light sphere could use an electromagnetic motor to create a strong electric potential and use that to move vertically? In an ideal world, this electrostatic drag would also grow quadratically with the sphere size so it would be possible to lift a hundred kg with a reasonable sized sphere.