5 ms·
Sounds cool, but the headline is pretty bait-y. First, the aircraft has no control surfaces, so it's limited to flying in a straight line. So the headline sho
by api_or_ipa 4y ago
Sounds cool, but the headline is pretty bait-y. First, the aircraft has no control surfaces, so it's limited to flying in a straight line. So the headline should read "MIT engineers fly first-ever plane with no moving parts in propulsion". And then, even that's not true, since ramjets[0] have been a thing for a long time.
0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramjet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramjet
- nharada 4y agoCould you yaw the plane by changing the power on one side?
- randrews 4y agoThank you! When I read the headline I wasn't even thinking of propulsion: gliders have no moving parts for propulsion, neither do solid rocket engines, so what? What I wanted to know was how on earth they made something to do the job of an aileron without moving to affect the airflow... And I was disappointed to find out that they didn't. "No moving parts" is a dumb way to advertise this. It's a cool thing, an self-propelled ionic propulsion system, but the fact it has no moving parts isn't an especially interesting feature of it.