levitation

hey,
just been watching real flying saucers on discovery. Saw one man demonstrate levitation by wrapping a coil of metal around and around time and time again, when they plugged this into the mains it hovered. was fasanating to watch! has anyone else heard of this? i hear it is very unpredictable though so was stopped!
Some guy on there said some ufo spotters saw these made bigger and flown around a base! could be interesting reading
Rob

Not sure but i know something that sounds simliar to this. The Biefeld-Brown effect. Not sure if this is what you mean, but this is a lightweight allumium foil craft which starts to float when a electrical current is running through/over it.

Some links i found in some topics concerning this 'effect'.
http://www.americanantigravity.com/ (lifters)
http://jnaudin.free.fr/html/lftbld.htm
http://jnaudin.free.fr/html/lfreplog.htm

...

Some students say they tested it at 0,2 bar and it worked as well, so it might work in space. Nobody is sure what causes, let alone what is, the effect, so you (and i) can't say with certainty that it will or wont work in space.

hmm if anyone sees any of the links to buy one id like a look! they said on the doc' that i saw that they still did not understand how it worked, there wire was floating at a good laf a foot up! if you could attach some light proppellar or something could it not then move without needing any sort of fuel?

Humm, I think you can never make a spaceship with this...

if you look at that picture, http://jnaudin.free.fr/images/plift1e.jpg it needs to create an electric field, look at the 2 cables on on the table and the other one that glass.
Or is there a "version" with "batery" + all other components on the small vehicle "itself" ?

I guess this is a nice effect, but won't help to bring things into space...
I don't see a way how it would work in 1 vehicle.

And I think the "air" allows the field to be there.. but in space, where there is almost "nothing", I think it won't work.

And if you would "move" the field generator components seperatly, relative you'll need more energy, than using a normal rocket..

Okay, so you completely missed everything that whonos and the websites actually said. The structure is essentially a bunch of open-to-the-air capacitors that induce a magnetic field around them that pulls the air in the boundary layer next to the vertical surfaces DOWN. Because every action has an equal and opposite reaction, the vehicle then goes UP.

Assertion made by whonos: the thing needs some sort of working fluid to operate in.

Assertion made by me: damn skippy it does, and hard vacuum with one atom per cubic centimeter does NOT count.

Could it be magneto-hydrodynamics?

Ask Tim, but I'm pretty sure they're at least related.

Hello, Sigurd,

what about using JP Aerospace's Ascender instead of a rocket?



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

Ekkehard,

Good idea, but maybe we should optimize it and don't use The Biefeld-Brown effect, since it's useless in that case

JP Aerospace's Ascender, is cheaper to produce and using a lot less energy.
And it can actually fly freely, since it's not limited to an energy field.

So I would say, JP Aerospace's Ascender is cheaper, and able to do the same + more

Yeah. Those lifters are really proppelled by electrostatic ion currents. Ions (I assume positive) move between the wire and foil by e-field force, and they cause a small air current. They are impossibly inefficient, and the claim that they can work in a vacuum has yet to be tested. Low pressure tests (such as J Naudlin conducted) don't count, there is still a reaction fluid.

Now, in my thinking, these things might make a suitable alternative or supplement to ion engines on the JP's ATO idea. The gasses at those altitudes are ionized by radiation more heavily than here, and so you could get higher speeds and more thrust. Using the naturally-occuring gas would reduce weight and cost of bringing the gas along.

To me it the discussion at this point seems to deserve continuation in the Genral JP Aerospace Forum or in the Technology section.



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

agreed, is there anyway any of this could be tested at all?

I'd say all you need to test the lifters with is a vacuum chamber and HV supply, and different styles of lifters attatched to some sort of sensitive thrust sensor. Test different configurations and voltages at progressively lower pressure, and look at the power/thrust ratio. I think it will be very low, though. It probably increases w/ the density of the working fluid, so then hi-altitude use would be a bad idea.