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First Ever Plane With No Moving Parts Takes Flight (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The first ever "solid state" plane, with no moving parts in its propulsion system, has successfully flown for a distance of 60 meters, proving that heavier-than-air flight is possible without jets or propellers. The flight represents a breakthrough in "ionic wind" technology, which uses a powerful electric field to generate charged nitrogen ions, which are then expelled from the back of the aircraft, generating thrust. Steven Barrett, an aeronautics professor at MIT and the lead author of the study published in the journal Nature, said the inspiration for the project came straight from the science fiction of his childhood.
In the prototype plane, wires at the leading edge of the wing have 600 watts of electrical power pumped through them at 40,000 volts. This is enough to induce "electron cascades", ultimately charging air molecules near the wire. Those charged molecules then flow along the electrical field towards a second wire at the back of the wing, bumping into neutral air molecules on the way, and imparting energy to them. Those neutral air molecules then stream out of the back of the plane, providing thrust. The end result is a propulsion system that is entirely electrically powered, almost silent, and with a thrust-to-power ratio comparable to that achieved by conventional systems such as jet engines. "I was a big fan of Star Trek, and at that point I thought that the future looked like it should be planes that fly silently, with no moving parts -- and maybe have a blue glow," said Barrett. "But certainly no propellers or turbines or anything like that. So I started looking into what physics might make flight with no moving parts possible, and came across a concept known as the ionic wind, which was first investigated in the 1920s."
"This didn't make much progress in that time. It was looked at again in the 1950s, and researchers concluded that it couldn't work for aeroplanes. But I started looking into this and went through a period of about five years, working with a series of graduate students to improve fundamental understanding of how you could reduce ionic winds efficiently, and how that could be optimized."
In the prototype plane, wires at the leading edge of the wing have 600 watts of electrical power pumped through them at 40,000 volts. This is enough to induce "electron cascades", ultimately charging air molecules near the wire. Those charged molecules then flow along the electrical field towards a second wire at the back of the wing, bumping into neutral air molecules on the way, and imparting energy to them. Those neutral air molecules then stream out of the back of the plane, providing thrust. The end result is a propulsion system that is entirely electrically powered, almost silent, and with a thrust-to-power ratio comparable to that achieved by conventional systems such as jet engines. "I was a big fan of Star Trek, and at that point I thought that the future looked like it should be planes that fly silently, with no moving parts -- and maybe have a blue glow," said Barrett. "But certainly no propellers or turbines or anything like that. So I started looking into what physics might make flight with no moving parts possible, and came across a concept known as the ionic wind, which was first investigated in the 1920s."
"This didn't make much progress in that time. It was looked at again in the 1950s, and researchers concluded that it couldn't work for aeroplanes. But I started looking into this and went through a period of about five years, working with a series of graduate students to improve fundamental understanding of how you could reduce ionic winds efficiently, and how that could be optimized."
I've made many airplanes without moving parts. They're called paper airplanes.
This plane's wingspan is already five meters, for just 2.5kg of weight, most of it going to the battery pack. To make it carry more weight, one will have to make it much bigger, which will require much stronger wings, which will make it heavier. And to make things worse, batteries do not get lighter as they discharge.
It's a great toy, but it will be a while before it is useful.
I would be fascinated to know how much thrust that is producing. How variable the thrust is etc.
Does the thrust increase with airspeed? I'd get about 2 mins of flight time on those numbers with a standard battery I use in my wings. But I get about 10-15 mins of flight depending on how much I'm caning it.
Excuse my lack of knowledge, but wouldn't this be effective on ground transportation if it was any good? I get that once you have lift, there is all kinds of other physics going on other than just acceleration and momentum but it seems to me it probably takes more energy to defy gravity than to just move along the ground against wind resistance and what ever friction the road causes (which is actually a good thing when you need to brake).
See Subject & Run, Forrest, Run! You can't even comprehend basic English, let alone figure out your "glorious" language Delphi.
If you think this is bullying, then fucking #MeToo
ZIP
No moving part motor == Jet. The story must have been written in 1909.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
In my dream world, this would be used to silently propel solar-powered zeppelins around the world. The zeppelin's buoyancy would support the weight of the batteries used for night-time propulsion.
Of course the problem with that is lithium batteries well-known flammability. But what's the odds of something going wrong with something a simple as a zeppelin?
Too bad humans don't like that kind of voltages if we scale this up to a commercial jetliner size.
The Philidephia experiment wasn't a big success.
Because their air cleaners were the first thing I thought of.
I cannot see this as immediately useful for plane construction but I can imagine some uses for it. Most notably, one could power this from a real fuel-powered motor rather than a battery and use it as a secondary propulsion mechanism. So for example, this could maybe eliminate the second rotor on choppers (which is a source of major mechanical complexity and does not do much lifting, just torque balancing).
This looks a lot like the Ionic lifters that were popular in the "anti gravity" circles about 15 years ago. I built a few and they were fun to build, but there isn't any anti-gravity going on here just ion wind. The high voltage was entertaining and the corona was beautiful when the lights were turned off.
The folks at MIT are doing great things. I love it!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biefeld–Brown_effect
Was doing this kind of ion wind stuff a decade ago.
This is called an Electrokinetic Generator, and was invented by Thomas Townsend Brown, patented in 1957. Patent is currently held by Whitehall Rand Inc. This may or may not be the first plane to use it. There were rumors that the B-2 bomber used these devices along with conventional jet engines. I'm no good at making links, but here's ther url to the patent. https://patents.google.com/patent/US3022430A/en
And the damn bungee flung the thing 60 meters. Monty Python did the same thing with a bunch of cows...
How is this even news? These things have been around for like 100 years.
> make it much bigger, which will require much stronger wings, which will make it heavier.
Yeah with planes, if it barely works at small scale, it can't come close to working at a much larger scale. Specifically, doubling the length and width means the weight is eight times as much. It's easy to do things at model scale that are nearly impossible at full size.
Imagine a plane with a rectangular fuselage 10x1x1. Its volume would be ten units, and the weight proportional. "Doubling the size" would be 20x2x2. That's 80 units of volume/weight! Doubling the size makes it 8 times heavier.
I can easily scratch build a model plane from Dollar Tree materials that has a thrust to weight ratio greater than 1. Probably most models have 1 or better thrust to weight. At full scale, only some fighter jets have that kind of capability.
The fact that scaling up by doubling the wingspan means 8 times as much weight means anything borderline capable at 5 meter wingspan because totally unusable at 10 meters. They'll need to either scale it up and show it works, or demo fighter jet level performance at 5 meters to show flight is possible at 10 meter wingspan.
Well, if you paint your zeppeling in flammable paint and fill it with flammable gas, then if the odds strike... you're still a ways better off than what happens when a tin can filled with people and fuel hits the ground at several hundred miles per hour.
Go on, look at what actually caused the most deaths in the Hindenburg disaster. It wasn't "burned to death", actually no. The incident lives so vividly in our minds because of that hysterical radio reporter shouting things live on air. And, sure, a burning ball of gas is impressive enough that it's easy to forget what didn't happen. So what didn't happen? That hydrogen gas in there, had it been mixed properly with oxygen, might also have exploded with a supersonic shockwave. That didn't happen.
Oh, and there's no requirement to paint zeppelins in flammable paint or fill them with flammable gas to make them go. How about constructing them out of, say, kevlar and aerogel instead? We have made some improvements in materials science and safety procedures since then.
Miniaturize these and use solar panels for the wings. Release in swarms as surveillance drones.
"The order is: engage the silent drive." --Captain Marko Ramius
...your hair would stand on end...
Why not make a sealed hot air balloon that expands as its contents are heated. Put water vapor inside, to go up, microwave the water vapor.
US government has top secret large triangular rigid helium filled air ships using "ion wind" propulsion.
The first real plane flight wasn't very long either, but it at least carried the weight of a real person.
It's my understanding that Ionic wind doesn't scale very well, and probably can't work for anything larger than a very lightweight toy.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Or.... fill your inflatable balloon with nitrogen. Ionize it while anchored to the earth to reduce the pressure, dumping the electrons into the earth. The balloon is a good insultator, to get down to earth, have a controlled flow between the inside and outside, discharging it slowly to the atmosphere.
Looking at the video, it didn't even take off under its own power.. Did it?
That's what a plane is. For an example of a powered, wingless aircraft with no moving parts, see this flying saucer based on a similar principle.
until it reaches a power density of one point twenty one jigga-watts !
Woosh !
> Imagine a plane with a rectangular fuselage 10x1x1. Its volume would be ten units, and the weight proportional. "Doubling the size" would be 20x2x2. That's 80 units of volume/weight! Doubling the size makes it 8 times heavier.
No it doesn't. Most of this volume is air. To achieve 8x weight you have to double size of every element of the plane. It is completely unnecessary for most elements of fuselage. E.g. if 0.5 mm aluminum sheet was good enough for 10x1x1, it most likely will work for 20x2x2 version. So, it's only 4 times heavier.
It doesn't help much here though. If it really had "a thrust-to-power ratio comparable to that achieved by conventional systems such as jet engines", then it would be a clear winner. Some extreme mental gymnastics is required to make a claim like that. Interesting toy without clear way for improvement.
It doesn't look like it scales well. Every single problem in Star Trek can be solved by reversing polarity or reconfiguring sensors. Maybe they should give it a try.
The obvious problem with hydrogen is that it will leak. Just look at how difficult hydrogen is to store and transport. Even if you covered the Zeppelin with a layer of light metal (Al), the hydrogen would still eventually make its way out. Leaking normally would not be a problem - it just goes up. But if the leak is large enough and there is an ignition source, like lightning, then you have a problem. There would not be an explosion right away but a fire would compromise the structural integrity which would eventually lead to ... a very bad event.
A modern airship using Hydrogen would be orders of magnitude safer then the Hindenburg. That being said, still not safe enough. Just use helium and deal with the reduced efficiency.
I do believe this is a solution begging for a problem, but I would not say there are hard limits on this application due to batteries in the distant future. We have to extrapolate from current technology that the future will offer wireless power transmission systems. Consider a matrix of ground-based microwave transmitters drawing from solar power that can beam energy to an aircraft such as this in bursts that can charge a meager capacitor. The aircraft is catapult launched, so it only needs to maintain enough energy on board for travelling between energy nodes within the matrix. Actual propulsion would be more efficiently accomplished via traditional means (propeller) for such an aircraft, but my intention here is to highlight that battery scalability should not suppress our freedom to dream of electric aircraft.
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I mean, they look fine, constructed out of Lego and everything but once you launch one in the air the flight time isn't great and they always fall to pieces where they hit the floor.
This is true of any lifting gas. But hydrogen is a lot easier to replace than helium...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Is it plausibly useful for very high altitude drones, mars aircraft and the like? What is the effective exhaust velocity? eg is there any regime where it is more efficient than an electric motor and propeller?
Still its a cute concept, even if it isn't practical.
Imagine a plane with a rectangular fuselage 10x1x1. Its volume would be ten units, and the weight proportional. "Doubling the size" would be 20x2x2.
Doubling the size would be 20x1x1. That you allow you to carry twice as much cargo... Probably a lot more than 2x as much since the 10x1x1 aircraft would have fixed size equipment and mechanical stuff that doesn't scale proportionally.
What you suggest is multiplying the size by 8. In practice very large aircraft are economical and not as impractical as your numbers would suggest. Per unit of cargo (e.g. per person) an A380 compares well to a small business jet.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
A modern airship using Hydrogen would be orders of magnitude safer then the Hindenburg. That being said, still not safe enough. Just use helium and deal with the reduced efficiency.
Weird. It's almost as if you believe that helium is cheap and unlimited.
You know that no ship is watertight, right? It's much easier to pump out a bit of water once a day than it is to get a perfect seal.
Blimps could do the same thing, ie. have some tanks of hydrogen on board to keep themselves topped up when some escapes.
No sig today...
Fixed that for ya'.
Doesn't this produce massive amounts of (toxic) ozon?
Could this technology also be used as an alternative to the rotating blades currently used in fans? Fans are everywhere, and if this system can scale down effectively and run quieter and more efficient it can have uses in air conditioning, ventilation systems, refrigerators, cars, desktop/laptop computer cooling, basically anywhere we need air to move.
Why add weight with the voltage converter? Batteries can be stacked (serial connection) for pretty much whatever voltage. In any case I like how it looks like some old triple-winged plane
Slashdot Editors, EDIT !
... breaks wind?
I'll be here all day. Happy Thanksgiving!
"doubling the size" is a colloquialism that's often taken to mean all 3 dimensions are scaled by a factor of 2.
If you want to be precise, there are other words you can use. Doubling the volume gets you to 20x1x1.
Nice but not the first. If one were to dig back in the archives of things like Popular Mechanics it would be discovered that electrostatic lift was being explored in the 1950's and successfully demonstrated. Essentially big balsa wood space frames with an array of electrodes, these devices created a 'wind' sufficient to lift the device to the end of the electrical cord. Wonderful idea and looked really cool. And these grids were pretty big.
The problem then as now is the power source -- while electricity can be used to create lift, the kit to generate enough of it is really heavy, whether batteries or other forms. And I am not sure if pushing the air with a spray of electrons is more or less efficient than whacking it with a stick (propeller). I suspect its the later but have been too lazy to work the numbers.
I'm trying to think of a common example where "doubling the size" would mean doubling all three dimensions.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Specifically, doubling the length and width means the weight is eight times as much.
Doubling length, width and height of everything, means 8x the weight. But only 4x the lift, lift being proportional to area.
In practice, you don't double every dimension. You build a bigger plane, but don't double wall thickness of your material. So weight goes up 4x, not 8x. With weight increase roughly matching lift increase, bigger planes are possible. Obviously, you can't scale up the battery more than 4x, but the 4x heavier plane will only need 4x power to get up. It also suffer no more than 4x the drag, as long as it aren't faster than the small plane.
Why not scale it that way? Certainly, if one flies, another one can fly next to it. You may even join them, if that's useful.
They are talking about making small planes in TFA, so they're probably aware of the problem.
And efficiency-wise, batteries are simply shit. So I don't know why they are limiting themselves to batteries.
It would be smarter, to use high-density fuel, like synthetic hydrocarbons, turn it into electricity, using fuel cells, and recycle the waste products back to synthetic hydrocarbons using the energy of a solar/wind power plant. Of course the recycling efficiency will be proportional to how well you can keep the waste products contained, but it's not like there isn't enough sunlight, and like one couldn't the fuel asynchronously. Thanks to fuel cells "burning" cleanly, and total recycling, the process would be perfectly green. Even more green than batteries, with their toxic and rare materials.
Or is the propulsion itself not efficient enough, even if you had an infinite efficiency, zero weight power source?
Because there are vastly more efficient energy sources than batteries. (Like artificially made fuel, burnt in a fuel cell, and completely recycled with only "green" power sources.)
Releasing a lot on nitrogen ions probably isn't the best thing for the environment. Yes, most will combine to NO2 but not all
Apparently the MIT goobs have never been on youtube. There are several ion wind devices that work much better that have built in random quack's basement.
Scale model sizes are always done this way. A 1:10 model is 1/10th the length, 1/10th the width, and 1/10th the height, or 1/1000th the volume.
i am sorry for suggesting this. i think one goal of the project was to make
the energy source electrical, e.g. battery.
however, methinks if a 20k RPM (carbonfoul) microturbine and a "transformer" are mated, the baby
should auto-output the required high-voltage at a rather spectacular V/gm (volt per gram)?
and who knows, maybe GE, rolls-royce et al. can get another design shelved in the secret bunker "no-see-no-know", when
the compressor part of the turbine is purely due to "ion-wind" : )
Ah yes, good example.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9yYu-ZM1S0
http://www.tuks.nl/pdf/Reference_Material/NASA%20-%20Asymmetrical%20Capacitors%20for%20Propulsion.pdf
I am a big proponent of open science initiatives. Why is it that our federal tax payer dollars fun organizations like the NSF, then publications are generated, and then "paywalled" by publishers, yeah this is directed at you Nature, and all those overly prestigious publishers. This "middle man" or gatekeeper of information is no longer necessary. The internet is a real thing and you can cheaply peer review, and publish articles for little to no cost. This is an amazing article, too bad most of the population will never be able to read this because research is behind a pay wall. The days are numbered....the days are numbered.
One point is that this is a *model* and as such is built of materials that you can't use in larger scales. Balsa wood, rubber band propelled planes work great at small scales. Not so hot at working sizes.
> Doubling the size would be 20x1x1. That you allow you to carry twice as much cargo...
If you had an aircraft design at 10x10x1 and tried to scale up the design by only doubling the length, without doubling everything else, it a) wouldn't fly and b) would probably fold in the middle before it made it to the runway.
You can see why if you take it to the extreme and imagine an aircraft 100 feet long, 1 foot wide and 1 foot high. It's obviously not going to be strong enough. Doubling length doubles the lever acting to snap the plane in half. To keep your structural strength, you have to double the width and height when you double the length. That"s why most all planes have basically the same shape, save the "flying wing" design exemplified by the B2.
Weight is HUGELY important in aircraft design, so you don't design something far stronger/heavier than needed, allowing you to double or square the forces without doubling or squaring the strength.
> In practice very large aircraft are economical and not as impractical as your numbers would suggest.
Large aircraft are *possible*, a large team of aeronautical engineering, working with materials scientists, can design one in a few years. Small ones are easy - if you have a piece of paper you can make one right now. You don't even have to know what "wing loading" or even "chord" mean to make a tiny plane that's plenty strong enough while being light enough.
Hobbyists routinely make small scale planes with performance numbers as good or better than the most advanced fighter jets, so that means there is room to scale up. You'd be hard pressed find a model that flies as poorly as a 747 because you'd almost have to suck on purpose to have to be as bad as what the weight penalty of scale does to an aircraft design.
The common housefly has HORRIBLE aerodynamics. If you scaled up a housefly to be a foot long or 100 feet long it would be far too heavy to fly. Yet it gets away with it by being so small. The very small wing area (and horrible chord to width ratio) works only because the fly is only a 3 mm tall.
What this means is that if a powerplant, wing planform, or other element is barely good enough to work in a small scale plane, things only get worse as you scale up.
Btw probably the most important design criteria is wing area . If you scale up a design by doubling length, width, and height, you have squared the wing area and therefore the weight carrying capacity. But you've cubed the weight.
You've got to watch the five-minute video the designer has on YouTube. The best part of the whole thing is how clunky and "garage kiddies" the plane looks, and how they tested it in a local school gym. I couldn't care less whether or not it's practical at the moment. The first automobiles were sometimes followed around by farmers with horse-drawn wagons full of tires and tools, because they were so prone to breakdowns, flats and just plain uselessness.
Here's a link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boB6qu5dcCw
This is like Kitty Hawk, which is how inventing things that could change the world should be done.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Can you reverse the principle to make a solid state windmill that generates power with no moving parts?
Graphene will yes
Blimps could do the same thing, ie. have some tanks of hydrogen on board to keep themselves topped up when some escapes.
Ideally you'd skip the hydrogen storage and instead include a fuel cell and an air compressor. The top of the blimp you're imagining is covered in nanosolar, right?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
> You build a bigger plane, but don't double wall thickness of your material.
Actually you DO have to double the strength of the walls, and square the strength of certain joints. That's because you've doubled, squared, and cubed the loads they have to withstand.
Consider the wing. A wing 20x2x2 is 8 times as much material as a 10x1x1 wing. Where the wing attaches to the fuselage, a wing root 2 units long is only twice as long as one 1 units. You've only doubled the number of fasteners but multiplied, so each fastener would need to hold four times as much weight, right? Four times the force trying to pull through the material on each fastener? Nope, it's even worse than that - the wing is a lever against the root. So 8x the weight acting via a lever twice as long = 16 times as much force trying to rip the rivets out. But only twice as many rivets.
So you *do* have to double the wall thickness. Or switch to stronger and heavier materials without doubling the thickness.
No, no, no! This is clearly a product destined for the Dyson lineup:
"Buy our fantastic new Ionic Breeze airplane, it's cordless!"
This will never replace a jet engine or turboprop for passenger planes or other fast vehicles. But jet engines and propellers are not efficient at very high altitudes.
But a solar powered very high-flying blimp or ultra-light that is a platform as a pseudo-satellite for scientific or communications purposes could make use of this system.
Would it be practical to use hot air as the lifting gas?
gweihir KNOWS u IMPERSONATE me https://it.slashdot.org/commen... c6gunner proves it https://linux.slashdot.org/com... he forgot to SUBMIT as AC & using his registered 'lusrname' instead (because he tried to mock me both BEFORE & after I FAIRLY challenged him to show he's done better work - he had ZERO).
& NO WAY I'd "cry" like you "ne'er-do-wells" on /. (TROLL /.ers, not all) OR post on hosts offtopic.
YOU HELPED ME https://science.slashdot.org/c... (& you quit trying to make me look bad trying to "tell lies" on hosts as "ME" IN YOUR IMPERSONATIONS of me e.g. https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... as regards Intel speculative execution attack? Hosts PREVENT 'EM)
APK
P.S.=> I KNOW the 2nd to last link above's KILLING YOU - YOU ACTUALLY HELPED ME getting me to see if hosts stop more than portsmash (& Meltdown + Spectre too) & "lo & behold" - hosts WORK on 'em - U LOSE (& U STOPPED TRYING IT in your impersonations of me) .... apk
They tried that. It was called the Ionic Breeze purifier. It turned out to generate too much ground-level ozone.
Let me take a guess: Perhaps the forces, abrasions, etc. on the landing gear are greater during landing at a given weight than during takeoff at the same weight. In particular, the contact with the ground is more sudden during landing than during takeoff, and more sudden generally means greater force.
"I'm a much better programmer than APK" - by Anonymous Coward ZIP on Monday October 08, 2018 @11:27PM (#57449082)
BIG TALK - ZIP has no programs to show as proof.
I do https://news.slashdot.org/comm...
(From registered /.ers liking/using/praising my work + 100k users worldwide)
ZIP tried to take credit for what I solved before him https://tech.slashdot.org/comm...
He codes? He can't EVEN READ!
I show 2 ways to do it YOURSELF https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... - he can't.
Delphi/FreePascal/ObjectPascal HAS no null-term'd string bufferoverflows https://developers.slashdot.or... - C does, C++ can UNLESS you do what I said 1st.
He likes CODE SIGNING (it's been STOLEN & ABUSED) https://www.helpnetsecurity.co...
MY METHOD CAN'T BE (upmodded +2 INTERESTING in CODING FOR DEFCON) https://it.slashdot.org/commen...
ZIP says he has no /. acct "I don't have an account so I don't have mod points" https://news.slashdot.org/comm...
Yet ZIP says he downmods me (IMPOSSIBLE w/ no /. acct.): "I down-modded a few of your post" - by Anonymous Coward "ZIP" on Thursday October 11, 2018 @11:31AM (#57461058)
APK
P.S.=> KEEP IMPERSONATING ME like https://science.slashdot.org/c... (I'd never say that OR bitch to do-NOTHING "ne'er-do-wells" like ZIP OR c6gunner https://linux.slashdot.org/com... (he 1st mocked me & impersonated me TWISTING /.ers words & after that, I FAIRLY challenged him to show HE DID BETTER & that was his response (weak))!
Above EXPOSES your BLOWHARD incompetence... apk
By incremental improvement, each of which is worthy of a fresh patent on the new parts. Drug companies have been using this sort of evergreening for decades: introduce an improvement and convince regulators to withdraw the previous product form the market as less safe, so that would-be generic manufacturers cannot compete by producing the previous-generation product.
Your software is just fine - well written, functional... I'm going to continue using the Host File Engine by mmell February 17, 2017
Your premise that hostfiles are a good way to deal with advertising and malvertising is quite valid - by JazzLad April 20, 2016
his hosts program is actually pretty good by xenotransplant August 10 2015
his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to locally block stuff outright while consuming minimum system resources by alexgieg September 25 2015
I like your host file system by Karmashock September 09 2015
that APK guy, I use his host file by rogoshen1 Tuesday March 03, 2015
I personally use a HOSTS file blocker produced from a genius called APK by 110010001000 October 27 2017
* Want more webmistressrachel? Ask - & "ye shall receive"!
APK
P.S.=> + me EXPOSING you impersonating me & WHY YOU DO IT too here https://science.slashdot.org/c... ... apk
... is here.
I'll use a car analogy.
It'll be a toy car powered by two AA batteries. The toy and its engine are green, wouldn't you agree?
I flip a switch and off it goes emitting very little CO2. How neat. I have a small-carbon-footprint car.
--
What processes and procedures in the PAST (here's my focus) caused the car to be here? Well, let's look:
Big fossil-fueled trucks cut the tops off mountains digging out essential minerals, metals, which are shipped by fossil-fueled semis, trains, to massive extractors driven by natural gas or coal or other fossil fuel.
Fat forward through a lot of fossil-fueled steps, and separate parts and pieces are fossil-fuel delivered to an assembly factory to actually fabricate not only the toy, but the batteries as well.
That's a lot of investment in carbon-positive contribution.
Let's back up and start again at the mountaintop cutters. The drivers got there how? By fossil fuel cars. The people bought good at the convenience store manufactured by _____ ____ (hint: fossil fuel).
In fact, all along the supply line including distribution, (all manner of transportation including air and sea), people arrive in fossil fuel cars.
Even after the toy dies, the goddam thing has to find its way to a landfill via a fossil fuel garbage truck.
--
Back to the story: Look at the carbon-neutral plane fly.
Question: Where did the copper wires come from? Where did the battery come from? Where did the parts and pieces come from?
How did the professor and a series of undergraduates get to the hangar?
Don't get me wrong ... I'm all for a plane with no moving parts and wind turbines and solar panels, etc.
But, goddammit, they have their DNA in fossil fuel and the laws of thermodynamics forbid us from getting something for nothing. /rant
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
>Some extreme mental gymnastics is required to make a claim like that. Interesting toy without clear way for improvement.
Perhaps so. But it doesn't take any mental gymnastics at all to realize that the one sure way to be certain there's no improvement is to simply ignore the technology.
It's an interesting technology. Probably makes more sense with lighter-than-air vehicles than aircraft at the commercial scale, at least for now. However, for now they appear to be looking at developing the technology for small-scale vehicles - consumer/delivery drones that operate nearly silently, rather than filling the skies with their annoying buzzing as they become more common. Maybe they succeed in optimizing it to that point, maybe not. Either way the technology has that much more research behind it against the day the right technologies come together to make it useful. And a bunch of engineering students have some hands-on experience doing genuine cutting-edge research towards developing a potentially useful technology.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
This would work better on Mars.
You stop your crap here 1st weirdo https://slashdot.org/comments.... & everyone KNOWS you do e.g. https://it.slashdot.org/commen...
* GROW UP LOSER!
APK
P.S.=> Hence WHY you "HIDE" behind your UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous posts now too... apk
"..how you could reduce ionic winds efficiently..."
should be "produce", not "reduce" - no need to reduce an already fairly small thrust :-)
The airplane was launched, and completely incapable of maintaining velocity under ION power. I have done better with folded paper. This is, at best, a hoax.
Your software is just fine - well written, functional... I'm going to continue using the Host File Engine by mmell February 17, 2017
Your premise that hostfiles are a good way to deal with advertising and malvertising is quite valid - by JazzLad April 20, 2016
his hosts program is actually pretty good by xenotransplant August 10 2015
his hosts tool is actually useful for those cases in which one does indeed want to locally block stuff outright while consuming minimum system resources by alexgieg September 25 2015
I like your host file system by Karmashock September 09 2015
that APK guy, I use his host file by rogoshen1 Tuesday March 03, 2015
I personally use a HOSTS file blocker produced from a genius called APK by 110010001000 October 27 2017
* Want more? Ask - & "ye shall receive"!
APK
P.S.=> Funny you tried downmod hiding facts above when I posted them earlier here https://slashdot.org/comments.... (not)... apk
It looks like MagnetoHydroDynamics (MHD) approach that power Russia's recently announced missiles.
Yeah, not much use for it right now, but the Wright brothers' initial technology wasn't that useful, either. A century later, some people consider propeller driven aircraft reasonably functional..
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
That wasn't me, I always sign my posts. Unlike you!
ZIP
P.S. => I've lost count how many times I've OWNED your ass on /. I have tom to thank for all the fun I've had! I will admit I'm not the first to defeat you. Nor will I be the last.
...until the power goes out. Trivial but illustrative example: I always carry at least a hundred or so in cash; many or my younger colleagues strictly use cards and see no point in having any cash at all. We walked over to the local food court and found that the Electronic Payment Processing System was down.
Who was given the opportunity to reconsider their positions on the utility of cash?
Answer - ALL of us! I was in a better position to pay for lunch, but the Restaurant was dependent on an electronic system for processing food orders and so could not serve anyone at all. Lunch was to be had elsewhere; Perhaps the restaurant learned something about the need for plans "B"
REF:
THE MACHINE STOPS
by E.M. Forster (1909)
http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html
If you start with 10 x 1 x 1,
* One way to double the volume is to go to 20 x 1 x 1.
* Doubling the dimensions gives you 20 x 2 x 2 (as well as eight times the volume).
Doubling the "size" is ambiguous, so I wouldn't be too hard on the O.P.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.