1964 and
Popular Mechanics featured Major Alexander P. de Seversky's
Ionocraft. This was supposed to be the biggest thing in aviation
since the Wright Brothers got off the ground. The ionocraft,
according to the magazine worked as follows:
High negative voltage is shot from the spikes
toward the positively charged wire grid, just like negative and
positive poles on an ordinary battery. As the negative charge
leaves the spike arms, it peppers the surrounding air like
buckshot, putting a negative charge on some of the air particles.
Such negatively charged air particles are called ions, and these
are attracted downward by the positively charged grid.
That's as maybe. De Seversky was no outsider
hammering at the doors of the academy. He was an aviation
engineer of over fifty years experience, but even the most experienced
inventor can head down a cul de sac now and then. The
ionocraft was an exciting thing to see. The newsreels and
photographs of his demonstrations show a grid of wire and balsa
floating eerily off the ground and around the room. Though
it was little more than a laboratory curiosity, de Seversky had great
hopes for his brain child. He felt that once the bugs were
worked out he would have what was in essence a helicopter without
moving parts that could fly 60 miles up and at unlimited speeds.
He saw them being used for everything from communications to traffic
reporting to antimissile defences.
Though you still see the
ionocraft popping up in circles dedicated to antigravity buffs, it
soon faded into history; a victim of the fact that what works as a
laboratory demonstration may not be scalable. The thrust of the
grid was tiny and never rose high enough to lift more than the
gossamer-like grid itself. It was a bit like observing that
dandelion seeds fly when you blow on them, then designing an aircraft
that operates by blowing on it really hard.
