Aircraft

[Paleophyte]

I met a retired airman who was once stationed at Edwards AB. He said he saw a small aircraft, silent without an engine or a propeller, take off and fly like any other airplane.

Impossible to say based on the lack of detail in this second hand account. Best guess is that he saw a prototype aircraft with the moving parts internalized for stealth.

My guess: they used static electricity in the form of charged plate capacitors with glass as the insulator/dielectric as a sort of engine and controlled it using electromagnetism as thrust.

That's an exceptionally bad idea. The charge needed to produce thrust or lift on those scales would overwhelm the dielectric strength of the air and you'd end up riding your own personal lightning bolt. And god help you if the dielectric on your craft failed. Falling would be the least of your worries. They'd need your DNA to identify your remains. Regardless of how you overcame all of that, assuming you could, you would have managed to produce the single least stealthy craft imaginable. The EM field you'd be pumping out would be about as sneaky as the Vegas strip.

I'm failing to see an upside to this technique. We've had better propulsion systems for over a century using nothing more complicated than an internal combustion engine and a propeller.

[Deesse23]

That's an exceptionally bad idea. The charge needed to produce thrust or lift on those scales would overwhelm the dielectric strength of the air

That was my first question as well, how charge is supposed to provide the lift.
Thats why i asked him how big/heavy the objects were that T.T. Brown had allegedly flying around. Grams, kilograms, tons?

Since there were no intelligible replys from him, i didnt even ask about stuff like glass as dielectric.

[Anomalocaris]

I met a retired airman who was once stationed at Edwards AB. He said he saw a small aircraft, silent without an engine or a propeller, take off and fly like any other airplane.

Impossible to say based on the lack of detail in this second hand account. Best guess is that he saw a prototype aircraft with the moving parts internalized for stealth.

My guess: they used static electricity in the form of charged plate capacitors with glass as the insulator/dielectric as a sort of engine and controlled it using electromagnetism as thrust.

That's an exceptionally bad idea. The charge needed to produce thrust or lift on those scales would overwhelm the dielectric strength of the air and you'd end up riding your own personal lightning bolt. And god help you if the dielectric on your craft failed. Falling would be the least of your worries. They'd need your DNA to identify your remains. Regardless of how you overcame all of that, assuming you could, you would have managed to produce the single least stealthy craft imaginable. The EM field you'd be pumping out would be about as sneaky as the Vegas strip.

I'm failing to see an upside to this technique. We've had better propulsion systems for over a century using nothing more complicated than an internal combustion engine and a propeller.

You are trying to insinuate things like magnitude matters.  As he already told you, science is not math, and therefore when science occurs to him, magnitudes, much less correlation with what actually occurs, is so completely beneath him that.... well, there I go again, trying to convey a magnitude.

[Haipule]

I met a retired airman who was once stationed at Edwards AB. He said he saw a small aircraft, silent without an engine or a propeller, take off and fly like any other airplane.

Impossible to say based on the lack of detail in this second hand account. Best guess is that he saw a prototype aircraft with the moving parts internalized for stealth.

My guess: they used static electricity in the form of charged plate capacitors with glass as the insulator/dielectric as a sort of engine and controlled it using electromagnetism as thrust.

That's an exceptionally bad idea. The charge needed to produce thrust or lift on those scales would overwhelm the dielectric strength of the air and you'd end up riding your own personal lightning bolt. And god help you if the dielectric on your craft failed. Falling would be the least of your worries. They'd need your DNA to identify your remains. Regardless of how you overcame all of that, assuming you could, you would have managed to produce the single least stealthy craft imaginable. The EM field you'd be pumping out would be about as sneaky as the Vegas strip.

I'm failing to see an upside to this technique. We've had better propulsion systems for over a century using nothing more complicated than an internal combustion engine and a propeller.

I like that, "Personal lightening bolt". And that's where I got started thinking about that. If electricity can open an air mass: then can I open an EM bubble using electricity? I would need lots of static electricity in the form of capacitance with a glass insulator dielectric. And enough electricity to turn the glass insulator into a capacitor. Like Benjamin Franklin said of Leyton Jars, "The electricity is in the glass".

Holes or leaks in the capacitors would be very bad and reaching the breakdown point of the dielectric would turn me into a falling rock. And yes, the amount of EMF would be outrageously dangerous!

But, if we could pull it off, we would fly invisibly because light would bend around that bubble. We would also weigh half our weight yet, not subjected to any "G-Force". There would no wind, friction or speed limit.

[Rhizomorph13]

Impossible to say based on the lack of detail in this second hand account. Best guess is that he saw a prototype aircraft with the moving parts internalized for stealth.


That's an exceptionally bad idea. The charge needed to produce thrust or lift on those scales would overwhelm the dielectric strength of the air and you'd end up riding your own personal lightning bolt. And god help you if the dielectric on your craft failed. Falling would be the least of your worries. They'd need your DNA to identify your remains. Regardless of how you overcame all of that, assuming you could, you would have managed to produce the single least stealthy craft imaginable. The EM field you'd be pumping out would be about as sneaky as the Vegas strip.

I'm failing to see an upside to this technique. We've had better propulsion systems for over a century using nothing more complicated than an internal combustion engine and a propeller.

I like that, "Personal lightening bolt". And that's where I got started thinking about that. If electricity can open an air mass: then can I open an EM bubble using electricity? I would need lots of static electricity in the form of capacitance with a glass insulator dielectric. And enough electricity to turn the glass insulator into a capacitor. Like Benjamin Franklin said of Leyton Jars, "The electricity is in the glass".

Holes or leaks in the capacitors would be very bad and reaching the breakdown point of the dielectric would turn me into a falling rock. And yes, the amount of EMF would be outrageously dangerous!

But, if we could pull it off, we would fly invisibly because light would bend around that bubble. We would also weigh half our weight yet, not subjected to any "G-Force". There would no wind, friction or speed limit.

Kind of like the blue bubble from the movie, "The Explorers" That would be cool.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Hold my beer and watch this.

[Paleophyte]

I like that, "Personal lightening bolt". And that's where I got started thinking about that. If electricity can open an air mass: then can I open an EM bubble using electricity?

Lightning doesn't open air. It converts the air into conductive plasma with a temperature several times the surface of the sun. You could make a plasma bubble in air, the simplest way is to slap a couple of chunks of Plutonium together, but you'll end up a crispy critter.

I would need lots of static electricity in the form of capacitance with a glass insulator dielectric. And enough electricity to turn the glass insulator into a capacitor.

Glass is a middling poor dielectric. Go with PTFE for the best bang for your buck. Diamond is better but not exactly cost effective.

The amount of electricity that you'd need is obscene and it would likely be unhealthy to be anywhere near the device while the charge was applied.

Holes or leaks in the capacitors would be very bad

In the sense that you wouldn't exactly die so much as simply cease to be biology and become physics instead. Geography too.

and reaching the breakdown point of the dielectric would turn me into a falling rock.

No, it would turn you into a falling cinder.

And yes, the amount of EMF would be outrageously dangerous!

To put it kindly.

But, if we could pull it off, we would fly invisibly because light would bend around that bubble.

No. Capacitors don't bend light. We've observed some pretty powerful ones in operation and that didn't happen. If anything, the EM that you're putting out will make you much, much more obvious.

We would also weigh half our weight yet, not subjected to any "G-Force". There would no wind, friction or speed limit.

Also no. We've never observed any of those phenomena around large capacitors.

Let's keep this simple. The law of action-reaction and the conservation of momentum require that if something is pushing you forward then something else must be pushed backward. For some reason you want to use something as horrbily dangerous as capacitance to achieve that. Ignoring the problems inherent in that for the moment, what exactly is the electrical charge propelling backward?

[Deesse23]

I like that, "Personal lightening bolt". And that's where I got started thinking about that. If electricity can open an air mass: then can I open an EM bubble using electricity? I would need lots of static electricity in the form of capacitance with a glass insulator dielectric. And enough electricity to turn the glass insulator into a capacitor. Like Benjamin Franklin said of Leyton Jars, "The electricity is in the glass".

Holes or leaks in the capacitors would be very bad and reaching the breakdown point of the dielectric would turn me into a falling rock. And yes, the amount of EMF would be outrageously dangerous!

But, if we could pull it off, we would fly invisibly because light would bend around that bubble. We would also weigh half our weight yet, not subjected to any "G-Force". There would no wind, friction or speed limit.

Ok, i swore not to do this to myself, but here you go....

If electricity can open an air mass...

As Paleo already said: wtf are/were you talking about?

I open an EM bubble using electricity

Again, wtf are you trying to say? What is an "EM bubble"? Please explain. This, as much as your previous statement sounds nonsensical.

lots of static electricity in the form of capacitance

This is the third nonsensical statement in a row, at least to me.
Ill elaborate on this one. Capacitance is not exclusively related to static electricity but to DC and AC* as well.

Capacitance is the ability to store charge. Hence the non-sense your statement above makes. It is measured in Coulombs. Two formulae may help you visualize some relations in static/DC electricity:
Q=i x t
I= current
t= time
Current consists of electrons, each with a basic charge of 1,6x10^-19 coulomb. So applying a current over a certain amount of time is like filling a coulomb bucket with lots of "electron coulomb drops". The total amount of water charge is just the sum of all drops electrons you have filled your bucket capacitor with. As long as you keep the current flowing, the voltage across the capacitor rises, by the way.

Which leads us to:
Q= C x U
Q= charge
U= voltage
A charged capacitor holds a charge which is proportional to the voltage across the C and the capacitance it has.
since Q= i x t and Q= C x U --> i x t = C x U

For any capacitor with given capacity you can calc the current, time (to charge), charge or voltage, once the other variables are given. Once you stop charging or discharging you are in the static electriciy realm, as long as current is flowing, you are in Dc, for the record.

Capacitance:
It depends on the dielectric material between the terminals (as well as on geometry). Voltage across capacitors can become substantial when you keep charging them with current over time: i x t = C x U --> U= (i x t)/C Voltage rises slower when C is bigger (bigger buckets fill more slowly, so to speak), but its basically unlimited if you keep charging.

This leads us to a problem/dilemma about materials: Materials with high "epsilon", a constant that directly influences capacitance (geometry aside) and makes for capacitors with big capacitances, tend to be "weak" regarding dielectric strenght. In other words: You can either make a capacitor with high capacitance (for its given physical size) or a capacitor that resits voltage very well, but will be physically big.

Glass or Diamond or any *normal* material sucks, big time, in the "provide big capacitance" department, although their dielctric strength is ok. Materials that provide nice and (physically) small capacitors with huge capacitance suck in the dielectric strength department.

Wehen you try to build a UFO, which is heavy, you have to counter the weight by creating lots of force (to counter gravity), this force is provided by electricity. Either by having a physically big capacitor or by having one that has small dielectric strength. Thats the core of the problem.

This is of course if you believe in "conventional" physics and electricity, and not in electrogravitics, which is the claim of having found a way to generate "anti gravity".

From what i have read, T.T. Brown has used extremely high voltages (250kV range), which indicates to me he chose (at the time, there was no advanced material of today availiable) material with high dielectric strength, making the capacitor physically big however and having rather low cpacitance. His "flying machines" were probably pretty lighweight.  

This is as deep as i am going to dive into the topic without the other side providing me with at least some evidence that they/he does even remotely have a clue what he is talking about. Not because i am rude, but because we would both be wasting our time with talking past each other.


*AC is complicated, really complicated and all you need to know (for now) is that a cpacitor in AC conditions acts like a variable resistor which phase shifts current and voltage across its terminals. The size of this "resistance" is inversly proportional to the capacitance C. Bigger capacitors are making better AC short circuits than small ones, simplified that is. When you apply AC voltage across a capacitor, the (virtual/AC) resistance decreases with frequency and current gets increasingly phase shifted form voltage.

And enough electricity to turn the glass insulator into a capacitor.

Yet another completely nonsensical statement. You create a capacitor by physically having an object, that is insulating (vacuum or air between two electrodes being the most simple one), its as simple as that. You dont make capacitors by applying electricity to an object. An object either is a cpacitor or not, duh.

But, if we could pull it off, we would fly invisibly because light would bend around that bubble

Is this a reference to the Philadelphia Experiment?
You know that it cant get more nonsensical than that, right? Because what, the hell, has (bending) light to do with electricity?

We would also weigh half our weight yet,

Are we talking about manipulating gravity, which, you know, nobody has demonstrated yet.
or
just creating forces, based on electricity, counteracting gravity and lifting ourselves up, like climbing a ladder?...with the problems and implications i mentioned above

[Haipule]

I like that, "Personal lightening bolt". And that's where I got started thinking about that. If electricity can open an air mass: then can I open an EM bubble using electricity? I would need lots of static electricity in the form of capacitance with a glass insulator dielectric. And enough electricity to turn the glass insulator into a capacitor. Like Benjamin Franklin said of Leyton Jars, "The electricity is in the glass".

Holes or leaks in the capacitors would be very bad and reaching the breakdown point of the dielectric would turn me into a falling rock. And yes, the amount of EMF would be outrageously dangerous!

But, if we could pull it off, we would fly invisibly because light would bend around that bubble. We would also weigh half our weight yet, not subjected to any "G-Force". There would no wind, friction or speed limit.

Ok, i swore not to do this to myself, but here you go....

If electricity can open an air mass...

As Paleo already said: wtf are/were you talking about?

I open an EM bubble using electricity

Again, wtf are you trying to say? What is an "EM bubble"? Please explain. This, as much as your previous statement sounds nonsensical.

lots of static electricity in the form of capacitance

This is the third nonsensical statement in a row, at least to me.
Ill elaborate on this one. Capacitance is not exclusively related to static electricity but to DC and AC* as well.

Capacitance is the ability to store charge. Hence the non-sense your statement above makes. It is measured in Coulombs. Two formulae may help you visualize some relations in static/DC electricity:
Q=i x t
I= current
t= time
Current consists of electrons, each with a basic charge of 1,6x10^-19 coulomb. So applying a current over a certain amount of time is like filling a coulomb bucket with lots of "electron coulomb drops". The total amount of water charge is just the sum of all drops electrons you have filled your bucket capacitor with. As long as you keep the current flowing, the voltage across the capacitor rises, by the way.

Which leads us to:
Q= C x U
Q= charge
U= voltage
A charged capacitor holds a charge which is proportional to the voltage across the C and the capacitance it has.
since Q= i x t and Q= C x U --> i x t = C x U

For any capacitor with given capacity you can calc the current, time (to charge), charge or voltage, once the other variables are given. Once you stop charging or discharging you are in the static electriciy realm, as long as current is flowing, you are in Dc, for the record.

Capacitance:
It depends on the dielectric material between the terminals (as well as on geometry). Voltage across capacitors can become substantial when you keep charging them with current over time: i x t = C x U --> U= (i x t)/C Voltage rises slower when C is bigger (bigger buckets fill more slowly, so to speak), but its basically unlimited if you keep charging.

This leads us to a problem/dilemma about materials: Materials with high "epsilon", a constant that directly influences capacitance (geometry aside) and makes for capacitors with big capacitances, tend to be "weak" regarding dielectric strenght. In other words: You can either make a capacitor with high capacitance (for its given physical size) or a capacitor that resits voltage very well, but will be physically big.

Glass or Diamond or any *normal* material sucks, big time, in the "provide big capacitance" department, although their dielctric strength is ok. Materials that provide nice and (physically) small capacitors with huge capacitance suck in the dielectric strength department.

Wehen you try to build a UFO, which is heavy, you have to counter the weight by creating lots of force (to counter gravity), this force is provided by electricity. Either by having a physically big capacitor or by having one that has small dielectric strength. Thats the core of the problem.

This is of course if you believe in "conventional" physics and electricity, and not in electrogravitics, which is the claim of having found a way to generate "anti gravity".

From what i have read, T.T. Brown has used extremely high voltages (250kV range), which indicates to me he chose (at the time, there was no advanced material of today availiable) material with high dielectric strength, making the capacitor physically big however and having rather low cpacitance. His "flying machines" were probably pretty lighweight.  

This is as deep as i am going to dive into the topic without the other side providing me with at least some evidence that they/he does even remotely have a clue what he is talking about. Not because i am rude, but because we would both be wasting our time with talking past each other.


*AC is complicated, really complicated and all you need to know (for now) is that a cpacitor in AC conditions acts like a variable resistor which phase shifts current and voltage across its terminals. The size of this "resistance" is inversly proportional to the capacitance C. Bigger capacitors are making better AC short circuits than small ones, simplified that is. When you apply AC voltage across a capacitor, the (virtual/AC) resistance decreases with frequency and current gets increasingly phase shifted form voltage.

And enough electricity to turn the glass insulator into a capacitor.

Yet another completely nonsensical statement. You create a capacitor by physically having an object, that is insulating (vacuum or air between two electrodes being the most simple one), its as simple as that. You dont make capacitors by applying electricity to an object. An object either is a cpacitor or not, duh.

But, if we could pull it off, we would fly invisibly because light would bend around that bubble

Is this a reference to the Philadelphia Experiment?
You know that it cant get more nonsensical than that, right? Because what, the hell, has (bending) light to do with electricity?

We would also weigh half our weight yet,

Are we talking about manipulating gravity, which, you know, nobody has demonstrated yet.
or
just creating forces, based on electricity, counteracting gravity and lifting ourselves up, like climbing a ladder?...with the problems and implications i mentioned above

Thanks for the reply but, to answer your question, I wrote a post here, a long time ago, where I stated that gravity, as an autonomous force, CANNOT exist! The post was "Defying Gravity" where I merely stated, "fuck gravity". And that's how I "defied" it! Because of electricity. I was phishing for answers to puzzles to nature, and things that fly, that "gravity" cannot explain! At that time, I was done with 'gravity' because it could no longer explain a thing! I then discovered magnetism and dielectric and realized what many have said, "Everything is Electricity"--including gravity as merely an effect--a byproduct! You ain't going to learn this shit in college are you?

[Deesse23]

Thanks for the reply but, to answer your question, I wrote a post here, a long time ago, where I stated that gravity, as an autonomous force, CANNOT exist! The post was "Defying Gravity" where I merely stated, "fuck gravity". And that's how I "defied" it! Because of electricity. I was phishing for answers to puzzles to nature, and things that fly, that "gravity" cannot explain! At that time, I was done with 'gravity' because it could no longer explain a thing! I then discovered magnetism and dielectric and realized what many have said, "Everything is Electricity"--including gravity as merely an effect--a byproduct! You ain't going to learn this shit in college are you?

If you think gravity does not exist, please conduct a very simple experiment. Please climb on top of the nearest skyscraper.....

Gravity explains a lot. The universe for example: All the celestial bodies and how they move.

Gravity being a byproduct of electricity: For the record, this is one of the big mysteries of our times: How can we connect/relate gravity to the other fundamental forces? We definitly know gravity exists, because its so DIFFERENT from all the other fundamental forces. The weak force, strong force, elctricity. They all are magnitudes stronger, yet only work on short distanes (mostly within an atomic nucleus) while gravity works all across the known universe (and most certainly beyond).

Gravity doesnt give a fuck what you think about it, if you like it or not.

You cannot begin a discusison with an assertion, which would make you Einstein, Newton and Feynman combined if you could demonstrate it to be true.