How To Draw A Flying Saucer
The Globe's First Flight Saucer: Made Correct Here on Earth
A University of Florida researcher has plans on the drawing lath for a saucer-shaped aircraft that turns the surrounding air into fuel
If a professor at the University of Florida (U.F.) has his way, the first flight saucer to grace Planet Earth'due south skies isn't probable to come from outer space but rather from Gainesville, where the faculty member is cartoon up plans to build a circular aircraft that tin hover in the air like a helicopter without whatsoever moving parts or fuel.
In other words, information technology will look like a UFO, but volition really be more of an IFO—an identified flying object.
The saucer volition hover and propel itself using electrodes that cover its surface to ionize the surrounding air into plasma. Gases (such as air, which has an equal number of positive and negative charges) become plasma when energy (such as estrus or electricity) causes some of the gas'south atoms to lose their negatively charged electrons, creating atoms with a positive accuse, or positive ions, surrounded by the newly detached electrons. Using an onboard source of energy (such every bit a battery, ultracapacitor, solar panel or any combination thereof), the electrodes will send an electrical current into the plasma, causing the plasma to push against the neutral (noncharged) air surrounding the craft, theoretically generating enough force for liftoff and motion in different directions (depending on where on the craft's surface yous direct the electrical electric current).
The concept sounds far-fetched, but U.F. mechanical and aerospace engineering science associate professor Subrata Roy plans to have a mini model gear up to demonstrate his theory within the next year.
At vi inches (15.2 centimeters) in diameter, the device, which Roy calls a "wingless electromagnetic air vehicle" (WEAV), will truly be a flight saucer. Theoretically, Roy says, the flying saucer tin can be as big every bit anyone wants to build it, because the design gives the shipping residual and stability. In other words, this blazon of shipping could someday be built large enough to ferry effectually people. But, Roy says, "nosotros need to walk before we tin can run, and so we're starting minor."
The biggest hurdle to building a WEAV large enough to carry passengers would be making the craft light, yet powerful enough to lift its cargo and energy source. Roy is non certain what kind of energy source he will use even so. He anticipates that the arts and crafts'south body volition be made from a cloth that is an insulator such as ceramic, which is low-cal and a proficient conductor of electricity. "In theory you probably should be able to scale it upward," says Anthony Colozza, a researcher with government contractor Analex Corporation who is stationed at NASA'southward Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and helped Roy draw upward the original plans for powering the saucer. The choice of a power source that is powerful, all the same lightweight is "probably going to be the matter that makes or breaks it."
Roy began designing the WEAV in 2006. The following twelvemonth, he and Colozza wrote a paper for the now-defunct NASA Constitute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) most the utilise of electrohydrodynamics, or ionized particles, equally an culling to liquid fuel for powering space vehicles. When NASA shut downwardly NIAC in August 2007, Roy decided to proceed his work at U.F.
If he'south successful, Roy hopes to develop a more than stable aircraft and a new form of fuel—air. Other craft that interact with the atmosphere have a problem: moving parts, whether jet engines, propellers or rotors. "My interest started when I saw inherent problems in helicopters and airplanes," Roy says. If these parts stop moving, the shipping falls from the heaven. The flying saucer, on the other hand, has no moving parts.
In theory, the WEAV would be more stable than an aircraft—airplanes and helicopters, for example—that rely on aerodynamics to provide lift. Using a plasma field, "you could produce lift in any direction, you could change direction quickly and that ability could be turned on or off almost instantly," Colozza says. If the pilot wanted such an aircraft to motion to the right, he or she would increment power to electrodes on the left side of the arts and crafts and vice versa for moving to the left. Electrodes on the bottom of the craft would power its elevator, whereas those on tiptop would bring the craft back downwards to Earth.
Assuming Roy'due south WEAV prototype gets off the ground next year—and that'south a big if—it could prove useful in a number of means. What makes the WEAV potentially appealing as a manner to power spacecraft is that information technology relies on electricity (from a bombardment or some other power source) rather than combustion—a process that requires oxygen, which is in short supply outside Earth's atmosphere, Colozza says. Still, the WEAV'southward biggest fans are likely to exist in the U.Southward. military machine, who would use the craft as a drone for gathering intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance information.
Roy has been working with the U.Due south. Air Force Inquiry Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, since 2001 to report how plasma could be used to control the flow of air—pushing air in different directions—and thereby the vehicle's movements. "If plasma (menses) is turned on the correct way, I tin can blow air any management I want to blow air," says Doug Blake, deputy director of the Air Force Research Lab's Air Vehicles Advisers, of the craft'due south ability to button air abroad from itself. "If I have a jet coming out of the lesser of this, I tin create a helicopter with no moving parts. Things that you would employ a helicopter for, yous could use this for."
But this does not mean the Air Force is ready to order a fleet of Roy'due south flight saucers. "We have worked with (Roy) on plasma studies but there are no concrete plans in identify that I'm aware of to explicitly back up the development of this device," Blake says.
At this early stage, and without a clear decision on how the craft volition be powered, Roy says it is unclear how much a WEAV might cost to build and operate. Still, he is optimistic. "All of the materials needed to brand this shipping currently be," he says, "and plasma is the well-nigh arable form of matter in the universe. If nosotros can somehow tap into that in the future we should exist able to fly anywhere."
Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/worlds-first-flying-saucer/
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