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Crowdfunding campaign announced: Nanotech: from air to space.

Finally, nanotechnology can now fulfill its potential to revolutionize

21st-century technology, from the space elevator, to private orbital rockets, to flying cars. This crowdfunding campaign is to prove it:

Nanotech: from air to space.

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One focus of the campaign is on ionocraft, known as "lifters". It's based on the idea the lifter's thrust increases with small diameter wires. So I intend to do the experiments with carbon nanotubes at perhaps 1/1,000th the diameter of the wires used so far. Note it should also work with metal nanowires which might be easier to get access to. But with either type of wire at the nanoscale they would be difficult to work with. That is why part of the crowdfund campaign is to rent a machine capable of manipulating objects at the nanoscale, the Nanomanipulator.

But it may work to use devices that have been in use for decades, such the AFM, SEM, STM, TEM, etc. These are devices used to make observations, measurements at molecular scales. I don't know if they would be able to connect together the nanotubes to make long nanotube strands as the Nanomanipulator can. But it may be sufficient to test the high thrust capability of the nanotubes by using a singe nanotube that might be only microns or millimeters long to see if it can produce the high thrust.

Alot of chemistry and physics labs have such molecular scale microscopes so this might be something that can generally be tested.

Note that using nanotubes for the wires would be trebly more efficient. First, their extremely small diameters should significantly increase the thrust. Second, their small weight compared to metal wires should greatly reduce the weight. And third, their increased conductivity, i.e., reduced resistance, means less power would be required to achieved the same results which means a smaller, lighter power supply, further reducing the weight of the craft.

Putting these factors together means there's a very good chance we can finally get an independently flying lifter able to carry its own power supply. Note this would also work to get a *real* hoverboard and personal jetpacks. Note also it makes the U.S. Army's billion dollar V-22 Osprey obsolete before being fully deployed.

Bob Clark

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nanotechnology now can produce the space elevator and private, orbital launchers. It now also makes possible the long desired 'flying cars'. This crowdfunding campaign is to prove it:

Nanotech: from air to space.

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----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reply to
Robert Clark
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Plonk! ...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson | mens | | Analog Innovations | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: skypeanalog | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at

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| 1962 | I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Reply to
Jim Thompson

The Firefox web browser does not like URLs ending in '#/' so the advert does not load. Try

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Reply to
Andrew Swallow

I take it you won't be investing then, Jim. ;-)

Reply to
Cursitor Doom

Nanotech is like, three fads behind the times.

Your technology ideas are of course absurd, but you might have a good ride for a year or so if you can crowdfund hard enough. Serial crowdfunding could be a pretty good lifestyle.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com
Reply to
John Larkin

Fool bait. This stuff was done to death in Germany in the 1940s.

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

As a electrical engineering guy, you might like this. Sharp points are known to more easily create corona discharge and also more intense ones:

Corona discharge. [Quote] When the potential gradient (electric field) is large enough at a point in the fluid, the fluid at that point ionizes and it becomes conductive. If a charged object has a sharp point, the electric field strength around that point will be much higher than elsewhere. Air near the electrode can become ionized (partially conductive), while regions more distant do not. When the air near the point becomes conductive, it has the effect of increasing the apparent size of the conductor. Since the new conductive region is less sharp, the ionization may not extend past this local region. Outside this region of ionization and conductivity, the charged particles slowly find their way to an oppositely charged object.

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The same is also true for very thin wires, a fact well-known to electrical engineers by Peek's Law,

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. So for ultra thin wires such as nanotubes would the same thing be true? A key fact is it has already been confirmed for nanotubes in regards to sharp points:

Why are carbon nanotubes such excellent field emitters?

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This *strongly* implies this will also be true in regards to ultra thin wires such as the nanotubes. But that's it, that's the game changer. Once you have that, you get the conclusion the force produced using nanowires, i.e., wires at the nanoscale, would be enough to lift the raise the lifters and their power supplies. For the equation showing the thrust for the lifters is simply:

F = i*d/k,

i the current, d the distance between the emitter and collector, and k a constant for air known as ion mobility, k=2*10^-4 m^2/(volt*sec) at STP, with all variables in MKS units.

Therefore the thrust to electrical power ratio is F/P = F/(i*V) = d/(k*V). See for example this published paper:

On the performance of electrohydrodynamic propulsion. Kento Masuyama, Steven R. H. Barrett Proceedings of the Royal Society A Mathematical, Physical, and Engineering Sciences Published 3 April 2013.DOI: 10.1098/rspa.2012.0623

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[full text]

So you see if you can get V small, you can get high thrust to power ratio. But you can't just arbitrarily set V small. V has to be of a size to initiate corona discharge, i.e., ionization, around the wire. Then that's the key point: with wires at the nanoscale Peek's law suggests, and experiments with nanotube sharp point emitters implies, that you can get ionization at just a few hundred volts, a hundred times smaller than with the voltages used now, which thus would correspond to thrust/power ratio's a hundred times higher than those attained now.

Note also you don't need nanotubes to confirm this. It can be confirmed by using any nanowires, such as used in microelectronics for example.

Bob Clark

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, nanotechnology can now fulfill its potential to revolutionize

21st-century technology, from the space elevator, to private, orbital launchers, to 'flying cars'. This crowdfunding campaign is to prove it:

Nanotech: from air to space. https://www.>Finally, nanotechnology can now fulfill its potential to revolutionize

Nanotech is like, three fads behind the times.

Your technology ideas are of course absurd, but you might have a good ride for a year or so if you can crowdfund hard enough. Serial crowdfunding could be a pretty good lifestyle.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement 

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com
Reply to
Robert Clark

(Note that we generally bottom-post on usenet.)

I worked for a while (too long) with a nanotech startup. The product was a tomographic atom probe. The idea is to apply high-voltage pulses and/or fs laser zots to a very fine tip, rip off one atom at a time, and reconstruct the 3D structure of the tip as it's disassembled. At around 1e8 v/cm, you can rip atoms out of a solid in a vacuum.

I did wind up with a cool 2kV couple-of-ns pulse generator design, which was fun but so far useless.

We also played with using carbon nanotubes as the electron emitters in a SEM. But nanotubes are very noisy electron emitters and erode quickly when used as such. Last I checked, people were still using hot or at least warm cathodes.

My idea was to taper a glass fiber down to micron diameter and coat the end with a photoemitter. Shine some light down the fiber and electrons leap off the end. The numbers looked reasonable.

Raise some money; have fun.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
Reply to
John Larkin

(I'm still using the backwards Windows Live Mail to read Usenet which top posts responses.)

Thanks for the response. About the nanotube as emitters, they burn in oxygen. Would your application allow an inert gas or vacuum operation? Also some metals such as iron or tungsten also can form nanoscale diameter rods, known as "whiskers". These might be better able to withstand the high voltage without degrading.

Like your idea of using microscale photoemitters. As with the nanotube emitters, your idea also could work to provide high ionization and higher thrust for ion space drives. This would have an additional advantage it could use the sunlight directly to ionize the propellant rather than first converting it to electricity with solar cells, solar cells being both heavy and conversion inefficient.

Bob Clark

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, nanotechnology can now fulfill its potential to revolutionize

21st-century technology, from the space elevator, to private, orbital launchers, to 'flying cars'. This crowdfunding campaign is to prove it:

Nanotech: from air to space. https://www.>As a electrical engineering guy, you might like this. Sharp points are

(Note that we generally bottom-post on usenet.)

I worked for a while (too long) with a nanotech startup. The product was a tomographic atom probe. The idea is to apply high-voltage pulses and/or fs laser zots to a very fine tip, rip off one atom at a time, and reconstruct the 3D structure of the tip as it's disassembled. At around 1e8 v/cm, you can rip atoms out of a solid in a vacuum.

I did wind up with a cool 2kV couple-of-ns pulse generator design, which was fun but so far useless.

We also played with using carbon nanotubes as the electron emitters in a SEM. But nanotubes are very noisy electron emitters and erode quickly when used as such. Last I checked, people were still using hot or at least warm cathodes.

My idea was to taper a glass fiber down to micron diameter and coat the end with a photoemitter. Shine some light down the fiber and electrons leap off the end. The numbers looked reasonable.

Raise some money; have fun.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
Reply to
Robert Clark

The point (pun intended) of the atom probe is that, at high fields, skinny wires disassemble themselves, even in high vacuum.

The classic field ion microscope used a fine tip to ionize gas in almost-vacuum, without serious tip degradation. The FIM made the first "pictures" of single atoms.

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The current is low, nanoamps range.

Lots of experts are working on ion engines. They have probably considered all the easy ideas.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
Reply to
John Larkin

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