On Thu, 19 Jun 2008 13:15:54 -0500, "Allen"
wrote in :

all. "This is a very novel
concept, and if it's successful, it will be revolutionary," said Subrata
Roy, the ship's inventor, who applied for a patent on it last week. "If
successful, we will have an aircraft, a saucer and a helicopter all in one
embodiment." The saucer is propelled by a force called magnetohydrodynamics,
which is created when a current or a magnetic field is passed through a
fluid. By interacting with the atmosphere, the for


Towering Obstacles? One wonders what the maximum magnitude of the
magnetohydrodynamic force created when the "plasma pushes around the
surrounding air" might be. :-)

http://news.ufl.edu/2008/06/11/flying-saucer/
Fittingly, Roy said his flying saucer one day could soar through
atmospheres other than Earth’s own. For example, the aircraft
would be an ideal vehicle for the exploration of Titan, Saturn’s
sixth moon, which has high air density and low gravity, Roy said.

The U.S. Air Force and NASA have expressed interest in the
aircraft, and the university is seeking to license the design, he
said.

“This is a very novel concept, and if it’s successful, it will be
revolutionary,” Roy said.

The vehicle will be powered by a phenomenon called
magnetohydrodynamics, or the force created when a current or a
magnetic field is passed through a conducting fluid. In the case
of Roy’s aircraft, the conducting fluid will be created by
electrodes that cover each of the vehicle’s surfaces and ionize
the surrounding air into plasma.

The force created by passing an electrical current through this
plasma pushes around the surrounding air, and that swirling air
creates lift and momentum and provides stability against wind
gusts. In order to maximize the area of contact between air and
vehicle, Roy’s design is partially hollow and continuously curved,
like an electromagnetic flying bundt pan.

One of the most revolutionary aspects of Roy’s use of
magnetohydrodynamics is that the vehicle will have no moving
parts. The lack of traditional mechanical aircraft parts, such as
propellers or jet engines, should provide tremendous reliability,
Roy said. Such a design also will allow the WEAV to hover and take
off vertically.

Though the design is promising on paper, towering obstacles stand
between the blueprint and liftoff.

No plasma-propelled aircraft has successfully taken flight on
Earth. Such designs have found some success in space, where
gravity and drag are minimal, but a vehicle hoping to fly within
Earth’s atmosphere will need at least an order of magnitude more
thrust, Roy said.

Also, the power source needs to be extremely lightweight yet still
produce enough power to generate the necessary plasma. Not to
mention the fact that the very same plasma that will allow the
aircraft to fly also will interfere with electromagnetic waves
necessary for communication with the vehicle.

But Roy is confident that the unique nature of his design will
allow it to clear the technological hurdles and take to the skies,
and he’s not deterred by the risk of failure.

“Of course the risk is huge, but so is the payoff,” he said. “If
successful, we will have an aircraft, a saucer and a helicopter
all in one embodiment.”

The propulsion system for Roy’s saucer sprouts from his extensive
U.S. Air Force-funded plasma actuator research, the results of
which have appeared in more than 15 scholarly journals.

The production of the aircraft will be a joint project of UF’s
mechanical and aerospace engineering department and its electrical
and computer engineering department.