Experimental plane flies silently, may lead to quiet drones

NEW YORK – A nearly silent, dronesized aircraft has shown it can fly, thanks to a scientist who was inspired by watching “Star Trek” as a child.

With neither propellers nor jets, the airplane gets its thrust by applying a strong electric field to the air. That general idea has been demonstrated at science fairs, but the new work shows it can power a free-flying airplane.

So can people look forward to traveling in planes that are almost silent and emit no air pollution?

“Not anytime soon,” says Steven Barrett of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who reported the results in a study by the journal Nature.

The approach might be used in airplane-like drones that perform tasks like environmental monitoring and surveillance, he said.

The Nature paper reports the results of 10 test flights inside an MIT athletic building.

Barrett, 35, said he was inspired as a child by watching “Star Trek” television episodes and movies, where he was struck by the shuttles that flew with no moving parts in their propulsion systems.

As an adult, he focused on that and came across a concept called “ionic wind.”

For the MIT airplane, that involves a series of thin wires at the front of the plane that generate a powerful electric field. The field strips electrons from air molecules, turning the molecules into positively charged particles called ions. Those ions flow toward negatively charged parts of the plane, colliding with ordinary air molecules and transferring energy to them. That produces a wind that provides thrust for the plane, Barrett explained.