this is the bsi2 Thruster like its predecessor it relies on tens of thousands of volts to create thrust using no moving Parts unlike its predecessor it's half the size moves twice as much air and is much more durable you see back in 2018 MIT built the world's first ionic thrust airplane so in response to their work I recently designed what I called a next-gen ionic Thruster the months of work I put into it led to a decent first prototype and a measurable amount of thrust but uh it was actually quite basic at the end of my video on the Thruster I acknowledged the design had room for improvement but it does have some inefficiencies I'm thinking of three in particular well it had a lot of room for improvement actually and after a friend of mine over in Portugal built his own ionic Thruster and crowned himself the velocity King five meters per second almost six it was time for me to step up to the plate and create the BSI Mark II dude that's a huge Improvement [Music] so the video on the first BSI Thruster was really well received and since I acknowledged in the video that my design had room for improvement it was basically an open call for you to critique my work and I received a lot of great feedback and a lot of feedback that would have made the design terrible overall I wanted to design a Thruster which was modular and capable of eventually propelling a fixed-wing airplane it was a huge engineering challenge so I took my time and worked on other projects in the meantime like my plasma filled River table but then my friend Joel reached out curious about the Thruster he wanted to build his own so we chatted for a bit about operational Theory and with a smug grin on my face I thought well I'm sure his attempt will be cute fast forward a month and it was more than cute his Thruster achieved velocities far greater than mine did and it was much more compact second almost six almost six meters per second I was proud of my friend however it called into question who I ultimately was I mean what was I was I plasma Channel or plasma enough Channel eventually the defeat got to me [Music] it was at this time I realized the universe needed the BSI Mark II let's go [Music] the new Thruster would feature several improvements first since I've learned a 3D print many of the structures and supports could be designed lighter and more compact Additionally the round electrodes on my first Thruster introduced turbulence and the brass added lots of weight so all the electrodes need to be designed with an aerodynamic shape in mind and reduced weight maybe I'd experiment with different configurations for the electrodes and see how that affects output and the last major Improvement was a little bit of an engineering task but you know what I was up for the challenge the open frame of the last Thruster was great for testing terrible for efficient airflow so I wanted housing which provides auxiliary airflow from the sides while containing and focusing the air already moving within the Thruster I had my work cut out for me I figured the best place to start would be to optimize a single section of the Thruster first right and then move on from there so I started with some 3D design and acrylic work [Music] thank you foreign [Music] here's the assembled first stage of the Thruster and I want to optimize this design before moving on to other stages but there's a couple of key features first of all the inlet utilizes a semi-venturi shape which should help a lot with airflow and drastically reduce Eddy currents and second there is an adjustable Inlet for air between the positive and the negative electrodes now this allows air to be sucked in from the sides during operation because of the low pressure inside the main body for all the tests I'm using this power source it pulses 15 volts into a flyback Transformer which feeds a voltage multiplier about 8 000 volts producing 50 000. Let's test it I started the tests with a 25 millimeter electrode spacing I've got everything wired up and I busted out the same wind meter I used last time let's just plug this in and see one point 1. 4 1.
5 next I close the distance down to 16 millimeter spacing all right let's give this another try [Music] oh man 2. 2 meters a second oh that's unreal 2. 3 2.
4 oh that's unreal I ended up running the test two more times because I just I really couldn't believe those numbers and in reality the average speed for a single stage of the Thruster was close to 2. 1 meters a second which still totally blew me out of the water now even though I was pleased with the results I suspected it could improve if the electrodes are spaced even closer so I went back to the 3D design board and removed about nine millimeters of length from the Venturi shroud after eight hours of printing and several cups of coffee later the new shroud was brought into reality a quick rewiring of the positive electrode and reassembling of the first stage and it was good to go I am curious what effect this is gonna have one way to find out oh wow 2. 2 2.
3 ah that modification man that made a huge difference it's gonna be an epic Thruster like before I ran a triplicate test and found that speeds averaged 2. 3 meters a second that was a 10 increase at this point I really wanted to visualize the airflow better you know what did it look like so I used a couple of methods that have worked for me on the first Thruster all right so I want to know how does a candle stand up to this not even a chance but to really see the airflow I headed to a seafood department and grabbed some dry ice It's a Wonderful source of fog especially when placed in hot water the black acrylic is just for better visibility flipping the switch it was clear the Venturi Inlet was doing its job beautiful a really common suggestion I received for improving the first BSI Thruster was to take the electrodes and place them perpendicular to each other curious to see what would happen I gave that a try is this a good change let's find out shall we oh it's about the same actually that's a little bit worse that's kind of surprising the average speed this produced was two meters a second which honestly was kind of surprising because I assumed the cross-grid structure would lead to more predictable and organized spots where the ionic winds being produced right everywhere the wire is Crossing that wasn't the case this told me that parallel is King so far all tests used a positive wire spaced between the grounds printing off another version I was curious what effect placing the wire directly in front of them had so I ran another test uh it's about the same as before 1. 92 meters a second yeah it's pretty steady at about two a second it sounds terrifying though further tests showed that having electrodes perfectly lined up led to an average speed again of only two meters a second so this told me that having the offset electrodes was actually the most efficient configuration consider this the old Thruster put out 2.
3 meters per second and it had three stages this is just a single stage of the new Thruster and it already puts out ninety percent the velocity of the first version that's a really good sign and considering it weighs just over 120 grams it's proportionately lighter as well at this point I had successfully created the world's crappiest and least OSHA compliant hair dryer if I achieved upwards of 2. 3 meters per second with just a single stage I sure as hell was curious what velocity three stages would bring [Music] after a couple days of 3D printing I was able to assemble the three stages together and address that question fully assembled what a beaut you've got three identical sections with identical spacing between the sections and spacing between positive and negative electrode you have an inlet for air right here and two auxiliary inlets on the side I think this design is going to perform Super well and only one way to find out this is going to be sick oh yeah 2. 9 2.
0 can be a three three three meters a second that's so cool while that was an improvement I essentially tripled the weight of a single stage while only adding 30 more velocity hardly a win so I called up my friend Alex who works at a rocket company in Los Angeles we bounced ideas back and forth on what tests we could perform to discover limitations of my design have you been playing with grid spacing eventually we settled on one test that would be very telling here's the setup I've got two separate sources of airflow a separately powered PC fan in the front followed by a single stage of the Thruster now the fan puts out about two meters per second and the Thruster also around two meters a second so what I want to know is when they combine is it linear will it create four meters a second Downstream so the thruster's on at about two 2. 1 meters a second now to give it a boost from the fan uh 0. 1 meter point two meters a second boost that makes no sense that test was pretty useful because it revealed a design flaw which is that any air coming in at two meters a second or faster doesn't quite have enough time to interact with the next set of electrodes and be influenced to go faster so essentially the second and third stages don't really help very much to remedy this I started by digging into NASA's designs for Ionic thrusters I also hit up my subscribers to see if any of them had experience with this I received a lot of great offers and Charlie's response stood out to me so I hopped on a video call with him where he suggested using thinner wire and elongated grounds which made physical sense this meant yet another reprinting and further waiting and by waiting I mean 15 hours while that printed I had plenty of time to reflect on this video's sponsor so this entire project was originally inspired by one I read that MIT had created an ionic thrust airplane and it was super cool it was in the news honestly it was all over the news and that's why sponsors like morning Brew are so important traditional news sources can be dry dense and addressing the elephant in the room a bit depressing morning Brew on the other hand is tailored to your needs witty and super informative it's a daily newsletter delivered Monday through Sunday which gets you up to speed on things like business Tech and Finance in under five minutes it only takes an email to sign up and it's free instead of aimlessly searching for news in the morning I've been using morning brew and I learned that one a giant Jurassic era insect was found on the outside of an Arkansas Walmart and two yet another Corridor is found inside the Great Pyramid of Egypt and here's the deal I went inside of it last summer and I walked a hole five feet from it oh if I just had a sledgehammer considering it's free it really makes no sense not to sign up you can go to morningbrewdaily.
com plasma Channel or click the link in the description down below all right onto some thrust originally the positive electrode had 32 gauge wire easy to see I changed that to 36 gauge which is much thinner and while the old ground used typical round tubing the new ground electrode steps it up a notch with aerodynamic tubing I also shortened the spacing between the stages by about 10 millimeters which brought the thrusters new length to just over seven and a half inches or 19 centimeters total weight now equaled 450 grams which is 10 percent lighter than the first BSI Thruster or a full can of my favorite drinkable nitroglycerin [Music] for testing this Thruster needed a proper stand which meant one thing ah nothing quite pops like nuclear green acrylic Let's test these changes so the lowest power level about 30 Watts brings us 1. 6 1. 7 meters a second 50 Watts brings us 2.
4 2. 6 okay and this is full power at about 90 Watts four 3. 8 dude that's a huge Improvement four meters per second obviously excited me so I wanted to see the airflow on the final Thruster and the results blew me away oh that's just biblical you can see the inlet doing its job with smooth airflow over its edges and a tremendous amount of air movement but what about the auxiliary inlets on the side were they pulling in additional air you can see it right here they are working beautifully eagerly wanting to see the airflow on the output I leaned on an old friend the Pyro inside of me oh God oh my God how's that for airflow oh the airflow on this is just insane it has a 12 centimeter diameter and it's pushing Air at about four meters a second right let's compare this to the first BSI Thruster and see how it measures up Mark 1 measured 38 centimeters 495 grams produced 2.
