NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather forecasts

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
    • The Great NZ Road Trip
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
    • Cooking the Books
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • What the Actual
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Technology

Pat Pilcher: New technology could transform aviation

Herald online
14 Aug, 2013 10:00 PM3 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

Photo / Thinkstock

Photo / Thinkstock

Opinion by

My two passions both tend to involve guilt. As much as I love tech and travel, both tend to involve environmental mayhem and emit more carbon than my mums baking. Neither of which is a good thing from an environmental perspective.

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology must also love long haul travel, because they've been working on a propulsion technology that has the potential to completely revolutionise air travel.

Going from A to B at the moment requires that a significant amount of aviation fuel is burnt by jet engines. This has the unfortunate effect of introducing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, along with a multitude of other environmental nasties that'd get the pulse of many a dedicated environmentalist and airline PR person going into overdrive. Equally worrying, fuel costs are often cited by airlines as being one of the major contributors to the high costs of air travel.

In the near future however, if the team at MIT have their way, electrically powered ionic wind thrusters will replace jet engines to provide energy-efficient and clean propulsion.

Warning Science Ahead
Ionic thrust is created when an electrical current is passed between two electrodes. The physics gives me a migraine, but cutting a long story short, it appears that if one electrode is thinner than the other, air flow happens in the space between the electrodes - Apply enough juice to the right electrode design and voila! You've got thrust and there's no need for fossil fuel.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

The technology is called Ionic wind thrust and it isn't exactly new, having been talked up since the 1960s. Back then however most physics boffins dismissed it as being barely suitable for lightweight vehicles let alone commercial airliners weighing in at just shy of half a million kilos.

Efficiency
This is precisely where the geniuses at MIT research come into play. Having spent a considerable amount of time tinkering with ionic wind thrust technology, the MIT Gurus reckon that ionic wind thrusters could eventually be more efficient than the jet engines currently in use. During recent testing, they found that ionic wind thrusters were able to produce a staggering 110 newtons of thrust per kilowatt. Putting this into perspective, todays jet engines are able to produce about 2 newtons per kilowatt.

Efficiency aside, ionic wind thrusters also pack a few other side benefits. For a start they're virtually silent and give off no heat. Because of this, it is probable that commercial use would have to wait as the military benefits of a near silent propulsion system that emits next to no heat is going to be too good to refuse with stealth technologies becoming an increasingly strategic defence tool.

But....
Before you get too excited and throw away your noise cancelling headphones, there is one small gotcha.

Ionic thrusters depend on the wind produced between two electrodes - the larger the gap between the electrodes, the stronger the thrust. This means that small aircraft (and the electricity substation required to power its ionic wind thrusters) would translate into an impractically large gap between electrodes before you'd even consider getting aloft.

Discover more

Opinion

Pat Pilcher: Piratebay to sue anti-piracy group over copyright infringement

16 Feb 12:45 AM
World

The Pirate Bay relocates to North Korea

05 Mar 06:16 AM
Technology

Crackdown on 3D printed guns

14 Jun 03:33 AM
Opinion

Pat Pilcher: Something very wrong in the UK

30 Jul 01:25 AM

Not to be deterred, the brainiacs at MIT team reckon that this could simply be solved by completely covering an aircraft with ionic thrusters. So will ionic wind thrusters ever replace the circa 1940 jet engine technologies we've all become so dependent on? The team at MIT are pretty fired up about it. Me I'm quietly hoping.

Save

    Share this article

Latest from Technology

Premium
Technology

Opinion: Ditching Google search was easier than expected

09 May 09:22 PM
Premium
Business|markets

Allbirds predicts turnaround - finally - if lucky break on tariffs holds true

09 May 12:23 AM
Premium
Business|personal finance

‘Rip-off’: App developer and Consumer say fees will stifle open banking

08 May 11:00 PM

“Not an invisible footprint”: Why technology supply chains need optimising

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Technology

Premium
Opinion: Ditching Google search was easier than expected

Opinion: Ditching Google search was easier than expected

09 May 09:22 PM

DuckDuckGo collects far less data than Google, enhancing privacy.

Premium
Allbirds predicts turnaround - finally - if lucky break on tariffs holds true

Allbirds predicts turnaround - finally - if lucky break on tariffs holds true

09 May 12:23 AM
Premium
‘Rip-off’: App developer and Consumer say fees will stifle open banking

‘Rip-off’: App developer and Consumer say fees will stifle open banking

08 May 11:00 PM
Google shares plunge 7% as Apple exec cites AI competition

Google shares plunge 7% as Apple exec cites AI competition

07 May 06:37 PM
Deposit scheme reduces risk, boosts trust – General Finance
sponsored

Deposit scheme reduces risk, boosts trust – General Finance

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • What the Actual
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven CarGuide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP