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Electrokinetic engines

Electrokinetic engines? Apparently first described in Thomas Townsend Brown's
1960 patent,
these devices generate thrust using only electric current. The devices are constructed of two conductors, asymmetric in size,
held apart by a insulator. When one conductor is attached to the negative end of an appropriate current and the other to the
positive end, thrust is generated. I hope this simplified description is accurate!

After Brown there has been some additional work on the device, as this
1997 patent
suggests, but in the past year or so both
NASA and
private inventors have demonstrated renewed interest in the idea.

Although Brown is hero of the "free energy" crowd, folks who
sometimes claim that the engines operate though
anti-gravity effects, these devices
actually do work and
are apparently fairly simple to build. A Frenchman named
Jean-Louis Naudin, working from Brown's work developed the "Lifter"
design, his work has recently been a topic of discussion on
Slashdot.

So what makes the Lifter lift? Most folks, those who aren't claiming anti-gravitational effects, seem to assume some kind of
ion discharge — but NASA doesn't sound so certain:

Although there are different theories regarding the basis for this phenomenon, there is no dispute that a force is generated ...

(NASA Patent 20020012221)