This website is dedicated to discovering the new wave in air travel, or travel in general. I call it stiff air because that is where I think we should be going for the future of transportation. When an airplane reaches a speed at which it can gain lift and start flying it essentially relies on stiff enough air molecules in front of the plane to push back on it and provide "steps" that the thrust of the plane can walk up. So far, technology has been able to create this stiffness through the use of speed, surface area, and Newton's idea that a stationary object wants to remain stationary.
So, air molecules want to stay where they are, they don't want to get out of the way of big metal objects. They'll gladly get out the way of a slow moving aerodynamic object, but if you speed that object up, it allows less time for the air to move out of the way, and moving things faster requires more energy. When the energy to move the air molecules equals the energy to move the metal object, the two mediums are at an impasse, neither can beat the other. This quality, when taking gravity as a constant for both the air and the metal object, describes hovering, or apparent weightlessness. This is the goal, I believe, to create this quality using the least energy possible. Depending on high speeds to keep a metal object afloat has proven very expensive and limiting. Airlines make jumbo jets to accommodate hundreds of passengers and just barely make ends meet. They can only land in certain places, and are very subject to atmospheric conditions. I think it's pretty obvious that the disadvantages airplanes exhibit are largely due to they're reliance on speed to keep afloat. Thus it becomes the future generation to discover a method of creating stiff air without requiring high speeds.
There are many examples of objects staying afloat in nature without the need for speed. One of these is a cloud. They remain afloat their whole lives and, though they can move rather quickly, don't use speed to remain afloat. Rather, they rely on the weak bonds created between air molecules and water vapor. Millions of these weak bonds can be very strong and hold up something as heavy as 2000 tons of water. This phenomenon is similar to Velcro, where thousands of tiny, weak hooks and loops create a reasonably strong bond when put together.
Another example of an object floating naturally in air without using speed is air itself. Why does air float, why doesn't it all lie on the ground and leave us gasping? Well, the answer is simple. Air forms bonds with itself and has a very low mass, being made primarily of nitrogen and oxygen. Kinetic energy created between the air molecules as they hit each other and bounce away is sufficient to keep them separated and stack them up high enough to fill the troposphere with a consistent mix of atoms. Basically, as I understand it, air molecules are so light that the energy of gravity isn't enough to counter-effect the amount of kinetic energy created by the air molecules keeping them afloat.
In both of these examples it is apparent that gravity keeps low-mass atoms (as well as almost anything with mass) near the surface of the earth. In summary, we assume that air molecules remain afloat by kinetic energy between particles, and clouds by the weak bonds created between air molecules and water vapor. These two ideas may not seem to relate much, but they actually exhibit the same essential quality: large quantities of miniscule forces.
"By small and simple things are great things brought to pass." This statement is proven over and over again throughout history and I believe will yet again be proven with the new wave in air travel.
So, air molecules and water vapor are already doing what we would all like to be doing: floating around peacefully without much energy loss and without needing speed to keep us afloat. How then, can we harness this power and mimic air and water? We would need to create an environment that acts equally toward us as it does to them. Meaning, we would either have to change our environment or change ourselves to exhibit the same relative forces, masses, structures, materials, abilities, etc. Since we can't very well change our mass (yet), we would need to change our environment. We would need to create an environment where the bonds connecting us to air molecules are as strong with respect to our mass, as the bonds are between air and water with respect to their mass. This may seem obvious, but it is important to realize this requirement before we can understand how to act as air and water do. Think of a dandelion seed, it connects to the air around it in such a way that it is able to act as an air molecule, even though it has many times the mass. An air balloon creates an interaction with air molecules on such a scale that it can lift cars and such. There are many problems with hot air balloons though, that I will not go into right now. Basically, we have many examples of objects that are already applying these principles in order to act as air and water do.
So, we need a way to create small bonds with huge amounts of air, without requiring a large
physical mass. Electrons are some of the lowest mass particles known and thus seem a very good candidate for manipulation. Every air molecule contains electrons, and thus already has a commonality with whatever material we build our cockpit from. As technology stands today (as far as I know), electrical fields are some of the largest 'metaphysical' relationships we have discovered. By metaphysical I mean relationships that interact with very low material change. Gravity would be the metaphysical we are combating.
We need to have an interaction between our vehicle and the air that doesn't require mechanical or massive physical material to move. Electrical movement thus seems the best answer. Electricity has great power but requires very little mass movement. It can interact with large quantities of air without requiring large amounts of mass. Now, in order to be able to use air effectively we would need to change some of its properties. All we've done till now (as far as I know) is heated air or just accepted its properties, like birds and natural phenomena do. We have accepted its very weak bonds and dealt with it, not trying to change it, but just using it according to its natural limitations. Planes and rockets heat air and create pressure below them, that allows them to go up. What about creating pressure above them then climbing up? Well, I think we can change air's limitations. I don't mean creating pressure above an air vehicle, but creating stiffness above, below and all around a vehicle. This stiffness would have to come from a strengthening of the bonds between air molecules! Think of making water into Jell-O, the bonds before jellifying weren't as strong as after, now it is much easier to place something on top of the "water" and have it stay there. Well, there are many other ways of stiffening water. But, air, well, there haven't been many attempts. This could be at the forefront of our efforts toward the new wave in air travel. We need to stiffen air (hence the name of this site)! As I see it, we can create a field of stiff air around a vehicle and climb that air, the stiff air will then normalize as we get further away from it. We will need a large enough field that it can lift heavy vehicles without causing damage or ill-effects to any rigid objects within range of our field. Electrical fields can create resistance between air molecules on a very small scale. What if pulses of electrical stimulus could create resonance and get the air molecules moving in such a way that the air doesn't want to leave resonance, unless its electrical pulsation leaves. Why wouldn't it want to leave? The same reason waves don't want to stop until acted upon in the opposite direction.
