Lifters are worthless

[johnyb]

What value is the particular line of reasoning that completely eliminates the value of something because it does not demonstrate to be useful or practical at this time?

Have you considered that the Lifters being a confirmed proof of concept,  could possibly be useful to something later on in time. Have you considered the possibility that it might develop into something practical in some variation, or combination of other discoveries that may end up being also just proof of concepts on their own which did not get linked up to this, because the experimenter said it was impractical to use, and used their reason to dump it in the bin, and thus that particular reason killed what may have otherwise had a chance to become a practical use in form?
Of course there may be things that may not ever work, but if everyone were to give a reason for not doing, we would not have had any progress, inventions, or much change at all.

I do not  know if it is true or how accurate is the reference by many people to  Thomas Edison having tested 10,000 materials and knew of 10,000 materials that were not a good a good material material to make a light bulb light up.
He could have  given himself a reason to not  continue. " its a waste of time, this 9,999th material does not light up, and i can not use it or any other material. These experiments are useless.".
Thankfully though, he had an attitude with each experiment  was one part of the end result. I do not think the accuracy or truth of that reference is that important, because it illustrates some value in that we have reasoned to be worthless or no point in the immediate time.  If he focused on this material and that material as being worthless, or there is no point, would you even be reading what you are reading right now?

[Yucca]

Maybe Maxwellsdemon is wrong?

Maybe asymetrical capacitors (lifters) do work in a vacuum?:

http://jnaudin.free.fr/lifters/ascvacuum/index.htm

The force applied on an asymmetrical capacitor is composed of two parts :

• An eletrokinetics part produced by the ions kinetic momentum transfert and the attraction of the main armature by the ionic cloud generated by the wire. This effect occurs only at atmospherical pressure.


• An electrogravitics part, this is the most interesting part, which can be observed only in High Vacuum conditions. This phenomenon, called the Biefeld-Brown effect, shows that it is possible to move an asymmetrical capacitor when it is energized with High Voltage. Although this force is weaker than the electrokinetics thrust in atmospherical pressure and although this thrust is not able to lift a standard Lifter placed in the earth gravity field, this experiment confirms a major phenomenon in the field of advanced propulsion because we have here a direct conversion of electricity into thrust...

It's interesting to think that in space, the dielectric (close to vacuum) will have negligible leakage thus to mantain the plate potential would require negligible current.

[hypersoniq]

I saw the same show (MythBusters).
Their foil lifter took off on the bench rather quickly when power was applied (think it was only 30,000 volts rather than the 45,000 volts in the NASA video of the one that works), failed to do so when put under a vacuum.

[pese]

even if he take the power supply to the lifter
HE NEED an CONTERPOINT for the Powersupply to the EARTH.

on wire to earth is need to allow an static field between the both items
Pese

[Paul-R]

Do you have a link to some evidence that they won't work in a vacuum? 

Yes. NASA tested the technology in high vacuum:
http://jnaudin.free.fr/lifters/ascvacuum/index.htm
Paul.