An ion-propelled aircraft or ionocraft is an aircraft that uses electrohydrodynamics (EHD) to provide lift or thrust in the air without requiring combustion or moving parts. Current designs do not produce sufficient thrust for manned flight or useful loads. History Origins The principle of ionic wind propulsion with corona-generated charged particles was discovered soon after the discovery of electricity with references dating to 1709 in a book titled Physico-Mechanical Experiments on Various Subjects by Francis Hauksbee. VTOL "lifter" experiments American experimenter Thomas Townsend Brown spent much of his life working on the principle, under the mistaken impression that it was an anti-gravity effect, which he named the Biefeld–Brown effect. Since his devices produced thrust in the direction of the field gradient, regardless of the direction of gravity, and did not work in a vacuum, other workers realized that the effect was due to EHD. VTOL ion-propelled aircraft are sometimes called "lifters". Early examples were able to lift about a gram of weight per watt, This was insufficient to lift the heavy high-voltage power supply necessary, which remained on the ground and supplied the craft via long, thin and flexible wires. The use of EHD propulsion for lift was studied by American aircraft designer Major Alexander Prokofieff de Seversky in the 1950s and 1960s. He filed a patent for an "ionocraft" in 1959. He built and flew a model VTOL ionocraft capable of sideways manoeuvring by varying the voltages applied in different areas, although the heavy power supply remained external. The 2008 Wingless Electromagnetic Air Vehicle (WEAV), a saucer-shaped EHD lifter with electrodes embedded throughout its surface, was studied by a team of researchers led by Subrata Roy at the University of Florida in the early part of the twenty-first century. The propulsion system employed many innovations, including the use of magnetic fields to enhance the ionisation efficiency. A model with an external supply achieved minimal lift-off and hover. Onboard power Twenty-first century power supplies are lighter and more efficient. The first ion-propelled aircraft to take off and fly using its own onboard power supply was a VTOL craft developed by Ethan Krauss of Electron Air in 2006. His patent application was filed in 2014, and he was awarded a microgrant to support his project by Stardust Startups in 2017. The craft developed enough thrust to rise rapidly or to fly horizontally for several minutes. In November 2018 the first self-contained