IB Göksel Electrofluidsystems announced the first breakthrough for future air-breathing magneto-plasma propulsion systems with the release of a new Star Wars movie in December 2015 and presented a first prototype at the ILA Berlin Air Show in June 2016. The first scientific paper was published in the Journal of Physics in April 2017. New results will be presented at the ILA Berlin Air Show in April 2018. It is envisioned that air-breathing plasma propulsion systems will enable future ‘stratollite’ airships and aircrafts to easily reach altitudes from the ground to 50 km and even beyond.   

The working principle of the new pulsed plasma engine is based on Lorentz forcing through a set of arc discharges with self-induced magnetic fields. Arc discharges can have very high currents which again generate high magnetic fields. Now in our case, there are arc discharges running from at least six outer bar anodes to a center cathode. The right-hand rule for current-carrying wires might be known to most readers from our high-school physics class: