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ehd-thrust-verification

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The Exodus Effect vs. Known EHD Physics

A small, independent physics sanity-check of the Exodus Effect — the<br>propellantless drive that Charles Buhler / Exodus Propulsion Technologies<br>described on the Danny Jones Podcast (July 2026). Their claim: ~10 mN of thrust<br>from a cm-scale ~760 mg device at 30–40 kV , said to be sustained in a vacuum<br>chamber and to persist after power-off, and framed as a working version of<br>Quantized Inertia that violates Newton's third law.

This project builds the standard, peer-reviewed model of electrohydrodynamic<br>("ionic wind") thrust and asks: how much of that is explained by ordinary<br>physics, and exactly where does the claim require something new?

What this is: a quantitative yardstick — what ordinary ionic wind predicts,<br>using published EHD literature (MIT's Nature 2018 solid-state aeroplane, which<br>flew at ~40 kV, as the anchor baseline). What this is not: a lab replication,<br>a measurement of Buhler's device, or an endorsement. No hardware — pure numerical<br>computing.

The one-line finding

In air , ~10 mN at ~40 kV is unremarkable ionic wind — it's the exact voltage<br>regime the MIT plane flew on, and needs only 50–400 µA of corona current, at<br>a thrust-to-power ratio (0.6–5 N/kW) at or below the known 5–15 N/kW ceiling.<br>Nothing anomalous. The claims that would be anomalous are the ones about<br>vacuum : Paschen's law says a corona at a cm-scale gap and 40 kV cannot<br>even self-sustain below ~10–80 Pa , so the model predicts 0 mN at any real<br>vacuum-chamber pressure. If Buhler's ~10 mN truly holds in hard vacuum, ordinary<br>ionic wind is falsified for his device — so his case stands or falls entirely on<br>a thrust-vs-pressure curve , which the public accounts never show.

And "thrust persists after power-off" is outside this model entirely: ionic<br>wind stops the instant the field is removed. A force that outlives the power is<br>the classic signature of a measurement artifact (thermal, dielectric charge<br>decay, balance settling) — the failure mode that sank the EmDrive/Eagleworks<br>results.

And the "but any thrust adds up over time in space" argument? Correct in<br>principle (~10 mN would give a small craft 3–13 km/s of Δv per year ) — but the<br>ionic-wind thrust hits its Paschen cutoff at ~55 km altitude , ~45 km below<br>the Kármán line. Realized thrust in orbit is 0 mN , so accumulated Δv on any<br>space mission is 0 . The argument integrates a number that is zero everywhere<br>you'd actually fly.

Run it

pip install -r requirements.txt<br>python src/compare_claims.py

This runs the whole pipeline: validates the model against the MIT baseline,<br>generates the pressure-scaling and comparison plots, and writes the report.

Outputs (in output/)

pressure_scaling.png — thrust vs. chamber pressure, with the Paschen<br>discharge cutoff marked (the core discriminator).

paschen_curve.png — the Paschen breakdown curve for air; its left branch<br>sets the vacuum-side cutoff used in the thrust model.

claim_comparison.png — the claim vs. the known-physics band, and what it<br>becomes in vacuum.

sensitivity.png — how the in-air verdict holds up as μ and voltage vary.

mission_integration.png — the "it adds up over time in space" argument vs.<br>where the thrust actually goes to zero (altitude / pressure profile).

report.md — full write-up: model, assumptions, MIT validation, verdict.

Layout

ehd-thrust-verification/<br>├── README.md<br>├── requirements.txt<br>├── data/<br>│ └── reference_literature.json # cited baselines + the claim under test<br>├── src/<br>│ ├── ehd_model.py # F = I·d/μ core model + MIT validation<br>│ ├── pressure_scaling.py # thrust-vs-pressure + Paschen cutoff<br>│ ├── sensitivity.py # sweep over μ and voltage<br>│ ├── mission_integration.py # "adds up over time" vs altitude/pressure<br>│ └── compare_claims.py # runs everything; writes report + plots<br>└── output/ # generated plots and report land here

Citations

Xu et al., Flight of an aeroplane with solid-state propulsion, Nature 563 ,<br>532–535 (2018).

Masuyama & Barrett, On the performance of electrohydrodynamic propulsion,<br>Proc. R. Soc. A 469 :20120623 (2013).

Gilmore & Barrett, Electrohydrodynamic thrust...