Independent research · three projects · published as it happens · misses included
Magnetic machines, from the desk to orbit.
Three separate projects under one method: buildable documents with predictions committed before data, gate and kill criteria written before the hardware arrives, and the git history as the timestamp authority. Corrected forward in dated commits, never silently rewritten.
MTS — Magnetic Transportation Systems
Launch without chemistry. A coilgun freight line for bulk mass, a maglev-plus-laser-thermal line for delicate cargo, and a water-based orbital logistics network that carries both onward — a concept-stage architecture study with a benchtop demonstration ladder already in Phase 0.
Space Transportation Architecture Study
Physics ground rules, rejected branches and the numbers that killed them, three launch systems plus an orbital node, risk register, demonstration ladder, live work-item ledger.
Build Sheets 001 & 002 — Phase 0 bench
Inductrack levitation demo (rev A) and the acoustically levitated droplet thrust balance (rev A): predictions committed before data, gate criteria, safety envelopes.
Program Gate Plan
Phases 0–7 with entry conditions, kill criteria written before data arrives, and the standing rules the program answers to.
Matter Stack
A layered physical–acoustic–photonic display: magnetically sculpted ferrofluid terrain you can grasp, an acoustic levitation layer that flies a bead through the air above it and delivers mid-air haptics, and a projected photonic overlay for unlimited detail. Sound is pressure and ferrofluid answers only to magnetism, so the two force media share one volume without interfering — the observation the whole design rests on.
The Matter Stack — Complete Design & Build Compendium
Parts I–VII: build guide, illustrated 4×4 → 8×8 → MATD manual, art & expressive-medium addendum, choreography-engine software spec, museum hardening, collaborative exhibit, full parts list.
Matter Stack Checklist
Stages 1–5 with actual-vs-predicted tables and gate criteria S1–S5. The Stage 1 acoustic layer is the same TinyLev as MTS Build Sheet 002 — one levitator serves both projects.
Propulsion
Solid-state ionic-wind thrusters, built to reproduce the current experimental state of the art from Gomez Vega's 2023 MIT thesis: a single-stage ducted corona-discharge thruster first, then a ten-stage multistaged ducted (MSD) device that runs its whole stack from one supply by alternating corona polarity stage to stage. Garage-buildable, minus the lab-grade power supply.
Single-Stage Ducted EAD Thruster — Build Specification
Phase 1. A working, instrumented corona thruster — target 50–300 mN — that teaches the current–voltage–thrust behavior the multistage build depends on.
Multistaged Ducted (MSD) EAD Thruster — Build Specification
Phase 2. Stack N corona stages in a duct with inlet and nozzle. Benchmark to beat: 0.84 N static thrust over 0.0324 m² — 26 N/m² at 5.0 N/kW.
How to read this site
Every buildable document carries predicted performance tables; lab notes carry the actuals, misses included. Gate and kill criteria are written before data collection and are immutable once a gate review begins. Dollar figures in the MTS study are [I]-grade bands, ×2–3 wide, until the citation-and-uncertainty pass closes each one.
Status
Authorship & method
This research is drafted in human-AI collaboration: analyses are AI-drafted under the owner's direction, then re-derived, red-teamed, and adopted or rejected by the owner. All decisions, inventions, and commits are Christopher Brotherton's; commits credit AI drafting via Co-Authored-By trailers. The dated commit history is the record of human contribution.
Technical critique is welcome and useful — open an issue. Errors that survive review get corrected in a dated commit.