A disconnected power cable doesn’t necessarily mean an electrically inactive device. That distinction may connect Ron Kita’s electrets, Exodus Propulsion Technologies’ electrostatic thrusters, and a wider history of capacitor-force experiments. Reports of force persisting after charging raise an intriguing possibility: researchers working with different materials and apparatus may be encountering related effects governed less by continuous power than by retained charge, polarization, and the geometry of electrical stress.

What Remains When the Power Stops

The question begins with a working premise: suppose an asymmetric electrical configuration can produce a small directional force that isn’t explained by conventional momentum exchange. What would happen when its external power supply was disconnected? If the force depended on an electrical condition that remained inside the device, rather than on continuous current from the supply, switching off the power wouldn’t necessarily switch off the effect. That possibility changes how a seemingly disconnected collection of experiments might be understood. Instead of sorting them by inventor, theory, or proposed application, researchers could compare the electrical states they create—and how those states evolve.

Electrets provide a natural starting point. These materials retain a quasi-permanent electrical condition through mechanisms that include trapped charge and aligned molecular dipoles. A space-charge electret contains an imbalance or distribution of stored electrical charge; a dipolar electret derives its macroscopic polarization from the orientation of molecular groups. Those mechanisms aren’t identical, and a particular specimen may require more than one description. What makes electrets relevant is their persistence. The charging apparatus can be removed while the material continues exhibiting electrical properties established during its preparation.

That makes “power disconnected” an incomplete engineering description. Turning off a high-voltage supply, removing its leads, shorting the electrodes, neutralizing external surface charge, and erasing internal polarization are different interventions. An open-circuit capacitor may retain electrode charge. Shorting its terminals changes that boundary condition, but it doesn’t, by itself, demonstrate that every trapped charge or oriented dipole inside the dielectric has disappeared. For a proposed connection between electrets and electrostatic thrusters, the important question is therefore not simply whether the power cord remains attached. It’s what electrical state survives after each intervention.

The speculative step isn’t the persistence of electrical charge. It’s the possibility that a retained electrical configuration could support an otherwise unexplained directional force on the complete device. Nor would a persistent force on a stationary balance, by itself, demonstrate continuous mechanical energy production: force, displacement, and work must be distinguished. The more useful description is force without continuous external electrical input. Under the proposed hypothesis, the power supply prepares the state, while the state—not the supply—determines whether the force continues.

Ron Kita’s Electrets: Putting the Electrical State Into the Material

Ron Kita’s US8901943B1 patent describes a specimen containing 50 grams each of carnauba wax and 1,2,3-trichlorobenzene. Its PVC vessel was three inches across and half an inch high, with aluminum mesh and a solid aluminum plate serving as electrodes. The charging supply was rated at 6.4 kilovolts and 1.2 milliamperes. Those are equipment specifications, not a measurement of continuous operating consumption. The apparatus was designed to establish an electrical condition within a solidifying dielectric.

Kita’s materials strategy goes beyond choosing an insulator that tolerates voltage. In his presentation, he describes using the wax as a matrix that separates polar molecules and discourages arrangements that cancel their collective polarization. He also discusses leakage during formation, charge additives, internal stresses, and the relationship between electrode materials and the resulting electret. In his account, two specimens that look similar externally needn’t have the same internal electrical organization. He explicitly distinguishes electrets that behave as useful transducers from those in which he believes he has observed a gravitational effect. Material selection and preparation are therefore central to his claim, not incidental construction details.

The patent’s most distinctive result is a slow, reversible apparent-weight excursion. A foil-wrapped, sealed assembly initially registered 277.76 grams, rose to 277.90 grams over 21 days, and returned to 277.76 grams during the next 21 days. Kita reported that an uncharged control remained stable. The 0.14-gram difference corresponds to approximately 1.37 millinewtons of apparent force, about 0.05 percent of the assembly’s weight. These conversions describe the reported scale change; they don’t establish that the specimen’s mass changed.

Kita attributed the cycle to electrical redistribution and polarity conversion within the electret. His patent specifies a balance accuracy of 0.01 gram, but doesn’t provide an unambiguous circuit history for the entire 42-day interval. His presentation adds another important detail: he sometimes uses weight behavior to infer what the charge is doing. That leaves a particularly valuable measurement still to be made—tracking the electrical state independently while recording force. If the two follow a reproducible relationship, the experiment becomes more than an unusual weight history. It becomes a candidate physical signature that another laboratory could seek in a different material.

Exodus: Making Electrical Asymmetry an Engineering Variable

Where Kita emphasizes material composition and polarization history, Charles Buhler and Andrew Aurigema’s Exodus work emphasizes shaped electrical configurations. One example in US11511891B2 used nine blades, each approximately four inches long and a quarter-inch high, spaced a quarter-inch apart. Conductive paint, copper tape, and cured high-voltage epoxy formed the assembly. This is a different route to the comparison: instead of starting with a particular polar molecular mixture, the disclosed device deliberately structures its electrodes and dielectric.

At 25 kilovolts, the patent reports an average force of approximately 237 micronewtons. Increasing the copper-tape ground-plane area from eight to fifteen square inches reportedly raised the average to 421 micronewtons, about a 1.8-fold increase. The disclosure also reports force scaling with the square of applied voltage. These are powered-test results. Their relevance is that they identify controllable variables—electrode area, field strength, and geometry—that could eventually be compared with the electrical-state dependence of an electret.

A different demonstration appeared in Buhler’s March 30, 2026, American Alchemy interview. He described a test operating at approximately 480 volts, with an apparent-weight change of about 0.1 gram, equivalent to roughly one millinewton. Turning the device over reversed the direction of the scale response. In that demonstration, however, the response also subsided when the voltage was switched off. It was an on-off experiment, not the same measurement as a days-long persistence test. That distinction is potentially informative: different constructions or circuit conditions may allow different amounts of electrical state to survive shutdown.

The longer-duration Exodus accounts describe force persisting after external power removal, reportedly for days. Those accounts provide the central reason to compare Exodus with Kita, although the supplied summaries don’t include a complete time-resolved electrical and force record for a particular specimen. The possible connection is straightforward: an electret could maintain through its material structure a condition that an electrostatic thruster maintains through retained charge. If that interpretation is correct, rapid shutoff and long persistence wouldn’t necessarily contradict one another. They could reveal differences in charge retention, discharge paths, or dielectric relaxation—differences that should be measurable.

Townsend Brown’s Older Clues: Gradients and Charging History

The historical background begins well before either program. Thomas Townsend Brown’s British patent GB300311A, published in 1928, described rigidly connected conducting bodies and assemblies of alternating insulating slabs and conducting plates intended to produce motion. Whatever interpretation one assigns to those claims, their engineering subject is recognizable: an integrated structure whose electrical organization was supposed to produce a mechanical response. That places Brown’s work in the same broad experimental territory, though it doesn’t make every later capacitor experiment a reproduction of his apparatus.

Brown’s 1965 Electrokinetic Apparatus patent expanded the design space. It described curved electrodes, tapered dielectric members, and gradients in conductivity and electric permittivity—the property governing a material’s response to an electric field. It also proposed varying concentrations of embedded particles, including lead oxide. The dielectric wasn’t merely a spacer between conductors. Its shape and composition were intended to influence the field throughout the structure. This is especially relevant to a comparison with electrets, where the internal organization of the insulating material may matter as much as the visible shape of its electrodes.

The same disclosure identified charging history as a variable. Brown stated that the rate of applying potential could influence thrust, particularly with high-permittivity materials whose charging time was appreciable. He described the field gradient changing as charge accumulated and discussed cyclically varying potentials. This is a specific historical lead: the reported mechanical response wasn’t described solely as a function of the final voltage. It could depend on how the device reached that voltage and how its electrical distribution developed over time.

That observation suggests a useful connection without requiring identical outcomes. Brown investigated spatial gradients and charging behavior; Kita describes a material whose electrical condition evolves over weeks; Exodus reports both switchable responses and longer-lived effects. The shared research question is whether the relevant variable lies in the electrical state and its evolution. Brown’s patents don’t supply a directly comparable weeks-long, disconnected-force record, but they do identify variables that a modern comparison should preserve. A test that records only input voltage and peak force may miss behavior tied to the route between electrical states.

Thin Capacitors and IVO: Related Experiments, Different Conditions

A further complication comes from Ankur S. Bhatt and F. M. Becker’s capacitor experiments, first submitted in 2018 and revised in 2019. They reported directional effects during internal discharge in nominally symmetric capacitors. One dataset contained 266 measurements across dielectric thicknesses of 13 to 80 micrometers, using approximately five kilovolts and normalizing current to ten microamperes. Their ordinary reported force direction was toward the anode. The external symmetry of the plates therefore didn’t eliminate the directional behavior they described.

Their methods deliberately varied conditions that could affect charge transport. Cathode surfaces were roughened, some specimens were preheated to about 50°C, and some tests were conducted at approximately 20 Torr. They also reported that nearby conductive material on the cathode side could reverse the force. These observations concern discharge-driven behavior, not demonstrated days-long unpowered thrust. Nevertheless, they identify useful comparison variables: local field concentration, electrode separation, current, temperature, and the electrical environment surrounding the specimen.

IVO’s Quantum Drive adds a separate engineering program to the picture. In its March 24, 2022, announcement, the company reported 45 millinewtons of thrust while consuming one watt. It described testing with E-Labs at nine-millionths of a Torr and temperature cycling between minus 100°C and plus 100°C. IVO framed the device through quantized inertia and identified Richard Mansell as its inventor. Those are the company’s reported performance and environmental-test figures, and they describe powered operation—not a demonstrated force persisting after all electrical input has stopped.

IVO’s relevance to the broader hypothesis therefore depends on measurements that separate current consumption from retained electrical state. Does its reported force disappear immediately when the drive circuit stops operating? Does it decay with terminal voltage, depend on accumulated charge, or exhibit a delayed response associated with the dielectric? Those questions could establish a connection or reveal a fundamentally different operating regime. “Fuel-free” and “power-free” aren’t interchangeable descriptions. A powered device can still help investigate a common mechanism, but its inclusion should follow its measured behavior rather than the similarity of its propulsion ambitions.

What a Common Phenomenon Would Look Like

The phrase dielectric stress needs particular care in this comparison. It can refer to electric-field strength, electromagnetic pressure, or mechanical loading within an insulating material. A proposed common mechanism shouldn’t treat these as the same quantity. Instead, each becomes a candidate variable: retained polarization, trapped charge, local field intensity, mechanical deformation, or spatial asymmetry in the associated stresses. The useful hypothesis is that some combination establishes a directional condition inside the device. Identifying that condition would be more informative than simply grouping everything operated at high voltage.

One possible synthesis would distinguish between maintaining an electrical state and changing it. In a state-dependent regime, force would remain while the relevant polarization or charge distribution remained. In a transport-dependent regime, force would appear mainly while charge moved, the dielectric discharged, or its polarization reorganized. These are proposed categories, not conclusions already established by the experiments. They offer a way to ask whether persistent electret behavior and discharge-driven capacitor observations might represent different regimes of one phenomenon—or whether they require separate explanations.

Direction provides another discriminating test. Exodus’s disclosed model makes the force direction depend on geometry rather than voltage polarity, while Bhatt and Becker describe an anode-directed response in their ordinary configuration. Those aren’t interchangeable signatures. Reversing electrical polarity, turning a device upside down, and reversing its geometric asymmetry must be tested separately. A direction controlled by geometry could survive a polarity reversal; a response controlled by charge transport might not. A vertical weight anomaly also needs comparison with horizontal-force measurements before it can be treated as the same observable as a general propulsion force.

Independent convergence would become meaningful when different specimens followed the same rules under those interventions. It wouldn’t require the inventors to share a theory, nor would familiarity with Brown’s work automatically eliminate independent experimental support. What matters is whether separately fabricated devices, measured with different apparatus, show matching responses to changes in electrical state. Conversely, historical separation alone can’t establish a common mechanism. The strongest connection would be a shared quantitative signature: comparable scaling, direction changes, relaxation behavior, and reproducible disappearance and recovery under controlled treatment.

The Experiment That Could Connect the Fields

A useful engineering lesson comes from T. Schreiber and Martin Tajmar’s 2016 electret study at TU Dresden. They used 45 percent carnauba wax, 45 percent rosin, and 10 percent beeswax, rather than Kita’s trichlorobenzene formulation. Their balance had 0.1-milligram readability and a stated standard deviation of approximately 0.2 milligrams. Polarized and unpolarized specimens showed similar weight trends, so their tests didn’t confirm a polarization-induced effect. The composition difference limits a direct comparison with Kita, while the control results demonstrate the importance of establishing what an otherwise similar, unpolarized specimen does over the same period.

The Dresden team also encountered a problem directly relevant to the proposed comparison: their electrostatic-voltmeter probe introduced a repulsive force that interfered with weighing. They consequently separated the electrical and weight measurements. A new cross-platform test would need to characterize that interaction rather than assume a probe is passive. It would also need to measure forces on the complete assembly, including any attached shielding, and deliberately vary nearby conductor positions. A force that follows charge decay can still arise from ordinary attraction to its surroundings; changing those surroundings helps determine whether they participate in the measured response.

The most informative experiment would follow a Kita-type electret and an Exodus-type capacitor through the same sequence: charging, physical separation from the charging equipment, an open-circuit hold, controlled discharge, appropriate depolarization, and recharging. Matched uncharged specimens would undergo the same handling and environmental exposure. Force, terminal voltage, leakage current, temperature, and an independent measure of retained electrical state would be recorded with an uncertainty budget that includes long-term drift. The test should last long enough to capture the reported behavior—weeks for the electret comparison—not merely the seconds around a switching event. Polarity, physical orientation, and geometric asymmetry would then be varied independently.

Such an experiment wouldn’t begin by demanding that every reported anomaly share one explanation. It would ask whether different constructions produce the same measurable relationship between electrical state and force. A positive match would turn an intriguing resemblance into experimental convergence; a consistent mismatch would show where the research paths diverge. Either result would be more useful than comparing labels such as electrogravitics, electret propulsion, or quantized inertia. The opportunity lies in comparing the materials and measurements directly. The most revealing moment may not be when the power comes on, but what remains—and what continues to change—after it’s disconnected.

 

Electrets and Ron Kita

• Electrets  — Whitesides Research Group, Harvard University. Background on space-charge electrets, dipolar electrets, and the development and dissipation of electrical charge.
• Gravitational Attenuating Material — Ronald J. Kita. U.S. Patent US8901943B1, December 2, 2014. Describes the electret materials, charging apparatus, and reported time-dependent apparent-weight changes.
• Electret Propulsion: A Gravitational Attenuating Material | Ron Kita — Ron Kita, Alt Propulsion. Presentation discussing electret construction, material selection, polarization, and experimental observations.

Exodus Propulsion Technologies

• System and Method for Generating Forces Using Asymmetrical Electrostatic Pressure — Andrew Neil Aurigema and Charles Raymond Buhler IV. U.S. Patent US11511891B2, November 29, 2022. Technical disclosure covering electrode configurations, dielectric structures, and reported force measurements.
• NASA Chief: “We Just Built Antigravity Propulsion!” — Jesse Michels interviews Charles Buhler, American Alchemy, March 30, 2026. Discussion of Exodus experiments, electrostatic propulsion claims, and a live force demonstration.
• Media — Exodus Propulsion Technologies. Official collection of interviews, technical presentations, and reporting about the company’s experimental program.

Townsend Brown and Electrokinetic Propulsion

• A Method of and an Apparatus or Machine for Producing Force or Motion — Thomas Townsend Brown. British Patent GB300311A, November 15, 1928. Early disclosure describing charged conducting bodies and layered conductor–insulator assemblies intended to produce motion.
• Electrokinetic Apparatus — Thomas Townsend Brown. U.S. Patent US3187206A, June 1, 1965. Describes shaped electric fields, dielectric gradients, electrode geometry, and the proposed influence of charging behavior on thrust.

Capacitor Discharge Experiments and the IVO Drive

• Electrostatic Accelerated Electrons Within Symmetric Capacitors During Field Emission Condition Events Exert Bidirectional Propellant-less Thrust — Ankur S. Bhatt and F. M. Becker. arXiv:1810.04368, submitted October 10, 2018; revised June 17, 2019. Reports capacitor-discharge experiments examining dielectric thickness, force direction, and the influence of nearby conductive materials.
• IVO Ltd Introduces the World’s First Pure Electric Thruster for Satellites — IVO Ltd., March 24, 2022. Company announcement describing the Quantum Drive, its reported thrust and electrical consumption, and thermal-vacuum testing.

Independent Electret Testing

• Testing the Possibility of Weight Changes in Highly-Polarized Electrets — T. Schreiber and M. Tajmar. 52nd AIAA/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference, AIAA 2016-4919, July 2016. Experimental comparison of polarized and unpolarized electrets, including sealing, balance stability, and electrical-probe interference.