Last week the Cyridonian Supreme Court filed a lawsuit to the NGQ1 Arbiters, claiming that humans had been using their electrostatic levitation technology for at least four hundred years.
Cyridonian engineers have patented the controversial technology more than eight hundred years ago, and it’s been collecting dust on the shelves of the Interstellar Intellectual Rights Organization (IIRO), all until they found a spicy news article on ‘the old internet’. The title itself has probably invited them for a deeper investigation, as it said; Electrostatic Levitation: MIT Engineers Test an Idea for a New Hovering Moon Rover.
The full article can still be read today on this link.
An excerpt which raised a lot of questions was:
Because they lack an atmosphere, the moon and other airless bodies such as asteroids can build up an electric field through direct exposure to the sun and surrounding plasma. On the moon, this surface charge is strong enough to levitate dust more than 1 meter above the ground, much the way static electricity can cause a person’s hair to stand on end.
Engineers at NASA and elsewhere have recently proposed harnessing this natural surface charge to levitate a glider with wings made of Mylar, a material that naturally holds the same charge as surfaces on airless bodies. They reasoned that the similarly charged surfaces should repel each other, with a force that lofts the glider off the ground. But such a design would likely be limited to small asteroids, as larger planetary bodies would have a stronger, counteracting gravitational pull.
The MIT team’s levitating rover could potentially get around this size limitation. The concept, which resembles a retro-style, disc-shaped flying saucer, uses tiny ion beams to both charge up the vehicle and boost the surface’s natural charge.
From there, the Cyridons drew a parallel to the existing human spaceships, and realized that this technology is in fact the foundation on which they’ve laid plans for ore transportation rovers, orbital lifters, hover cars, and scanner probes. They sourced 56 blueprints which they attached to the lawsuit, claiming they had originated from the technology invented by Cyridons and confiscated by humans when they shot down multiple drones during the 20th century.
The defending party claims that this discovery has been nothing but a result of immense effort put into the subject by their dedicated aeroengineers and students.
“Any similarity with whatever technology the Cyridons feel it could be connected with is only a coincidence,” says the head of Interstellar Space Organization, Malcolm Olntrim. “We understand the concern that the allegedly damaged party may have, but our scientific breakthroughs had been made independent from any outside interference on our technological evolution. We will stand before the Arbiters with clear cheeks and open heart.”
If we lose, Earth will have to pay out Cyridon a lump sum of 5000 tons of gold, or its equivalent value in cobalt. If the Cyridon lose, a countersuit might be an option, claiming defamatory behavior. The trial will take place in exactly two Earthly weeks.
