Did you say "vacuum chamber?"
From the article:
.... He created two capacitors that are tubular, like tiny jet engines - with the hot wire on one end, a gap, and a metal tube for the ground. Each capacitor is mounted on the end of a rotor, driving it like a pinwheel. Last fall, they tested the contraption in regular air - shooting it with 27,000 volts at 20 microamps. Bingo: It generated 3 millipounds of force, and the rotors spun at 60 rpm.Then, in December, they finished tweaking their vacuum. They were able to get the pressure inside the bell jar down to the equivalent of low-Earth orbit - 10-7 torrs, to be precise. They put the device inside and hit the juice.
Nothing happened.
It wouldn't budge an inch. They jammed the voltage up to 50,000 volts, and still nothing. They repeated the tests several times but didn't dare use higher voltage. "We had lightning coming out the back of it," says Andy Finchum, Campbell's assistant, pointing to a set of plastic guards he set up after nearly frying himself. "You could start hearing the hiss at those voltages, and that's when you don't want to get close!" He hands me a thick gray pressure gauge. "These are $1,500 apiece, and we toasted one."
To check if it was an equipment error, they brought the bell jar back to sea-level pressure - and the rotor started spinning again. The device itself wasn't malfunctioning.
Campbell folds his arms and declares antigravity dead.
"There's no performance in a vacuum," he concludes. [snip]