A brief historical summary of the milestones in the development of ion-propulsion technology:

•  1907 Goddard patented a tube that blew a small amount of ion wind.
• 1950 T.T. Brown patented the concept in its simplest form of wire/plate thruster (a similar device swung around a pole).
• 1964 Major de Seversky patented a similar concept, with added wire grid and pointed emitters. 

Vertical Take Off and Landing for these required several hundred pounds of power supply, that needed to be plugged into the wall for power.

• Up to the 2000s there were a small number of similar patented inventions with minimal variations.
• Early 2000s “ion-lifters” became popular among enthusiasts; it boiled down to the simplest concept of T.T. Brown’s wire/plates, often arranged in a triangle(s). 

All of the “Ion-Lifters” built by a large number of enthusiasts required ~ 1 Kg of “umbilical cord” power supply, connected to the device to create 1 gram of lift.  There were many variables that needed to be considered, many time-consuming experiments in order to find the right combination of parameters for the apparatus to finally take off, with its own power source on board.

The “Self-Contained Ion Powered Aircraft,” (patented in 2018, published in 2016) has a multitude of distinct differences shown below:

•  Power supply on board (nothing outside the system, no external power/nothing plugged in) 
• It produces ~1000x more thrust per its total weight.
•  Higher emitter wires
• Thinner emitter wires (2.5 microns (hair~75microns) vs. previous 250 microns that people often used)
• Aerodynamic wing-shaped collectors (therefore, I always call them “wings,” obviously ‘fixed’), forming ideal aerodynamic shapes, when the craft flies on one side.
• Novel voltage multipliers
• Novel transformers (cores and windings designed and built in house)
• Development of structural components
• Research of best application materials (aero-space quality) 

The challenge was to go from the previous ~1000g power supply that people used to lift even 1 gram of weight, to a complete system that is able to lift its own power supply. 

This was unattainable for 70 years.  My contribution to this technology is to share information gleaned from the past 23 years of research and experimentation.  Currently, it can be used for and includes any flying craft, whether it is a plane, glider, drone, or rocket.  

The following  is copied from an online blog: I think there is really a lot more to it than this but, it is true that our device can accelerate at well over 1g continuously. It can also carry several small propellant tanks allowing it to work efficiently in a vacuum.  It should also work well with relativistically accelerated propellants... Please see below.

According to Wikipedia, "interstellar travel at 1G would take approximately 1 year + the distance in light-years.  Proxima Centauri (4.2 light years) for example would take 5.2 years.

But that time is from the viewpoint of stationary observers at the departure point.  The trip's duration from the traveler's viewpoint would be less due to the time dilation effect predicted by Einstein's Theory of Relativity.  The greater the distance, the greater the speed from the stationary observer's viewpoint.  From the stationary observer's viewpoint the traveler's rate of acceleration would slow as they approached the speed of light.  The traveler would see no change between their speed and the speed of light.  Instead they would experience time at an increasingly slower rate which would effectively cause the distance to the destination to become shorter.

Due to the time dilation effect, 1G acceleration should be sufficient to travel anywhere in our galaxy in less than a lifetime from the viewpoint of the traveler, but not the stationary observer.  "

Also, according to what I have read so far, any destination in the solar system, would be a short trip at 1g.

I welcome any corrections on this, since I didn't have time to run the all of the numbers yet.

• The following paper by Brian Vyhnalek of NASA https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/author/37087413164 implies that at 5-10MV it should be possible to get 10s of grams of force from relativistic electrons only, as a reaction mass. No added propellant would be necessary. This agrees well some of my earlier log book calculations.  It does still need to be demonstrated experimentally:

                  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H4aDNAiFZBtpVbXJ1ah-b1Fki46_0tDX/view?ths=true 

                 The above link has recently been repaired, thanks to some viewers for letting me know.              

• Here are some more articles that you may find interesting: https://www.space.com/40056-air-breathing-electric-thruster-test.html  

•   Electric Propulsion Development and Application in the US by R. Stephenson