Very powerful ceramic magnets are made of iron and metallic oxides. These extremely durable magnets do not lose their magnetic attraction unlike the "permanent magnets" which used to be made of hardened iron and steel which would get weak after a few years.
If you can find two very strong permanent magnets approximately the same size, you can levitate one of them using the repulsion of like poles. The magnet, which you will levitate, must be prevented from flipping around. You can stabilize the levitating magnet with a cardboard balance or horizontal nylon threads or a heavy copper wire through a hole in the magnet. See the diagrams on this page showing how to do this.
A thick copper wire stabilizes the top magnet from flipping around as it slides freely to a point 2 centimeters above the supporting magnets.
The conclusion which can be drawn from the fact that permanent magnets will levitate is that magnetic levitation or hovering does not need any energy input. This is due to the fact that no energy needs to be input into a permanent magnet.
This means that if we succeed in making a ship hover, no energy will be required to do the actual hovering. The energy requirements will be for the inefficiencies of how the magnetic field is generated. There may be resistance losses, losses due to the creation of radio frequency noise, audio noise losses and heat losses.
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