of the Gyroscopic Inertial Thruster
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of the Gyroscopic Inertial Thruster |
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The GIT is a way of converting energy into "reaction-less" thrust. In the no-frills version, one "orbital" is driven by a center motor (not shown) around and around in a "race". The orbital can be a sphere, a double conic, or many other shapes. What is important is that it has a variable diameter; a cylinder just won't work. The "race" is a circular set of tracks that are wide-set on one side and taper to a close on the opposite side. When the orbital is in the wide-set area of the race, instead of sliding along, it spins, because the rails of the race are close to the poles of the sphere, where the diameter is very small. As it moves along and the tracks begin to taper, the orbital starts moving faster, because the contact diameter is getting larger. At the side where the tracks close, the orbital moves fastest and exerts the most thrust against the race. Click on the top left image for an animated gif (100K) showing how the orbital moves faster on one side than on the other. Click on the bottom left image for an animated gif (75K) showing that same movement from a different camera perspective. Click on the top right image to see a rendering (25K) of a git built by James Hurl of Australia. [My browser downloads to disk any file without a .htm suffix; if yours does too, or you want to save a few mouseclicks, go straight to the animated gif page here.] |
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First, consider a rocket, where the thrust comes from ejecting matter at high speed opposite from the direction of thrust. Newton's guidelines inform us that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, so we HAVE to throw away that mass out of the rocket or we don't go anywhere.Conventionally, we demonstrate Newtonian mechanics to children by taking them to a bar and playing pool. The cue hits the eight ball; the cue loses energy and slows down, the eight ball goes from a standstill to racing across the table. Action, reaction, pretty simple.
Well, not entirely. What happens when you take a 1 ounce superball and an ounce of wet clay and drop them both from 4 feet onto a concrete floor? The ball bounces and the clay just sticks to the floor. The ball is very elastic; all its energy goes into the observable reaction of bouncing back up in the air. In contrast, the clay absorbs all that energy internally -- its shape deforms and its temperature rises by some miniscule amount. Wouldn't it be great if we could get that energy back out on demand? Imagine saying, "Jump, clay!", and the clay magically converts all that internal energy back into potential energy by leaping four feet in the air. That would be pretty cool, but impossible. That energy is effectively lost forever to the evil forces of entropy. If you don't know entropy, go somewhere else to find out. This is supposed to be a short overview.
Consider instead storing energy in a spinning mass -- a flywheel. In this case, the energy is retrievable. If you spin a child's top, it just sits pretty much in one place in the floor spinning away. But what happens if it drifts an inch to the left and touches the wall? It doesn't drift back an inch -- it goes wildly careening off into the distance. The angular momentum gets converted into linear momentum -- action and reaction become considerably more complicated.
I used to think the GIT worked via a form of controlled careening; on one side, the orbital is spinning like crazy. It doesn't really want to go blasting off across the room. But the move from one side of the race to the other is a gradual transition to where the orbital DOES want to go careening away from the center of the GIT. It exerts a greater force on that side of the race than on the side where it is just spinning. But now, I understand and accept that this is a simplistic view, and the reality is likely to be more physics than I like before breakfast.
I don't believe you!This not-at-all-rigorous explanation will not satisfy you if you are curious, skeptical, and reasonably gifted at understanding mechanics. It's just supposed to whet your appetite, or alternatively, get you so riled up you'll read the rest just so you have ammunition on hand when you send us a 500 Kelvin flame. In any case, visit the rest of the site to decide whether you understand the concepts and agree with our assessments, or think all of our other explanations are still total gibberish.
It was fun chatting! Wherever you go next, whether you give up in favor of something more interesting or continue to explore this technology, I sincerely hope you enjoy it!
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