Could a Gyroscopic inertial thruster ever work?

[N_las]

Input plz?

Looks good. Cable shoudn't be an issue now.

[LABHOUSE]

Just make it go fast in a 1/10 circle pattern back and forth so centrifugal force would be applied.

[fenderzilla]

I can also fly by pulling on my shoelaces. unless you can build a non-newtonian spaceship, there's no bootstrapping allowed.

[lajoswinkler]

I can't believe this thread is still alive. What's next, redstone?

[Kryten]

I can't believe this thread is still alive. What's next, redstone?

Obviously the missing ingredient is red mercury.

[J.Random]

Remember the guy with fan inside the box?

[M Drive]

Kind of became lazy the past few months. The machine has been rebuilt and is now synchronized so it won't sway so much from side to side.

And if you're sure that this won't work, please try to explain why it's been behaving weirdly during all the pendulum experiments.

When you perform a cycle as it's moving forward it increases swing momentum (reaches further with every cycle (a cycle is a "spin" of the gyros)). The opposite happens when you perform a cycle as it's moving backwards. The theory I've heard is "Oh well that's just how you increase swing momentum when sitting on a swing", but that doesn't explain it fully, as you have to pump your "legs" (the gyros in this example) in synch with the pendulum. My machine can complete anything from 2-4 cycles in every left-to-right swing. When you turn the gyros off and move them around in pretty much literally the same way, it stops being able to gain swing momentum.

Also in the latest experiment, we saw that the pendulum was actually deflected to one side on average, among other things. Yeah, there were problems with that experiment, but none that really explained this behavior.

(As for that "fan in a box" guy, it was extremely obvious the bearings he used were sub-par and was the reason it could move, it was stick-slip.)

[meve12]

Reactionless force doesn't happen in the real world, by our current understanding.

Same with conversion of rotational force into linear force, angular momentum is always conserved.

Ditto.

You could have the weights detach when they're going in the opposite direction from where you want to go, but that's just another species of mass driver.

[meve12]

That being said, if this keeps being anomalous take it up with the nearest university.

[M Drive]

Not claiming it's "reactionless" anymore. If anything it's a "novel" propulsion method where the reaction is unknown, kind of like the EmDrive that NASA tested.

I mean, fundamentally, a gyroscope is a piece of mass that's interacting with spacetime to stay in one orientation relative to basically the rest of the universe. I always thought that was pretty cool, and while I don't have any proof yet, I don't think it's a stretch that you could impart momentum using this interaction.

[M Drive]

Performing new experiments tomorrow (most probably). The "M Thruster" has been rebuild and the gyros are now perfectly synced, meaning the center of gravity of the machine will now move in a straight line, which will cause it to not twist and turn, which was a problem last time.

I've also done some rewiring to make the cables less of a problem from a scientific point of view. Last time we could see the laser dot was in fact deflected, but in the same graph we could see the cables could've caused that. Not so anymore. Here's hoping!

[M Drive]

*Sigh*

So syncing them was a bad idea it seems. It was noticeably weaker and the gyros had trouble even reaching their forward-most position. Also it increased the twisting that was supposed to be eliminated.

After some tweaking I could get a similar effect as in my April experiments (with 5 meter wires). One cycle with the gyros on could increase a swing by upwards of 5-6cm, but when you turn off the gyros and move them around, it basically loses this ability and only increases swing momentum by 1cm per cycle, if that. It would also decrease the swing momentum if you did the cycles as the machine was moving backwards, also a lot better than with the gyros off.

So yeah, it becomes ~300-600% more efficient at swinging with the gyros on,. Something I'm not too sure should happen. Can anyone try to explain that?

Other than that, nothing of interest really happened. I couldn't get it to move like it did on July 8th, where it would pretty consistently try to stay on one side of the pendulum more than the other.

[N_las]

Disapointing that the experiment hat increased twisting.

*Sigh*

So yeah, it becomes ~300-600% more efficient at swinging with the gyros on,. Something I'm not too sure should happen. Can anyone try to explain that?

We have suggested an explanation for this back somewere in this thread. I will try to find it. I don't know if this is the right explanation, but it clearly is no mysterious behaviour.

EDIT:

Here is a possible explanation from the past of this topic:

If the angle of the gyro-axis is changed, that means that the angular momentum of the gyros was changed (not its amount, but its direction). If there is a change in angular momentum (amount or direction, doesn't matter), that means there has to be a corresponding torque.

If the gyros are off, they have no angular momentum and so a change in the gyro-axis doesn't mean a change in angular momentom (at least not in the same way as before). So there is no corresponding torque (or at least a very different tourqe).

An oscillating torque on the machine can produce a swing motion, as long as the machine is connected through wires with the ceiling. So a different tourqe-situation may case very different swing behaviours.

Thats just one idea. There could be hundreds of reasons why the machine swings differently with gyros-on.

Edited November 20, 2014 by N_las