Could a Gyroscopic inertial thruster ever work?

[FREEFALL1984]

In case you're unaware, a Gyroscopic inertial thruster is a device for turning kinetic energy into a unidirectional reactionless force through a complex mechanical motion. So far hundreds of designs have been patented which claim to achieve just this, although none of them have proven to provide any unidirectional force at all.

My design would involve using a flexible belt arranged around 2 narrow pulleys, (one pulley larger than the other) in a figure of 8 the pulleys are then rotated quickly. At the larger pulley, weights are attached to the outside of the belt in such a way that they would effectively "miss" the smaller pulley as they rotate. All the weights maintain a constant orientation to the belt as they travel around at speed. As the weights go around the larger pulley they splay outwards and create a certain amount of centripetal force. As the same weights then proceed around the smaller pulley, they are compressed inwards closer to the center of the rotation and create slightly less centripetal force.

To me (a mere layperson) logic dictates that the variations between the relative speed between the belt and the weights, ie the weights traveling faster than the belt on the large pulley, and slower than the belt on the small pulley, but the belt itself always remaining at a constant speed. A net force would be produced in the direction of the large pulley.

So what I want to know is whether this would be a feasible design or whether there is some obvious standout error in my logic?

[SargeRho]

No, you can't impart momentum on an object without something pushing against the object other than itself, or having the object push something other than itself. The object will wobble back and forth, but it won't accelerate.

Just to be clear, propellant-less propulsion isn't a problem, such as solar sails, magnetic sails, gravitational slingshots, and possibly quantum thrusters. Reactionless thrusters in turn, aren't physically possible. You can't turn a rotary motion into forward motion without expelling mass either.

Edited March 12, 2014 by SargeRho

[Guest]

Post some pics of what you mean with that belt, its not very clear lol.

Are you speaking of something like Wankel engines?

[Red Iron Crown]

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.

[FREEFALL1984]

Sorry for the hastily drawn sketch I'm supposed to be working

Edited March 12, 2014 by FREEFALL1984
Change image host

[SargeRho]

The forces would balance eachother out in this case. The centripetal force exerted on the weights on the bottom would be higher, but applied for a shorter time than that on the upper weights, and the weights moving up would balance against those moving down. In the end, you are transferring angular momentum from one wheel to the other, but producing no net linear force.

[FREEFALL1984]

Hmm, what if I modified the design to have the weights on the smaller pulley match the size of the pulley itself. that way as the weights travel around the smaller pulley they would generate no centripetal force at all relative to the belt but would be essentially rotating on the spot.

[Z-Man]

The specific error in your reasoning is that because of the displacement of the weights relative to the belt, they are accelerated a bit when they enter the rotation on the big wheel or leave the small wheel, and decelerated on the opposite points. The force required to do that compensates the deficit in centripetal force on the small wheel.

The general error, of course, is that you are trying to achieve something with purely Newtonian mechanics that is demonstrably impossible in that framework. Conservation of total momentum is ingrained into it via the third law, even more so than conservation of total energy. Really, your chances of building a perpetual motion machine of the first kind are strictly better.

[FREEFALL1984]

Ahhh I see, so what you're saying is that even if I where to use a disk the same size as the smaller pulley, the force would be balanced through the relative acceleration and deceleration of the disks at the various points, which would always and irrefutably negate any net forces generated. Effectively turning this design from a gyroscopic inertial thruster, into a noise making machine.

[Camacha]

Right. The whole thing is pretty much a closed system when it comes to forces.

[SargeRho]

Yep. It might begin to spin due to the imballance of mass and diameter of the disks though, but that's all it'll do. The only way to use that to produce thrust is by jettisoning the weights.

[FREEFALL1984]

There MUST be a WAAAY

[SargeRho]

There isn't. The closest you can get to a reactionless drive is a quantum thruster, which in turn is still theoretical, and not reactionless at all, just propellantless.

[Red Iron Crown]

It might begin to spin due to the imballance of mass and diameter of the disks though, but that's all it'll do.

It can't even do that, because of conservation of angular momentum.

[Brotoro]

Could a Gyroscopic inertial thruster ever work?

No.

[FREEFALL1984]

Could you not form a propulsion system based on the conservation on angular momentum. I'm thinking kinda gyroscopic oars, lol

[SargeRho]

No, you couldn't.

[peadar1987]

Could you not form a propulsion system based on the conservation on angular momentum. I'm thinking kinda gyroscopic oars, lol

You can, it's called an orbital slingshot, and you need an entire solar system to power it!

[K^2]

There MUST be a WAAAY

No. There isn't. Gravity is caused by the local Poincare Symmetry of Space-Time. By Noether's Theorem, the conserved charge of that symmetry is stress energy tensor. Among other things, it gives you momentum conservation. Topological charge conservation is the most fundamental thing there is. It's the source of, well, everything. And that's the thing you want to disregard, or violate, or cheat. It just doesn't work that way.

It's possible to move without thrust. There is teleportation, warp drives, and wormholes. And these are the realistic options in comparison. But getting thrust without reaction mass is simply not possible.

[Accelerando]

No. There isn't. Gravity is caused by the local Poincare Symmetry of Space-Time. By Noether's Theorem, the conserved charge of that symmetry is stress energy tensor. Among other things, it gives you momentum conservation. Topological charge conservation is the most fundamental thing there is. It's the source of, well, everything. And that's the thing you want to disregard, or violate, or cheat. It just doesn't work that way.

It's possible to move without thrust. There is teleportation, warp drives, and wormholes. And these are the realistic options in comparison. But getting thrust without reaction mass is simply not possible.

What would the consequences be to the universe if it did work that way? How might the world form and work differently?

[SargeRho]

Then the big bang might never have happened.

[K^2]

What would the consequences be to the universe if it did work that way? How might the world form and work differently?

There would have to be a fundamental anisotropy to the space-time. Since that anisotropy would be detectable, there would be a preferred coordinate system. In other words, there would be such a thing as an absolute velocity. If that anisotropy would be periodic, momentum would be replaced by quasi-momentum, similar to that of free particles in a crystal lattice. If the anisotropy is amorphous, there would be no such thing as momentum conservation at all, and a closed system would be able to propel itself. Three would be no gravity. At least, not in a form we understand it to be. There could be any number of gravity-like forces related to structure of space-time itself, rather than accumulation of matter. Other fields could still work. But their strengths would change with location, making any complex life impossible for any practical purposes. In fact, organization of any kind is difficult to imagine.

[Dust]

I don't need to understand all the maths in physics to know that a closed system cannot propel itself anywhere without reacting against something outside that closed system (thereby making it not closed). Basic Newtonian laws hold that it would not be possible.

Misconceptions such as this seem to result from taking into account one or two laws or truths of a system while ignoring other truths or consequences thereof - at the same time ignoring overall basic truths like conservation of momentum. The whole perpetual motion phenomenon is rife with examples of this.

[M Drive]

Hey everyone. I'm one of those inventors who are currently working on a "gyroscopic inertial thruster". And it just so happens I have some of the most promising results of all the publicly known machines.

What you see can't easily be explained away by known science. A lot of people have gone "Oh it's just stick-slip", and they may be right, but if you study the 2 videos I've published so far there are some pretty hard to explain things going on. Like how it only propels itself in one direction, consistently, instead of a random one. And, while it does manage to propel itself with the gyroscopes off, but in a random direction, it propels itself forward several times better with the gyroscopes on.

The machine is still in its infancy, and I don't have a solid theory behind how it works, as I'm not a physicist. But, I do believe that there are gyroscopic phenomena that's still waiting to be explained by science. Here are two important videos:

Edited March 12, 2014 by M Drive

[sgt_flyer]

The problem is, your experiment is altered by the presence of two elements : air and gravity. In a zero G vacuum environment, the results would not be the same.

And we can even include ground friction - even of you are able to minimize track friction, you can't remove them - in the end, it seems that what your contraption do, is to make a sudden move in one direction, then a slow reset - the slow reset having less effect than the fast one because of the air and ground friction.

This would not work in a zero g vacuum environment.

Edited March 12, 2014 by sgt_flyer