On Wed, 7 Nov 2007 17:08:34 -0500, "Eisboch"
wrote:

It seems to me the big "breakthrough" in this product is the vacuum
enclosure of the high speed gyro. I'd be interested in how they handled the
issue I've described.

Good questions. They were talking about using signicant power to spin
it, something like 1.5 KW even though it's in a vacuum. That would
imply that it has a fair amount of friction and quite a bit of heat to
dissipate. It will generate a lot of side loading on the bearings as
it resists the boats rolling motion. Imagine the chaos on board if it
ever jumped loose from its cage!

This has all been tried before if my memory is correct. As I recall,
the problem with the older systems was that the gyro had to be quite
large, probably because they were running it at a lower speed.