On Wed, 07 Nov 2007 19:05:03 -0500, Wayne.B
wrote:

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!

When I was on the fire department, we responded to an injury call
where a building collapsed. I went direct to the scene and when I got
there, the whole saw mill had collapsed. After we got the workers
out, the Fire Marshall began looking and found what happened.

The fly wheel came loose from the 30 hp two lung jug engine and just
ripped the place apart. Max rpm on that thing was only 40 rpm. Of
course it weighed 900 pounds, but still... :)

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.

I'm still confused about how it actually stops the mass of the boat
from moving in only one direction.

Then again, I'm not the brightest guy on the face of the planet.