*UPDATE 08*
Updated 22 January 1998 with link update to Roger Cook's site
This document was added on Sunday, the 22nd of June,1997
Stats are showing a steady increase in traffic now, as of 8 pm this evening, 4,106 file transfers, and the number of countries (that I can identify) is more than 15. Japan finally took a quick peek, and Germany, Venezuela, and Malaysia have joined the club.
Australia is really hitting it now, thanks to a new link from Geoff Egel's free energy site, over 11 distinct Australian domains have seen the new way to travel. Mr. Egel has put together a very interesting collection of information and links, adding his own comments and analyses to selected articles linked through his site.
My site is now also linked (or soon will be) with Terry Bastian's Etherian Dream Weavers site, a real treat for technical expertise, and a treasure house of alternate information, some fun, mostly serious explorations of uhm.... fastinating stuff.
Of course the site first added to mine as a link, Roger Cook's Spacedrives Archives is a most valuable resource for a 20 year collection he is making available online covering hundreds of patents world-wide concerned with inertial propulsion and other "reactionless" drives, possibly suited for spacecraft.
I will be adding the above links to a dedicated link page as time permits.
I'm a little late in getting the information sent me by James Bolstad, a Chemical Engineer, on line, and I hope he'll forgive me for being slow. He writes in part:
COMMENTARY ON THE COWLISHAW INERTIAL PROPULSION DEVICE
My way of viewing the operating principle of this device is as follows:
The mechanism provides an efficient means of creating a periodic unbalanced centrifugal force, which is always oriented in the same direction within the mechanism, resulting in a net (more or less) unidirectional propulsive force experienced by the mechanism as a whole. The force, or thrust, is non-reactive in nature, meaning that no mass is exchanged with the surroundings in producing the force, and no frictional contact with the medium is required in order for the propulsion to occur.
The difference that I see between this and other inertial propulsion devices is that this device uses rolling spherical masses as a means of providing the "switching" or "velocity shifting" function of an orbiting mass, which is required in order to achieve the periodic unidirectionally oriented unbalanced centrifugal force. In other devices of this nature, such "velocity shifting" has been accomplished by gearing, by the action of compressed gas, or other means which typically results in a device that undergoes somewhat violent and jerky motion. Mechanically, these devices typically are very unbalanced in their rotary movement, and would be expected to experience serious wear and stability problems.
The rolling sphere mechanism provides an effective solution to the above problems by allowing kinetic energy of orbital speed to be periodically stored as spin energy, then released again at the appropriate time. This transition is smooth and continuous.
~~~
"signed"
J. Bolstad
5/30/97
On the other hand, there is this return letter from a man who has a rather interesting device (he insists has nothing to do with concept), that won't be linked here, as he has made it clear he wants nothing to do with my crazy ideas.
The letter previously in this space has been removed at the demand of the sender. He called me and a 2 1/2 hour, mostly intelligent conversation resulted in my invitation for him to read it.
As my only recorded detractor, I sincerely want him to see the glaring dichotomy of his total and worshipful adherance to Newton's "law", while at the same time openly espousing a physics concept at odds with the "establishment". He has made it clear that any further exploration of my subject was sacrilege, and that my experimental results were an illusion and a trick of the "devil" designed to mislead me (my understanding of his language).
With an impressive knowledge of physics on one hand, and a Bible in the other, his communication is both baffling and frighting. He has my phone number. He lives nearby. He wants me to remove his un-attributed words here.
Sure man, anything you say! Psstt, Rosalie! Is the gun loaded? Is that a cross burning on the front lawn!!?? No, just a car driving by and my rheumy red eyes playing tricks on me. HEY, guy, I removed the letter! LEAVE ME ALONE!
The rest of my update remains unchanged and the following paragraph addresses his letter, no longer here. I will be very careful in the future with my phone number!
He likes my graphics! The rest of the letter is a rather sad example of the very same kind of thinking he is running into trying to get his idea into production. Oh well, 'what goes around comes around' as they say! I do wish him luck, and a little more understanding.
The gremlins seem to be taking a break for a while (other than a continuing disappearance of the .avi files), probably to lull me into a false sense of security, but I'm grateful nonetheless.
I'll be adding a new links page accessed through the index soon, so be sure to use refresh or reload to get the latest version.
Stay tuned!.......DavidC 1:30 am Sunday morning
In Talking to my patent attorney last week, a concern arose about the "theft" of any patent involving an air or space invention that would become the property of the US Government, and taken away from the inventor. I had 3 paragraphs here that sounded the alarm for anyone seeking a patent.
Of course I looked up the law (42 USC Sec. 2457) at Cornell University's US Code site (link included on that page), and found that it did not apply to me, or most folks who have never worked for the government, any company contracted to the government, or any company thinking about working for the government. I removed the alarmist text, but included the law and Cornell link for anyone it may apply to linked from the patents page.
James Bolstad wrote me to tell of a flood in his neck of the woods that warped and ruined the piece of plywood he was to do the "bowling ball" experiment with, so it may be a while before he gets to perform my 1986 experiment. Shucks! Such a simple experiment shows anyone doing it that this "mad scientist" is not a kook, but actually has something, and Mr. Bolstad at least will talk to me, unlike some of you out there that don't write!
3 pm Monday 23 June 1997 - DavidC
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