*UPDATE 19*
19 November, Wednesday - I'm right at my 5 meg limit, this little tag in will likely get a nasty note from my ISP to erase some of my files to get my site under the line. I'm in the process of putting together a "new and improved" site for a free Geocities web page, about all I can afford right now. Many things are happening, a couple more GIT builders to report (send me pictures in jpg or gif), math discussions, and other wonderful things like line thrusters, and several permutations of the basic concept that I need to render for your information.
I'm hoping to be online with a dual site with cross calls on the big byte stuff around the end of the month. Be sure to check back then, and tell your friends to get what I've got posted now, before I start making big changes. 12:48 am Wednesday morning. DvC
Update interjection of 11 November - We have another GIT builder folks, Jim Bolstad of Newton refutin' fame informed me a while back that he was making a small GIT, but it had some problems. His first attempt had a large steel orbital in a 4 inch race, and it WAY over balanced his construct, dancing like a manic Fred Astair, lifting it's feet and bowing before the four winds in a dizzy dance.
He reduced the race overpowering mass by replacing the steel with glass for a more moderate attempt, and then tried the water test, except the piece of styrofoam he used was just a bit narrow for the git on it's back, so we had a GIT drowning (blub blub).
Jim reports that he has had enough results from his mishaps to convince him of the validity of the GIT, but he's still on the trail of definitive showing for others, so is tuning his race up, and getting a bigger boat for his thruster to thrust.
Jim is to be congratulated for his Masters degree, he graduated recently, so the work he's been doing for so long in that capacity now has the lettered ring to it. All hail Master Jim! His email address is "Jim Bolstad" < James.J.Bolstad@jci.com >. See Update 18 for a picture of Jim, and Update 10 for his observation on the misapplication of Newton's laws.
I hope to have a full update (20) online by the 16th, late Sunday night. The Rhino3D ring has changed URLs because of provider overload so refresh your "UFODrive.htm" page for the new address if you want to cruise the work of 3D artists using the program I am beta testing, also see my LINKS page for a link to your FREE copy while they last (getting close to commercial release). No, They didn't pay me to say that, unless you count the 800 dollar program I'm playi..WORKING with! As soon as I'm comfortable enough with my new tools, I'll post copies of some of my work (and play!).
Well enough for Teusday the 11th of November, the six month anniVERsery, by the way! Well over 200K files out now, gigs of information all around the world! Happy anniversery everyone! - David - We now return you to the regular update:Over!
Monday, 3 November 1997
Rather busy here these days, and a new phase has begun. I think I can now feel safe that the original goal of my project has been reached, and that was to insure that the GIT would not be supressed or be deemed "secret" by my own overzealous government when an "advantage" is sought over "the enemy", which frankly I believe is it's own people at this point in history. Call me cynical, but with all the patent shenanigans going on now (such as patent "rent") and horrors still pending in the "omnibus" legislation, us little guy inventors haven't a chance to keep intellectual property "proprietary".
Therefore I've teamed up with the best and brightest responders to my world release to get "big" enough to make a difference, and to hold onto and enforce my claims. More about that in the future.
Let's review the first people in the World to confirm my device:
1. James Hurl of Australia first confirms the GIT to me on 15 July 1997. He did the pendulum test and was convinced of it's validity, and reported to me his findings. Since then he also made the first micro-GIT which showed a much more solid thrust, in fact from the video he sent me, I am convinced that flight quality thrust is possible with a higher orbit rate.
His little "Indie" in it's construction, also verified the particulars on why the GIT works, in that the much shorter orbit to the orbital and it's steep front to back "gear ratio" showed that the translation of forward velocity of the orbital in the race into spin acceleration, and deceleration back into forward race velocity is the key to cheap space flight, that translation being the heart of the GIT, and also, to me, shows why other devices have a minute thrust although the "math" says it was impossible, more on that later.
James is our Australian associate, a team member, and fellow inventor. His duties haven't been nailed down at this point, but from seeing some of his renderings, I can safely say he'll be doing a lot of the computer modeling and our visuals in the future, as well as the machine shop stuff with me, carving out our new reality from lumps of ordinary matter.
2. Sam Smith of Florida reports on "Bowling Ball Bertha" on the 6th of September, a monster of a device that, while achieving some forward thrust on the ground was flawed with a lot of sliding in the race. Then his "billiard ball billy" makes history with the first reported water test on the 29th of September, after he had insured solid rolling traction with a rubber faced race and drive wheel. Also included in that letter was a pendulum test that was somewhat suspect in that it was suspended from one string and required a finger to keep it from spinning.
Sam is also the first to offer plans for his "bbb" and as such is the world's first commercial offering involving the GIT. See his page for details (linked in above). Sam is also now "Team Leader" by email vote of the team members. Want to do business? Talk to Sam.
3. Amanda Jane Gilbert invents the geared GIT, a now "obvious" solution to required race traction that translates forward momentum into spin momentum, the reason the GIT works. She mailed me the description several weeks before I published it, the publication date being 12 September 1997 (the one year clock is ticking!).
Amanda is now our Business Warrior Princess, a very hard head as far as proper business is concerned, her studies at Stanford University including all the "proper" methods of obtaining Venture Capital, public stock offerings and the like (stuff that I just don't want to deal with), as well as working on her Master's degree in energy related sciences. Want to invest in the GIT? I'll tell you right now, that is just not possible at this point (we're working on it!), but Amanda is the one that will be handling that department.
4. JJ. Ellingsworth of Dallas Oregon was the first to confirm the friction drive model of the GIT in September, his lead shot filled tennis ball orbitals driven with a full contact dual drive wheel. JJ's success helped me find my error involving my tutorial animation wherein I had all orbitals turning at the same rate. Of course a friction drive version wouldn't work if that was the case, and the fact that there is in fact a spin acceleration and deceleration makes for a simple GIT that works!. You can see his page linked in above.
5. A H Forge (not sure where he's from) reported to me in September the world's first double conic GIT, and ran thrust tests in a spring cage dampened GIT with a trackball tied into a computer to get a close look at the back and side thrusts as well as generated forward thrust.
Mr. Forge also has the onerous distinction of receiving the first injury from the world's first "GITastrophy" when his race let high speed orbitals fly out of a broken race and his hand was clipped with a flying orbital. He really cranked his test unit up into the danger zone to measure a thrust that looks to be greater than a linear relationship, perhaps showing that thrust will be more of a squared relationship, good for us, since usable thrust will be much more achievable if that proves to be the case.
Mr. Forge's accident allowed me to state in more dramatic terms to BE CAREFUL !!! when testing the limits of your constructions. The centrifugal force increases with the square of the orbital velocity and can do some MAJOR DAMAGE if you are not prepared for system failure. I can't stress enough the importance of this. You are warned! 6. The middle of October brought me a report from Jeremy W. Goodall, he made a GIT from Embroidery rings and racquet balls. He reports a successful water test and in showing it to a friend moving smartly in his bathtub, his friend christened it with it's name in an expletive that escaped him upon seeing it work, so Jeremy's GIT is the SOB 1.
Jeremy says he and his friend are getting together a Science Fair project to wow the teachers and judges with. I hope the judges are not wooden heads!
7. In the latter part of September, Pete (no last name yet) who uses the name XENON as his email address, said he was working on a GIT, and then reported to me a demonstration he gave at a Halloween party of his device. He reports the correct movement (toward the nose) but hadn't yet convinced himself of it's validity, vibrational movement and unequal friction possible as an explanation.
I suggested he try to see if he's introducing another unwanted spin component with possibly unequal race halves and to try the water test in a round float, and once he has made sure it works, he may take the 6th place in the first ten to confirm the principle. Pete is a self described "wizard" for the Rhino 3D program, answering questions for members of the beta tester's group. I myself am beta testing the modeling program called Rhino 3D, one I highly recommend, see my links page for a link to a free copy of the beta. I LIKE IT!
So That's the Magnificent 7 in this little review of GIT history, Folks changing the world while you're just doing the couch potato thing!
If I've missed anyone that is now solidly convinced of the GIT's reality, please understand that mail is getting rather heavy now, and it's only an oversight. Write me to make sure you are included in the Terrific Ten, the first 10 people to achieve a solid understanding of the principle with actual constructions and tests. Sam said we should award plaques to the first ten pioneers on this new science, and I agree, details to be worked out.
My so called "Math Prize" now has some real interest, and a few have related to me that they now have a better understanding of the problem, and are working on the equations that will convince "real scientists" that will ignore the evidence of their own eyes if it can't be described with an equation. This will be a great milestone of history and will enable others to engineer better models and cement the GIT's place in the world of science.
The actual publication of the equation will have to wait for verification, as I'm not qualified to judge long strings of Greek. SO when the contenders have submitted their analyses to me and it can be verified by " Dr. High N. Mighty, Professor Empitridish of Teachumstuff University", notice will be given on this site.
If you are interested in deriving the math, keep in mind that the spin accelerations must be taken into account, for without doing so, you will get a sum of zero, and that will be just plain wrong.
Earlier in this update I stated that "The GIT principle" could account for the reported minute thrust in previous devices, and here is the explanation:
There are two types of thrusters that over-populate the patent lists concerning inertial propulsion, and I call them the variable velocity type, and the variable radius type of circular motion thrusters.
All devices before the GIT used "dumb" weights, not allowing the orbital masses to accept momentum about their centers of rotation to unload the center of mass of the system of reverse "reaction" forces. That there Rube Goldberg must be a handsome fellow, his children are everywhere!
Of the two, the variable radius type was showing more promise, but frankly the generated thrust was not adequate for space flight, the machines disintegrating long before usable thrust was obtained.
The variable radius type (an arm, for instance that got longer and shorter around the circle), supposedly gave a stronger centrifugal force at the longest extension of the arm, yet when the math was run, the reverse forces canceled out the forward gain showing a net nada for thrust. Yet these devices DO in fact show a weak, but measurable thrust!
The so-called "experts" had failed to account for the spin acceleration of the rotating weight, and in a variable radius thruster (assuming a constant revolution rate of the arms) will have a small but real acceleration and deceleration of spin for that extended weight (the shorter radius side having a faster spin rate, albeit extended on the arm).
The so-called experts were so convinced of their Newtonian world (curtsey and mumble), that it simply didn't occur to them to try to account for the reported thrust, it should be zero, here's an equation that say's it's zero, now go away and don't bother us anymore!
SO, for you math heads that need it spelled out for you, here's a little analogy that may bring into perspective ALL the variables that need accounting, a portion of a letter (modified and corrected for spelig erers) to one man wanting to fully understand the GIT with numbers:
The orbital slowing down in those devices places a back thrust (action/reaction) on the center of mass of the system in the GIT and other devices.
In the GIT this portion of back force is split between the race (center of mass of the system) and the orbital itself (spin), and while it is physically coupled to the system, it's mass center can be thought of as seperate as far as the universe is concerned.
The race acts as the fulcrum of a lever, a portion of the force goes into the race to push it back, the orbital "free falls" with the exception of a restriction on one side, about it's own mass center, to accept a portion of the momentum as a spin acceleration.
This "levering" of force into spin is the heart of this device, in essence unloading the center of mass of the system momentarily into a spin acceleration, so in this instance the GIT can be thought of as a two body momentum transfer problem.
With gravity (an acceleration force) if you pick up one end of a board, you only carry half the weight to get one side off the ground. In the GIT a similar thing happens, only a portion of the "weight" of the orbital is born by the race. The other portion of the "weight" is born by the orbital itself, in it's own rest mass.
OK, now if you can see that analogy, we'll have to get off the ground and into free fall or micro-gravity environment for the rest of the analogy, kinesthetically becoming an astronaut on a space walk.
Remember that here we are only concerning ourselves with the circumferal forces "holding you back" from the centrifugal forward componant. The deceleration side of the equation is easy enough to see, in that all we've done is have our astronaut in free fall try to stop, say, a bar coming toward him, and he could only bump into one side of the bar.
A portion of the energy contained in the relative motion of the bar will bump our astronaut "backwards", but the entire bar is at velocity, so depending on the relative velocities and masses of the bar and our astronaut, (lets make our astronaut, ie the race, the more massive) the bar will begin to spin with the residual energy, transferring only a portion of it's energy into the astronaut, the remainder of the velocity turns into spin of the bar.
Now on to the other side of the race. Rest mass and forward inertial properties remain fairly stable even if a mass is spinning (though there are experiments that show anomalous things like the gyro free fall experiment, let's ignore it for the moment) , in other words, the energy required to "return" the spinning mass is right close (let's say equal here) to the energy required to send a dumb non-spinning mass back toward the nose of our race.
OK, now we have a spinning bar coming up from behind to our astronaut (we'll get these guys and the spinning bars integrated soon enough). As the spinning bar comes along side our hero in space, he (or she) reaches over and gives the bar a forward push, momentarily touching the side coming back toward the gloved hand. Since the device is spinning, the energy required to accelerate the bar is contained in both the astronaut and the bar itself.
The hand only has to supply the energy to "rectify" the spin, accelerating one side of the spinning bar so it can "catch up" with the side that's already going in the desired direction. In other words, only about half the energy required to boost the bar to the desired velocity is required, since "half of" the bar itself was already at the desired velocity and vector.
SO, hopefully I've explained where the "impossible" thrust comes from in a GIT, obvious to me now (thank you Cyril for the opportunity to mull this over, I was lacking the acceleration side explanation until I was forced to look closely at it), and now I have a better handle of how to explain it to others in the future.
Assuming that previous devices summed to Zero (circumferal back forces, added to the integrated centrifugal vector), I think it's safe to say that the desired thrust can be easily derived by calculating the spin accelerations of the orbitals, and taking that portion that is not directly born by the center of mass of the system (about half?) as the calculated thrust. COOL!
I think it's safe to say that once the particulars are nailed down as to what portion is transfered at the fulcrum point, and what is retained in the orbital itself, a relatively easy method of calculating thrust for given variables can be achieved.
Actually, thinking about it, the one person lift analogy (dumbell for a ring mass, and solid plank for the solid mass), would make both ring and solid orbitals come out to half. Feel free to correct this assumption.
Let me know if I've clarified how inertial propulsion is now possible, and if you'ld like to try your hand at deriving the equations.
My observation on the use of hollow orbitals only comes into play if right angled turns are used to recapture forward momentum as an increase in orbit velocity. That is another set of variables to be worked out involving the "overunity" capture of acceleration (like gravity for instance), with a slight modification of this device to be used as an energy generator rather than a motivator (see Ongoing Experiment linked in from my index).
DavidC - 3 November 1997
Many have tried to derive the math, much of it I can't understand, but upon review of all submissions so far, I haven't seen the spin accelerations taken into account. Without that, you are doing math on the wrong beast, mathmatically deriving a turtle rather than an eagle, so to speak.
One such submission came into me from a man called Tomas K. not fully identified since I can't seem to get any mail back to him, his mail bounces back "no such address", and the folks at his ISP say he's not a subscriber to them, either by email address, or by proper name.
This is a picture Tomas sent to me that I've reduced to fit on my site, relating a version that has been discussed and is one workable variant the team has looked at, reprinted here so I can tell Tomas that we already thought of this one, since I can't seem to reach him any other way.
The drive wheels at angle to the orbital plane and a non varied ring race is a good variant.
I'm kinda pissed that I needed to release this concept variant to the public, but here it is folks! I won't go into the reasons why it's a good variant, but public release is only to show and tell someone I can't reach (and any others thinking of this particular variant) that it's one the team and I have already claimed (Sam and I actually).
If you write back to me Tomas, DO NOT INCLUDE ANY ATTACHMENTS! The zipped package you sent me the first time with your math attempt, included single color gif pictures that have wild pallettes that look like machine code rather than gradiant pallettes. When I unzipped your package, a strange sys file appeared on the root directory of my computer called (fh00th00th.sys or similar, it's since been deleted and I won't unzip your repeated send of that particular file). This particular picture has a normal pallette (and converted to jpg).
If you are on the up and up Tomas, you had better become a person as far as your ISP is concerned, make sure your return address is accurate, and be willing to explain all the contents of your zipped packages to me. I find it interesting that email discussions of one of the better variants comes to me in pictoral form several weeks after it was described, and sent by one with suspicious surroundings.
Anyone wanting to look into this strange package to see what's really in it, let me know.
Well, I think that's enough for this update, sorry it took so long, I'm getting rather occupied these days with formal business discussions, a BUNCH of email, possible contests to enter, science fair and space shuttle experiments to encourage and help "tune", my own constructions, and of course the day to day activities of "normal" life.
Barring Earth shaking news that will be appended here, I will be moving to a bi-monthly update schedule.
My site is now near the top of my 5 megabyte limit, so I need to start winnowing it down, and a much better Theory page is on the list to do, incorporating some of the better analogies and explanations that have been derived during this project.
The team would also like me to be less of a blabbermouth, so the startup company has a better chance of getting to the self feeding stage before I encourage too many more folks to get into this field on a commercial basis. I'm not very happy with that idea, but see it's neccessity.
I will maintain what I have here so far, and continue to help serious explorers through email to better understand this budding new science, however the improvements and variants will of neccessity be kept under wraps until world patents can at least be applied for.
Do go back for my previous updates if you haven't so far, the first 7 will be consolidated soon into a history section (first chapter), so if you want the original writings, get them now, see the paranoid inventor grow out of his paranoia into a world mover and shaker in his own words, imperfect, mussed hair and all. (before the rewrite and "comb" is applied).
Maturity is coming on rapidly to this baby science, it's simple once understood, and our industrial base will not have to stretch too far at all to make it an everyday reality.
STAY TUNED! - David Eugene Cowlishaw - 5 pm Monday 3 November 1997
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