> Japolsky, Kidd and other such gyro/inertial drives, we discussed it to > some degree on the KeelyNet-L list and despite the videotape that > Thornsen did showing a box sitting in a canoe and the canoe accelerating > across the water with nothing in the water but a rudder, it would appear > that canoe test could well be translated vibration from the box to the > canoe as pointed out by Senor' Tomes.
I saw a demo a few years ago with Robert Cook in Littlerock, CA. Near Los Angeles. He had his latest Cook Inertial Propulsion machine suspended by rollers on a rail going uphill. He explained that one of the rotors was broken, (and from what I could see this was true), and he couldn't afford to repair it, so it wouldn't work very well.
His kids were hanging about, lots of them, and their house looked pretty bare. I felt somewhat responsible for this last because I'd gotten him down to Southern California to a gravity conference at Golden West College a few years previous. The investor I'd hooked him up with, who'd paid his way to So. California for the Gravity conference, ended up trying to take his invention away from him without payment. This guy, a man named Black, had a tricky way of using lawyers to insulate himself from repercussions, and had a "Holding Company". Watch out for these guys!
At the Gravity conference he was the last but most enthusiastic speaker present, for he obviously was a man who DOES things rather than thinking dim thoughts. I and most of the audience could barely suppress sleeping through the prior nine or ten theoretician speakers. When he came in in a rush, we all woke up and watched his presentation in wonder.
Anyway, back in Littlerock a few years later, sure enough when he turned it on it did ever so slowly climb up that rail, which was probably inclined about a half an inch over a three foot length. That would be hard to do with the thing suspended on roller bearing wheels. I don't think any "vibration" would do that, note even a side to side vibration, as the whole thing probably weighed several hundred pounds.
If you read his book "Death of Rocketry" there is a very clear description of why it would do what it did, and I was suprised at how it could be this way, for the logic of it is to me quite astounding and indicates that there may be something missed by the smart boys..
The image that sticks in my mind is that of the man stepping off from the turning helicopter rotor to the aircraft wing going in the opposite direction with no relative motion. I tried to pick this apart for a couple of months but never could see a fault in the logic of it. This is the basic part of the theory of his machine, a way to turn rotary motion to linear motion.
In the book he also shows a demo of an earlier machine on a boat propelling itself across a swimming pool. There is also one of it swinging to the side suspended from wires.
