gyro power generator

Dear Bernhard Kuemel:

Yes. But to gain energy from it, you will be altering the rotation of the gyro. In short order, you will have the gyro's axis parallel with Earth's rotation axis... and energy production stops.

David A. Smith

I thought about mentioning that. But ... say we are at the equator. The gyro's axis initially is vertical and is mounted in a hollow sphere. The sphere's axis is mounted horizontally with a north-south orientation. Now the gyro's axis will remain perpendicular to earth's axis.

Maybe there will be some change of earth's precession, but I'm not worried about that. Hopefully it will not cause major earth quakes or climate changes. Could we choose to either increase or decrease earths precession?

Bernhard

No, it will not. Not if you are going to remove energy from the system.

Yes. Could we measure the change? Probably not.

David A. Smith

But this means that earths axis will change until it is aligned with the gyro. Certainly a long order process.

Maybe my description was unclear. I'll try again: We are (not necessarily) at the equator. There is a hollow sphere with bearings on the outside so it can rotate with its axis parallell to earths axis. On the inside of the equator of the sphere there are 2 bearings that hold a gyro so it will spin perpendicular to the spheres axis. Now there is no way the gyro can align its axis with earths

Now I wonder what dimensions such a generator must have if it is to deliver 10 kW power. Top priority is reliability because the intended purpose is to support a facility that preserves humans at cryogenic temperatures. I guess it will be unpractical because it has too heavy and too many moving parts. Otherwise it would be an interesting option because the facility could be buried and sealed deeply underground. Safe from nukes or casual vandals. The currently best option IMO are solar powered thermoelectric elements.

Bernhard

No. It means the gyro's axis will be altered to match the Earth's. The fly will move.. not (much) the mountain.

Depends on your rate of energy removal. Suffice it to say that if it is on the order of the rate you put energy in to get the gyro up to speed, it'll be on the same order before the gyro puts out no more useful amount of energy.

This cannot be entirely true, if you are going to remove energy from the gyro.

Then you will get no energy out.

Use a moon. Create a tidal generator. Better still orbit Pluto or Charon. Plenty cold there, all the time. Not too many vandals either.

Since these bodies are already dead, what does "safe" mean?

David A. Smith

But the gyro will resist to changing its axis and this torque can be used to extract energy. If the axes must align then why shouldn't earths axis change - just a tiny bit?

How would I do that? I don't like using the tides of the sea because I think that's to unreliable. The facility should remain operable even if human maintainance is absent for decades or centuries.

Yep, that might be an option. But the bodies must be protected from cosmic rays and asteroids which would mean heavy armor which makes the trip quite costly. Also maintainence is rather difficult. OTOH I see the average temperature is 50 K so there isn't really a need for maintainence. Landing on Pluto should be feasible once we are there and digging a hole might be possible to protect from rays and asteroids. The density of Pluto is only 1.1 g/cm3.

But then I guess it would probably take quite long until someone came there to revive us.

Cryopreserving a body shouldn't kill. It should preserve the information that makes up the mind so it can be scanned later and emulated in a computer or robot. So asteroids, cosmic rays, heat, vandals, whatever must be prevented from destroying the body/brain.