"Anti-Gravity" in the Form of
Inertial Propulsion

by Koda

koda@kodasplace.com

"This is the third major update of this page in the previous 15-plus years. I now describe a device intended to transfer the inertia of spinning wheels into directional momentum. Since writing this originally I no longer believe it will work, so I am back to investigating other designs. Those who already understand what inertial propulsion is can skip to the description of this particular test unit below."

Well, it's not really anti-gravity, but when I tell people I'm working on inertial propulsion their faces respond with a blank stare. If such a device can ever be made to work it will replace rocket motors with something so cheap and simple that backyard mechanics could build spacecraft in their garages at home. It's not anti-gravity, but it produces similar effects. In simplified terms, inertia is the stuff you put into a ball when you throw it into the air. (The input of kinetic energy produces momentum, which has inertia.) The more you put into the ball (the harder you throw it) the higher it will go. When the inertia runs out (from the resistance of gravity) the ball falls back to the ground. Isaac Newton, the father of modern science, described inertia something like this: "an object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force." In this case that outside force is gravity. Let's start by making an observation. If you swing a bucket of water rapidly around you on the end of a rope, you can swing the bucket up side-down over your head and the water won't fall out. Gravity seems to have no effect on the water. That's because inertia makes the water want to keep moving the same direction it had been moving previously - away from the center of rotation. The water gets pressed against the bottom of the bucket. Inertia moving in a circular pattern like this is called centrifugal force. But if you were to suddenly let go of the rope the inertia would make the bucket of water go flying off through the air in one direction - till gravity overcame the inertia and the bucket came crashing to the ground. The concept of inertial propulsion involves building a device that continuously adds inertia in only one direction. It would like having a baseball with a motor and other parts inside it that keeps pushing the ball after you throw it. The ball would go upward higher and higher, far beyond the planet into outer space, till the motor ran out of fuel. If inertial propulsion can be achieved, it would be possible to build a machine that could fly through the air, into outer space, even travel underwater -- all with the same machine. And since any kind of motor could be used to generate the inertia it would be possible for modified VW bugs to fly to the moon, though of course that would require A LOT of modification. :) But science doesn't believe inertial propulsion is possible. That's because Newton came up with another observation, "every action has an equal and opposite reaction." The constant creation of inertia in one direction could propel a spacecraft, but that thing about equal and opposite reactions seems to make inertial propulsion impossible. If you push something in one direction, you end up pushing something else in the opposite direction. When you try to make something go up, something else has to go down. The net motion is zero. Imagine an astronaut floating in space. If he throws a baseball in one direction his whole body moves a little bit in the opposite direction. If he had an endless supply of balls to throw he could propel himself through space, moving a bit faster every time he threw another ball. But that's the real problem, having to throw something away in order to go anywhere. It's how rockets work - by throwing away their fuel (very rapidly, of course, creating higher pressure at the bottom of the rocket than at the top). An inertial propulsion device would, theoretically, be able to move through space without having to throw anything away in the process. So let's consider our astronaut in space again, and see if he can manage to move without throwing anything away. He can push his legs and arms out forward at the same time, but he won't go anywhere. The rest of his body would move backwards, but when his arms and legs became fully extended the inertia in them would pull against his body and the net motion would be zero. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The astronaut can be considered a "closed system" where nothing is thrown away from that system. Almost every physicist alive now believes it is impossible to create a closed system that would propel itself through space. But what if the astronaut were to thrash around violently for a few minutes, jerking and twisting and flipping in every way possible. I think it is reasonable to assume that his body might drift in one direction or another, beyond it's original position. If an astronaut inside the space station held heavy weights in each hand while someone else started him spinning, he could extend one arm then another outward and pull them in at random times. Each time he moved one of the weights it would change his center of gravity -- the center of his spinning motion. An ice skater spinning on a pond with her arms extended will spin faster as she pulls her arms toward the center, but if she pulled just one arm in she would lose her balance and fall down. Changing the center of gravity (actually the center of mass) would throw her toward the heaviest (more massive) side. This effect would be much more pronounced when the astronaut spinning inside the space station moved the weights in his hands. His center of mass would change position, and that would change his location in space. The astronaut is a closed system so he should not be able to move from the place he started, but instead he would start bouncing off the walls. ANY movement away from the original position of the closed system proves that inertial propulsion is possible. My personal research into inertial propulsion was stimulated by a "vision" I experienced sometime around 1990. I had been wondering how UFOs, if they exist, might operate, and woke up one morning dreaming about a bunch of gold colored balls spinning in a very interesting pattern against a black background. I climbed out of bed and walked across the dark room to turn the light on, only to realize I was wide awake but still seeing the image of the spinning balls. I stood there quite amazed for a minute or so, until I had memorized the pattern of movement. Over the next few days I analyzed the forces involved as best I could and realized such a device might actually be able to fly. Previous versions of this page described how to create a test unit that would duplicate the movement of those balls, but in early 2008 I finally built a similar test unit and it didn't work. What I describe below is based upon a completely different theory. Inertial Propulsion Through Transfer of Centrifugal Force In a nutshell, this device operates by causing a flywheel to begin spinning as it moves in one direction, then stopping that spin as it moves in the opposite direction. This transfers the momentum of centrifugal force in the wheel to the frame to produce lift. Imagine two flywheels mounted at the ends of a rotating arm. The arm is constantly powered by an electric motor in the center which spins the arm counterclockwise. Each wheel also has its own motor.