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Comment by upstarter | Hacker News Reader

I'm not a mechanical engineer at all, unfortunately (most of HN readers are probably working in IT). And I don't have access to mechanical engineer friends, or the budget to pay people. So I hope someone is getting on it really fast now, because I'd say we need this urgently.

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What are your thoughts on the potential for this technology to unlock absolutely untold devastation? As with the fission and fusion atomic reactions, the weaponization of this technology could potentially threaten all life on earth. An ICBM-delivered payload of a gyroscopically stabilized flywheel spun up to arbitrary (relativistic?) velocities would have literally no ceiling on potential yield with infinite free energy. Might Iran and North Korea already be working on such a doomsday weapon now?

Well, this is only my humble opinion, but what I see here is a pretty low-tech (and thus rather easy to build) way to produce free energy. Which means 0 pollution (once it is built), which to my knowledge doesn't exist elsewhere in this manner.

I don't see "arbitrary (relativistic?) velocities" as you say. There must be mechanical limits to the speed of the rotation here. What is unlimited is the duration that the engine spins.

When you say "weaponization of this technology could potentially threaten all life on earth", I actually think of nuclear energy, as in the one we have right now.

Why would there be mechanical limits to how fast a flywheel can spin? If the wheel is suspended, say, in a frictionless magnetic harness, there should be no limit to how far it can be spun up. Thus, a single device should be capable of cracking the Earth's crust and ending all life on Earth, without the expense and engineering necessary for fusion weaponry. I don't believe you've thought through the dangers here.

> When you say "weaponization of this technology could potentially threaten all life on earth", I actually think of nuclear energy, as in the one we have right now.

The difference is that nuclear engineering is expensive and difficult. Magnets are cheap and ubiquitous. A nuclear reaction can continue only so long as there's fuel. Infinite free energy is, well... Infinite.

Like Monty Python said: Always look on the bright side of life. Assuming you're right, then your first buyer would be the US Army. You would never have to work a single day in your life ever again. :-)

> Monty Python

Somehow, I don't think you're taking this seriously. If you really believe in the potential of this technology, it should scare the daylights out of you.

I'm generally hard to scare, but why not talk it over with a couple of engineers? Either they're going to tell you "it's not going to work b/c that's what we've been told in school" and you'll sleep better, or you're going to be very rich and you'll also sleep better.

I don't need to talk to anyone to sleep just fine, because Elon Musk, Exxon, the CCP and the US Department of Defense aren't idiots and would have bought up all of the rare earth magnets already if this was anything but obvious crank.

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