Gyrosphere

[Disclaimer] This post is lengthy. If you are not in for a good long chew, you might want to just skip this one. [Disclaimer]

A spinning gyroscope’s axis resists being tilted and as a result the gyroscope seems to defy gravity. The weight of it doesn’t seem to matter, in fact the more it weighs, and the farther that weight is from the centre of rotation, the better it works.
While it spins it holds its own weight from falling until the forces of mechanical friction, and drag slow it down. [link #2]
But, what about in a vacuum?
If a gyroscope is contained within in a vacuum the force of drag is eliminated leaving only mechanical friction from its axis, but if a magnetic ball socket or bearing is used for the axis, most of this drag could be done away with as well.

Picture the gyroscope as a hollow spinning globe instead of a disk, and this sphere is housed within another static, (unmoving) sphere. Both contain a vacuum.
If the shape of the two spheres are of a geodesic design and each of their triangular facets are magnetic with the same polarity opposing the inner and outer surfaces, the inner sphere will hover inside the outer, on a magnetic cushion.
Now visualize the facets on outer surface of the inner sphere, and the inner surface of the outer sphere, as being “dimpled” like a golf ball and 100% reflective. I don’t think anyone has managed to make a material that is 100% reflective yet, but close enough for the purpose I have in mind. A single one of these facets on the outer sphere will be a one way mirror which is only reflective on its interior.

If a (non heat) Laser beam was fired through the one way mirror at a tangent to the desired direction of spin, and if all of the mirrored facets on the inner and outer surfaces are aligned at just the right angle, the laser beam will be bounced from one mirror to another until it has made its way around the entire sphere and back to the initial one way mirror where it will lose some of its power, depending on how reflective that facet is, and then start back around the sphere.
This will have the effect of pushing the inner sphere in the direction of the initial beam in the same way that photons from the Sun or from a laser on the planet will push against a reflective solar sail in space. Link #3]
Because the sail is in the vacuum space, speeds just shy of the speed of light can eventually be reached, and I think that the same will be true of this gyro-sphere in a man made vacuum as well.

Ok, here is where it gets a little bit harder to put into words, bear with me.
Instead of one sphere, picture six of them, one inside of another. The innermost and outermost spheres remain static, and contain a vacuum between them. They also provide the magnetic axis upon which the inner four spin.
Each of these inner four spheres rotates along a different plane, thereby incorporating all of the forces of inertia.
The same single laser beam propulsion system as the original gyro-sphere, (housed within the innermost sphere), will accelerate all four spheres, though now each of the four has a single transparent facet, (the last in the series to be touched by the beam), in addition to the reflective dimples, whose refraction bends the beam in order to push the next sphere in a different direction than its predecessor.

This is where the physics start to get a bit sketchy.
I have read that the escape velocity to leave a planet with the Earths mass is seven miles per second, but this is a linear speed and I doubt if that speed would remain the same for a spinning object due to the conservation of angular momentum, I do think though, that with four planes of rotation spinning fast enough (near light-speed), this gyro-quadrasphere will resist being tilted in any direction; any direction at all, not only the tilt that will be caused by the rotation of the Earth, but also the Earths path within the solar system, the system within the galaxy, maybe even beyond. I don’t know what would be considered stationary in an expanding universe.

I am neither a physicist nor a mathematician so I could be wrong in this assumption, though I have read an article about a group of Japanese scientists spinning a gyroscope fast enough that, when it attained top speed, it weighed some fraction of an ounce less that when the gyroscope was at rest, (you have no idea how long I’ve looked through several years worth of Scientific American, and Discover, Popular Science, and yes even a few Omni magazines to find that article with no success, if anyone knows anything about the experiment I’m talking about, I would greatly appreciate a link)
Even if this is a faulty assumption, if you have all four spheres spinning simultaneously and you rapidly decelerate only one sphere, this should produce movement in a straight line in the vacuum of space due to the sudden absence of one force of inertia.
Think of a machine which does nothing but spin incredibly heavy fly wheels set at different tilts. The machine is calibrated to remain stationary while they all spin at top speed, but the contraption itself rests on casters and can move in any direction if pushed. Now suddenly stop just one of these flywheels, and stand back as it punches out the wall of your workshop that a moment ago was in its way. [Link #4]

[Entering the gyro-quadrasphere, without slowing it down, and without breaking the vacuum]:


The laser will need to be disengaged, and the coherent light either dumped, stored, or turned into electrical energy while entering or leaving the sphere.
The facets along both sides of each spinning sphere’s equator will retract and these splits in the spheres will align, creating holes on opposite sides. An air lock connecting the inner sphere to the outer can then be extended through this alignment, creating two potential entrances.

[System losses]:

The gyrosphere will not attain a spin equal to that of light due to imperfections in its materials, (and quite possibly in my reasoning).
The mirrored surfaces will only be ninety nine point something percent reflective so the laser will lose some power on each circuit, I also believe that it will begin to lose coherency and will have to be dumped periodically.
As well, there is supposedly no such thing as a perfect vacuum. Particles pop into and out of existence within a vacuum, (quantum physics, go figure), and these particles will create drag which will also slow the spheres. There is magnetic drag to contend with too.
Another factor will be aligning the dimples so as to keep the beam of the laser exactly on its course, the spheres will wobble slightly and even if the magnetic fields remain perfectly uniform there will still be a vibration of sorts, this will need to be compensated for.
I know we are all tired of hearing about Piezo electric gizmos, but if each of the reflective facets were controlled in this manner and could find their own sweet spot, (the tilt which would reorient the laser to the optimum angle), then any wobble can be accounted for many thousands of times per second.

[Attaining the speed of light]:

I don’t have the required knowledge to determine how long it would take to get the Gyrosphere up to full speed. I imagine it would take several years and with the flaws in its system, the percentage of the speed of light attainable will probably be somewhere in the low, to mid, nineties, I’m guessing.
This could be increased without additional propulsion using geometry.

Each of the spheres which are in motion will need to be constructed somewhat like an Hoberman Sphere. [Link #5]
Where the sides of each triangular facet meets the next, picture them as being connected by what looks like a baby gate on sliders. If the sides of every facet are joined in this manner, and any two points on the sphere are drawn apart from one another, the sphere will expand as a whole. Conversely it can also shrink.

If the spheres are fully expanded when top speed is reached, powerful electro-magnets in the outer shell can squeeze the spinning spheres and their rate of rotation will increase in the same way that a figure skater spins faster as her arms are brought in closer to her center. I believe that this will allow the rotation of the spheres to reach the speed of light, overcoming the previously mentioned restrictions.

I don’t know what the relativistic effects of this would be, but if the size of the globes were compressed enough would they not then spin faster than light? If so, would they not travel backwards in time?