Inertial drives are one of the most fascinating reactionless propulsion systems in my opinion. Assuming they work, they will create unidirectional thrust without expelling mass, using nothing more than typical electric motors to drive them.
Several devices with this arrangment have been brought to life by amature inventors, such as the Sling Drive, the TIE, and the Dean Drive, but only a few seem to have any promise.
The primary
eccentric axis device that I am familiar with is the
Thornson Inertial Engine (TIE).
It consists of a weight mounted on a planetary gear which orbits
a fixed sun gear of equal size. This arrangment causes the weight
to move in such an orbit that it creates an un-balanced
centifugal force in one direction.
This is a relatively simple and cost effective device, and I plan to build and experiment with the concept in the near future. If you wish to look into this device yourself there is a link in the Links section of this site to the webpage of J.L. Naudin, which contains not only detailed information on the TIE, but on free energy and reactionless propulsion as well.
There is only one device of this type that I know to exist, but it has many varirtaions, creating a genere of species of sorts in the inertial propulsion animal kingdom.
I have to admitt that I am not entirely impartial towards this device, I have been working with a large group to improve opon it for several months. But bias aside, it is still a very promising and extensively tested device which, if you care a hoot about this sort of thing, you should check out for yourself.
This is the Gyroscopic Inertial Thruster (GIT). The brainchild of my fellow mad scientist, David Eugene Cowlishaw, it was concieved long ago and has been greatly improved opon over the years. It hasn't quite reached its destiny of flight yet due to the fact that most of us don't have the neccessary fundage to build the perfectly tractioned geared GIT (a brilliant idea by Amanda Gilbert if I do say so myself).
The basic
mechanical principle of the GIT is this:
You have 3 of more spherical or dual-conic "orbitals"
rolling around the inside of a circular track composed of two
circular rails, which are at an angle to each other. This angle
causes the rails to make the track contact the equator of the
orbitals' spins on the narrow (nose) half of the track, and to
contact close to the poles of the orbitals' spins on the wide
(tail) half of the track. Given the fact that there is sufficient
traction between the orbitals' surfaces and the rails, this
difference in contact points results in the driving force behind
the GIT concept.
Remember, the orbitals aren't spinning randomly as they go around the track, they are rolling against it. Because the track contacts the orbitals closer and closer to the poles of their rotations as they approach the wide (tail) half of the track, their linear movement around the track is slowed by using that momentum to accelerate the rotations of the orbitals, storing their kinetic energy in the form of angular momentum, and vice-versa at the nose half of the track.
This allows the machine to reduce the centrifugal force (created by the movement of the orbitals around the track) on only the tail side of the system, without defeating itself by applying any braking force to them.
I'm a little to simple minded to put that all into lamens terms (I barely understand it myself), but luckily, I can send you to the site of people who can.
David E. Cowlishaw's GIT homepage
Amanda Gilbert's Inertial Propulsion