🚀 go-pugleaf

In the referenced article, () writes:
>be contained by a container.  The object is not to stop the flywheel failure
>at any given point, but to slow it down and cause it to loose energy.  
>
>What I would like to see is a good treatment of the energy needed to turn a 
>flywheel into cotton candy.  This gives everyone a better idea of how 
>much energy is left yet to be contain by the next carbon carbon shell.

If a flywheel powered vehicle actually contained the same amount of
energy as an equivilent gasoline powered car, you're going to die
flaming death if they fail, but...

Is anyone here missing the point that flywheel powered cars need far
less total energy to go a certain distance (stop and go) than a
gasoline powered car? Car designers aren't completely stupid, you
know, they do try to recover kinetic energy during braking in a
vehicle that is capable of doing so (gasoline engines aren't). Also,
flywheel vehicles aren't really intended to provide as high a range as
gasoline powered vehicles, nor are they intended to be used for
towing. We're talking commuter cars here.

Additionally, gasoline engines are basically heat pumps. A large
percentage of the energy escapes in the form of heat out the exhaust
pipe in normal operation. This much energy, at least, would not
present in a flywheel.

Electric motors are much more efficient than gasoline engines, there's
absolutely no question about that...the inefficient part about using
electric motors in cars is getting the electricity into the car in
usable form (charging losses, discharging losses, efficiency of power
plants, efficiency of power lines, etc).

The actual amount of non-lossy energy it theoretically takes to get
from point A to point B is much smaller than you might think in terms
of heat.

Actually, though, the thing I'm curious about is: how do they manage
to find strong enough materials to make the mounts that connect the
counter-rotating flywheels? There's one hell of a lot of precessional
energy released in a change of orientation of even minor proportions,
and while they'd naturally balance *total* angular momentum (not being
total braindead idiots), I can't help but wonder...



-- 
"When you're down, it's a long way up
 When you're up, it's a long way down
 It's all the same thing
 And it's no new tale to tell"                      ../ray\..