This thread is intended to provide a space for 'crazy' ideas. Ideas that spontaneously come to mind (and feel great), ideas you long wanted to tell but never found the place and time for and also for ideas you think should be obvious and simple - but nobody ever mentions them.
Rules for this thread:
- Each crazy idea goes into its own top level comment and may be commented there.
- Voting should be based primarily on how original the idea is.
- Meta discussion of the thread should go to the top level comment intended for that purpose.
You've all seen the pendulum exhibit at the planetarium. Is it possible to use gyroscopes to extract the rotational motion of the Earth as a power source? Maybe you can use a vacuum and maglev bearings so you aren't expending energy to keep them spinning. You can use gears to trade torque for rotation speed. The available torque from the planet must be immense. Building such a device may be expensive, but then it's "unlimited" free energy with no carbon emissions, and, unlike most renewables, it has steady output.
Googling, this turns out to have been discussed a lot more than I would have guessed. Apparently if it does work, even with very good ball bearing and gearing, you can't get more than a fraction of a watt, and that's worthless since such a scaled up gyroscope will break long before it pays back its cost, much less turns a profit.