On Jul 21, 2007, at 10:55 AM, Harry Veeder wrote:
But if the hand of God placed a non-rotating wheel (wrt to distant
stars)
in the supporting frame, then it would behave as I drew it? ;-)
All you would need to get the rotation right would be a sidereal
drive from a telescope equatorial mount.
If you extracted any energy from the wheel motion wrt earth though,
its angular velocity would change to closer to that of earth, until
it matched and no more ennergy would be available. No free lunch
there, but the answer to the above question is yes.
Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
