On Sun, 07 Dec 2008 18:37:30 -0600, Jim Logajan wrote:

Martin Gregorie wrote:
On Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:51:18 -0800, wby0nder wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IsaM...eature=related

How about that: perpetual motion resurrected yet again.

Doesn't appear to be. One notable non-perpetual motion aspect appears to
be taking advantage of the temperature differential between the lower
atmosphere and the upper atmosphere. That point _is_ rather clever,
though whether it can be taken advantage of with sufficient efficiency
is another story.

If a powered compressor, driven by batteries, an IC engine or even
photocells on the top surfaces, was being used to compress the gas for
descent it might work, but using energy from forward motion to run the
compressor sounds like perpetual motion to me.

The same scheme is being used successfully in undersea gliders for
oceanic research, but these all use battery powered pumps to control
buoyancy.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |