To: Dave Jackson
In the experiment you are describing you can place the spinning system in a vacuum and it would still work. It would be difficult to make the experiment work properly so you would have to suspend the hub and the weights in a gimbaled system. It is not necessary to misalign the shaft all you have to do is to put a perturbing force on the gimbal ring supporting the gimbal ring that supports the hub and weights and the gyroscopic forces will realign the hub and weights in another plane 90-degrees later in the direction of rotation..
[ 02 December 2001: Message edited by: Lu Zuckerman ]