Seven years has passed since this work was published and since I last had contact with Ron Thompson and, now renewing the contact, Ron has asked me if I could spell out the inter-relation between certain scientific principles so far as they might relate to Sandy Kidd's machine. The question really was about the evident confrontation the machine poses for Newton's Third Law, Einstein and the Law of Conservation of Energy.

My answer below relates generally to any machine that uses flywheels in a way which can demonstrate a small, but real, anti-gravity effect.

One must always keep faith with the need to conserve energy, but that does not mean that we have to confine ourselves to the mechanical energy and the heat energy of the machine under study. It is as if we were born in, and have remained in, an enclosed laboratory on a ship and are now testing a machine which is driven by the ship's propeller, as the ship slows down, but without us knowing that the ship is actually moving on a sea that we have never seen. Equally, it is as if we are in a ship at anchor but there is a flow of water under the ship keeping the engine turning. If the gyroscopic machine in our Earth laboratory develops an out-of-balance force, then it must be involved in an energy transfer process. The flow of water relative to the ship turns the propeller and energy is transferred because the speed of the flow multiplied by force is the rate at which work is done. A scientifically minded person, inside that enclosure, would infer the existence of that sea outside. A perverted mind might contrive some kind of philosophical explanation. Either way, however, energy must remain conserved.

The Sandy Kidd machine must, therefore, satisfy the Law of Conservation of Energy, because it has a way of latching onto something that connects with that hidden energy sea that we speak of as the 'aether'.

Now, where does Einstein fit into this picture? Well, it seems he could not make up his mind as to whether or not there is an aether, but he assumed, as a philosophical exercise, that we could live in happy ignorance and not refer to it at all. All Einstein did was to provide a kind of computer program that provided a picture of virtual reality which satisfied the concerns of some of those secluded in that enclosed part of that ship. He was born in the year when Clerk Maxwell died and, for a while, he was allowed to wander about the upper decks of the ship. Maxwell's aether was there in the range of sight. It was well charted in 19th century physics, but towards the end of that century attempts to see it in greater detail, by illuminating it with interfering light waves, somehow obscured the expected detail. Einstein must have known in 1905 about the non-successful efforts to measure the ship's speed by using mirrors immersed in water and timing light signals reflected from those mirrors. (This is just an anecdotal way of referring to the well-known experiment by Michelson & Morley.) So he then took up a philosophical stance and decided that physics was governed by rules which in no way depend upon reference that old vision of the aether sea.

He invented his own imaginary ocean and he, or his followers, called it 'space-time'. It was tailored to fit the requirement that light travels at a constant speed but relative to the observer, even within that enclosed world inside the ship. Then, as the years moved on, Einstein decided that the ship could not move on a steady course but must follow a curved track and, still without involving reference to that aether sea, he saw that as explaining why there is a gravity force. So, if the Sandy Kidd machine exhibits an out-of-balance force and it has to be explained by Einstein's theory, someone has to figure out why the ship can go off a rectilinear course in its space-time travel as a function, not of the curvature of 'space-time', but of the operating state of the Kidd machine.

In fact, on aether theory, the simple answer I offer applies to the case where the ship is at anchor and the force arises from the propeller reaction, but where, concerning gravity, that ship's anchor slips a little occasionally, as I explain below.

First dealing with the question of Newton's Third Law of Motion, which requires action and reaction to be equal and opposite, this again holds valid so long as the aether is accepted as a component part of the system. You see, if there is force balance in an overall system which includes the aether and you are foolish enough to take away the aether then you give yourself a problem with Newton's Third Law. That, however, would be your own invented problem and not one confronting Sandy Kidd's machine.

As to spinning flywheels, remember that, once spinning, they are difficult to manipulate by turning the spin axis, owing to their inertial effects. The right way to explain the force of gravity acting on that flywheel is as a force on 'something' that is separate from but 'anchored' to the mass elements of that wheel. The flywheel exhibits weight. However, there are, in effect, two systems spinning about that spin axis, the wheel proper and that 'something'. The apparent weight of the flywheel is really the gravity force conveyed through that link with the anchor. The Kidd machine is geared to connect with the varying orientation of that flywheel system. One must then ask what happens if that 'anchor' does slip and the flywheel becomes partially disconnected from that 'something'. The weight property of the wheel is then affected, because that 'something' is part of the hidden aether.

Now, slip it will, because there are two spinning systems and it takes quite a force to displace a flywheel from its plane of spin but the machine is only applying that force to one of those two systems. The complementary aether spin of the other system has to adapt to the change as best it can and, though the aether responds very rapidly in its reactions to changes in our material world, its response can be sluggish if it has also to contend with its own spin action.

To conclude, whatever those who talk in terms of Laws of Energy Conservation, Einstein's theory and Newton's Third Law have to say about the impossibility of anti-gravity machines, the fact that they neither understand what underlies the force of gravity nor do they recognize the existence of the aether renders their views irrelevant.

Obviously, it is not going to be easy to break through technologically in developing anti-gravity machines, but if the Sandy Kidd machine has opened a crack through which we can glimpse the way forward, then his efforts and those of Ron Thompson in supporting him are to be commended.