Quote from: Pirate88179 on September 23, 2007, 07:23:12 PM
...What I am leading up to is this: would it be possible to construct a "table" or very accurate flat/level surface and place magnets in a very precise way to allow a rolling sphere to "tour" the magnets as voyager did...

Pioneer is accelarated by the gravitation of the planets due to their motion. The energy is taken from the kinetic energy of planets. When a Pioneer is accelarated, a planet is slowed but as the mass of planets is much more than that of the Pioneer, planets slowing is negligeable. Gravitation is just acting as a vector for the energy transmission.
With a static configuration of permanent magnets, this could not occur. And if we used mobile magnets to mimic planets, then we would have to put energy for moving the magnets and compensate energy used by the sphere to accelerate and move.

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