Why did it fail?

Apart from the obvious possibility that the Orbo did not exist in the first place, this is my best shot at clearing some of the fog around the London demo’s failure. It is nothing more than my best guess:

Sean claims that the device is simple to build. This confidence led him to inject hurdles that added to the risk of failure. These include:

• Using polycarbonate materials to afford transparency
• Fitting simple ceramic watch bearings to keep opaque elements small
• Concentrating on the artful look over function and reliability
• Settling for a low-torque configuration
• Placing the exhibit in a greenhouse with hot lights focused on it
• Using an untested system (ie poly-built – not the configuration itself)
• Seat-of-the-pants flying
• Insufficient time to recover from inevitable problems
• No fall-back plan

I am sure there are others, but it is easy to see that the above list fits with Sean’s ‘mea culpa’. I do not write this to embarrass Sean further. He has fallen on his sword and apportioning blame is Steorn’s business not mine. I am simply trying to bring clarity to a confused situation with what little information we have. One guess is that, since polycarbonate has a high degree of expansivity, it may have done so under the lights and put excessive and unbalanced pressure on the bearings. (I am told by friends that these type of bearings do not take such treatment well). With such a low-torque system, it would not take a large degradation in performance to kill the rotation.

To conclude, as some people have, that the Orbo is real but fragile, is a leap too far for me. I would find it easier to believe that the device did not exist in the first place and I am not ready to jump to that conclusion either.

Up until now, I figured that the delays and obfuscation were down to giving Steorn time to squeeze the last patent improvements into the system. This conforms to the observation that the continuous motion technology is just off the drawing board. On Friday, I asked Sean if they were now fully patent-protected. He was unequivocal in his answer – yes. Taken together with the demo train-wreck and his display of sincerity regarding a change of approach, I can only pray that we will not have to wait a year for the jury to report. That may have made some sort of sense last month, but the landscape has changed and it no longer does.