Spinorb

Spinorbs are levitated flywheels, placed inside a sealed vacuum chamber. Because they have no friction, spinorbs can store energy for extended periods of time. Compared to force crystals, spinorbs have the advantage that they can be discharged and recharged an arbitrary number of times, whereas force crystals can only be used once. On the other hand, spinorbs store much less energy per weight, being limited by the strength of the materials (mostly core steel) out of which they are made. For this reason, applications requiring very high energy density (such as ornithopter backpacks) still use force crystals.

The name derives from the shape of the flywheel and its housing, which are both spherical. This permits the axis of rotation of the flywheel to change arbitrarily. Consequently, a spinorb does not generate gyroscopic forces when its housing is rotated. This can create unexpected forces when the orb is charged or discharged, as the torque on the flywheel may be in an unexpected direction. This is usually not a problem if the flywheel is charged or discharged slowly, although it does limit the accuracy of the autosling, which uses a spinorb to store energy. On the other hand, the autosling is not a very accurate weapon anyways.

Spinorbs are used as an energy storage device on almost all types of magic-technology hybrids. Hoverships use them for regenerative braking, allowing them to accelerate quickly to their optimum aerodynamic speed. Building televators sometimes use them as an energy buffer to deal with unexpected bursts of traffic.

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