Soon after deciding to cancel the planned demo, Sean made an appearance at Kinetica to apologize for botching the event and to take questions. Below is a video of his talk, taken by Steorn forum member Zen Master Lee.
Sean accepts full blame for the failure and presents an explanation for it that is, at least in some respects, more credible than what we’d gathered so far. According to Sean, they had brought three working demo devices to London. The display device ran for four hours in London before being set up in the display space. Soon after being set up, however, it stopped running. Taking it apart, they isolated the problem to the two bearings in the device, which had apparently been damaged, resulting in increased friction. They proceeded to swap out the bearings with one of their other demo devices, started it up, and found that it quickly failed as well – more damaged bearings. Swapping out again, they’ve broken a total of 5 of the 6 bearings they had with them (from the three demo devices). They do not know what is causing the bearings to break; the fact that the failure appeared to be specific to the demo space itself led to the speculation that heat from the museum lighting was at fault, but that is far from certain.
Sean blames himself for going against the advice of everyone else at the company by allowing only three days for the engineers to set up the exhibit. As a result of having “dropped the ball big time”, he’s now facing a lot of pressure to make changes – from shareholders, people in the company, and the media. These changes may include a policy of greater openness, releasing videos of the working device and possibly even blueprints, as well as staging a successful public demo as soon as possible. One change he’ll make for the next demo is that the event will not be announced until the device is in position for display, tested and working.
Sean comes across as being worn and disappointed, but still confidant in what he has. His stated intention is to produce a successful live demo in the near future. It’s still just possible that this week’s disaster will have been a bump in the road for Steorn, rather than the end of the line.
Overconfident, a bit cocky. When things are going well in your life your perspective changes and you do things you would not ordinarily do. Mix in the media coverage and you place even more pressure on yourself and your decisions.
Sean made a mistake and a pretty big one at that. Sean seems to have been humbled by this and probably is better because of it. I still believe they have what the say they have. I’ll wait for the next demo before I change my mind about the viability of Orbo.
Neils Bohr was right! It’s the “Copenhagen Interpretation” thing. Of course the wheel spins…when no one is looking.
If Steorn has a working model -even if it runs without external energy for only a few hours – why is the jury of scientists still convened to try and determine if the “Steorn Effect” is real? This doesn’t make sense since an actual working device settles that issue and the jury can be dismissed. In addition, if this plexiglas contraption ran for several hours “upstairs” at Kinetica, where is the video? In this day of ubiquitous video devices, including video phones, and with all the video equipment available “downstairs”, it is incredible that Steorn wouldn’t at least show the device working during the initial testing and set-up at Kinetica to at least preserve some credibility. Something is definitely rotten in Denmark. Frank G. Pearce, Richardson, Texas.
Stays positive attitude, this is a good news for more technlogy consolidation.
Bon courage