Quote of the Day

Flash memory is really cheap. So cheap, in fact, that it’s too good to be true. In reality, all flash memory is riddled with defects — without exception. The illusion of a contiguous, reliable storage media is crafted through sophisticated error correction and bad block management functions. This is the result of a constant arms race between the engineers and mother nature; with every fabrication process shrink, memory becomes cheaper but more unreliable. Likewise, with every generation, the engineers come up with more sophisticated and complicated algorithms to compensate for mother nature’s propensity for entropy and randomness at the atomic scale. - bunnie

Previous posts involving bunnie.

Steam Locomotives

Restoration of Sumpter Valley Steam Engine (Cushman)
I've been having trouble sleeping lately, which has led to watching long videos about steam locomotives. I can't listen to people bloviating for more than a few seconds, but I can watch people working with steel forever. This video is about restoring an old steam engine from eastern Oregon. The work was done in Oregon City, a suburb on the south side of Portland. Sadly, the Daylight Locomotive and Machine Works doesn't seem to be in business anymore.


Building Steam Locomotives - 1930's Trains & Railways Educational Film - S88TV1
This video is about the production of new locomotives in England 80 years ago. A while back I posted a video about building an all new steam locomotive, a replica of one from the 1950's. All of the originals had been scrapped. Looking around on YouTube, there doesn't seem to any limit to the number of  old steam locomotives that are being, or have been restored. Of course, even if there are a hundred, it doesn't hold a candle to the thousands that were built. Isn't it odd that people would be investing so much in these things that are essential toys? I guess that's what you do when you have excess funds.

They refer to the locomotive in the first video as a 'Mikado'. I had heard this term before, and wondering where it came from, so I asked Wikipedia and I got an answer:

The wheel arrangement name "Mikado" originated from a group of Japanese type 9700 2-8-2 locomotives that were built by Baldwin Locomotive Works for the 3 ft 6 in gauge Nippon Railway of Japan in 1897. In the 19th century, the Emperor of Japan was often referred to as "the Mikado" in English. Also, the Gilbert and Sullivanopera The Mikado had premiered in 1885 and achieved great popularity in both Britain and America.

The Wikipedia article also explains that the Mikado wheel arrangement produced a better, faster, stronger high speed locomotive.

Asteroid Mining, Part 2

Screenshot from Asterank

Asterank has spreadsheet listing asteroids that might be profitable to mine, and a cool interactive view of the solar system and the asteroid belt. In amongst all the asteroids (the little white dots) there are some gold dots floating around. Watch them and you might conclude that they are spaceships on their way to the asteroid belt. Very cool.

Watching the full screen animation, I hear the cooling fan in my laptop kicking on and off every few seconds. I think it must be busy.

Part 1 here. Via Dennis.

Quito Approach

Quito Approach - Lufthansa MD-11F [English Subtitles]
There is no air at 10,000 feet, but Ecuador has a whole city up there. Denver, the mile high city, has an elevation of only 5,000 feet, half that of Quito's. What's it like trying to breath at high altitude? Ask the guys from Top Gear. They can tell you.

The aircraft is a McDonnell Douglas MD-11, not to be confused with the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 or the Lockheed L-1011 Tristar. Via Posthip Scott.

Another Soyuz Preps for Launch

Expedition 49-50 Crew Prepares for Launch in Kazakhstan
The first six minutes are shots of the rocket and the spacecraft being prepared and moved to the launch site. That was pretty cool. After that they go to bloviating and they lost me.

At the 3:31 mark in the video there is a closeup of the spacecraft. You can see that the spacecraft has what look like four fold down platforms. They look like a bad idea. No attempt has made to fair them into the main body so they are going to be producing some aerodynamic drag during the trip through the atmosphere, and why would you need platforms to stand on anyway? Unless they are only there to facilitate preparations for launch, and they take them off prior to launch. But just saying that sounds dumb.

The Wikipedia article about the Soyuz, in the section about the Launch Escape System, mentions that "Four folding stabilizers were added to improve aerodynamic stability during descent." I suppose that's what they could be, but they really look tacked on. But maybe if you've got a rocket as powerful as the Soyuz, you can afford to have some tacked on gee-gaws sticking out in the slipstream.

Child Proof Containers

HISIERRA how it works
Oh, brave new world! Oregon forges ahead in the marijuana business. We've got medical marijuana and recreational marijuana and a whole passel of rules and regulations, one of which says that stuff going out of the head shop, er, sorry, cannabis retail operation, has to be in child proof containers. This plastic bag is a new one on me. The video shows that you need to press down on the little tab in the slider in order to open the bag. What they don't show you is that if you don't press on the tab, the slider goes back and forth just fine, but the bag stays closed.

Shanghai to Chicago

A painting of a WW2 scene of B-24 Liberator bombers & PBY Catalinas at Amchitka AAF.

An airliner traveling from Shanghai to Chicago encountered a problem the other day and diverted to Cold Bay, Alaska. Cold Bay is a hamlet out in the Aleutian Islands. Why is there this giant, jet capable runway in this out of the way spot? WW2, of course. Looking for more information I came across Paul Freeman's Abandoned & Little-Know Airfields, which has a page devoted to the Alaska, which is where I found the picture. Several airfields listed on the Alaska page are in the Aleutian Islands, and most of those were built during the early part of WW2.

Reading about the airliner incident brought a couple of questions to mind. The first one was why was a giant airliner carrying only a hundred people? Every plane I've been on recently has been packed to the gills. And then I plot the trajectories on a map, and I wonder why are they diverted to Cold Bay. Cold Bay is way south of the Great Circle route from Shanghai to Chicago. I smell a conspiracy! The CIA is probably up no good, and this engine malfunction story is just part of the coverup.

Then I do a little more checking. Seems airlines sometimes need to stage a plane to be ready to pick up a full load of passengers, but there just aren't enough people where the aircraft is, who want to go where the airplane is going, but the plane has a schedule to keep so it goes anyway, which means that sometimes they are darn near empty. Wish I could find one of those flights when I need one.

Shanghai to Chicago

Looking at the Great Circle route again I notice that it goes over North Korea and we don't want to be flying over North Korea. They might not be able to hit the broadside of a barn with a bowling ball, but let's not tempt fate, eh? The route also goes over the Kamchatka Peninsula, which is part of Russia. These days I am pretty sure airlines are allowed to fly over Russia, but maybe they need permission, and you know, maybe we ought not go there either. Plug those allowances into the route and Cold Bay looks like a more likely solution.