Chopper to pluck returning space capsule in mid-air

Is it just me, or does this whole thing sound very similar to the movie The Andromeda Strain? Not the helicoptor capture stunt, but the idea of capturing some extraterrestrial material and returning it to Earth for analysis. In the movie it was called Project Scoop, and I think they captured material from a comet. Needless to say, it turned out to be less than benign. :o
 
Pretty much all our early rockets blew up on the pad, too. Engineers get to make very expensive mistakes, don't they?
 
When you think about what a hard drive actually does, it's positively mind-boggling that they work as well as they do. You've got read-write heads travelling microns above a surface spinning at buzz-saw speeds for hours, days, weeks or months at a time, without so much as a single, disasterous downward flutter.

Never mind that while all that mechanical precision is going, you've got sensitive magnets reading and changing the strata on the surface of the disk millions of times per second.
 
I'm most intrigued by the fluid dynamics happening between the flying head and the platter. Especially since the movement that generates the lift is not of the object that is flying.
 
There's no fluid dynamics between the head and the platter.... they're both solids. It's that wee bit of air inbetween that's interesting.
 
I think on the scale we're dealing with, the dynamics might as well be fluid. Air currents to something that weighs thousandths of a gram are anything but insubstantial.
 
sechs said:
There's no fluid dynamics between the head and the platter.... they're both solids. It's that wee bit of air inbetween that's interesting.
Click to expand...

That bit of air is a gas and is known as a fluid in the field of fluid dynamics. And it is in between the head and platter as I said. :wink:
 
You said between, as in one versus the other. Not quite the same as in-between, as in the gap or difference of the two.
 
In another thread, Bozo (I think) suggested WD-40, and I stated I have been using 50 Grade motor oil with excellent results, and Tanin said something about olive oil, I believe. Conditioner makes your hair slick, so I belieive it should prevent head crashes. Obviously, one would want to try this with an old drive first.
 
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