Celestia Sleeps In--Chapter 10 notes and thanks · 1:29am May 19th, 2013
Chapter 10 notes and thanks
Once again, a shout out to my prereaders:
Humanist
Woonsocket Wrench
and my parents!
The Star Trek reference is to Star Trek IV, where, when instructed to use the computer’s keyboard, Scotty replies: “A keyboard! How quaint!”
Archamare’s constant is pi, which used to be called (back in the day) Archimedes’ constant.
Issac Newton calculated pi to 15 digits; William Shanks spent 15 years calculating it to the 707th digit. Too bad he made a mistake at 528. Incidentally, this makes me feel a lot better about the little errors that have crept into this story here and there--at least I didn’t spend 15 years at it. That’s really just a fun fact--I was going to try to come up with a pony pun, but William Shanks doesn’t lend itself to ponification, sadly.
“Oceanic tribe” is a reference to the birthplace of pegasi: “There are several versions of the birth of the winged stallion and his brother Chrysaor in the far distant place at the edge of Earth, Hesiod's "springs of Oceanus, which encircles the inhabited earth, where Perseus found Medusa” (from Wikipedia)
The toilet in the space shuttle is complicated. If you want to know more, it (and the process of using it) are described in great detail in Packing for Mars by Mary Roach.
Nibbler, Leela’s pet in Futurama, excretes dark matter.
The ‘three shells’ is a reference to the movie Demolition Man, in which Sylvester Stallone gets frozen, thawed in the future, and doesn’t know what the three shells in the bathroom are for (it’s never explained in the movie).
Wooden wheels often have a steel tire (for wear purposes). I don’t know if it’s normally made as one piece, but I do know that steam locomotives had a replaceable ‘tire’ on their drivers, which was installed by heating it up until it was stupidly hot, then putting it around the wheel and allowing it to cool, thereby attaching it. This would have been commonplace by the 1860s--if not earlier--and the designers of steam locomotives almost certainly were inspired by the earlier design of wooden wheels. Thus, it’s not much of a stretch to imagine that ponies know this technology.
Helmuth von Moltke the Elder said “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” (translations vary)
Neil deGrasse Tyson might not roll over on the beach (although I bet he would if an alien asked), but the man can dance.
I seem to remember in an early episode of Futurama, Fry got hit by a lot of pneumatic pocket doors.
I don’t know if the lamp which is used to generate light signals is still called “the Aldis,” although it was in World War II in Britain, and an ex-soldier I spoke to said his grandfather (who was in the navy in WWII) called it an Aldis.
Mint is, in fact, good for indigestion, and grows feral all over northern Michigan.
Top speed of a 25’ Coast Guard Boat (Defender-class boat) is 46 knots--53mph for you landlubbers. The Coast Guard has a bit of an institutional problem with crew thinking that the only two settings of the throttle are “full stop” and “full ahead.” (If you don’t believe me, read the NTSB safety reports.)
St. Elmo’s Fire does occur on the Great Lakes; I have a friend who has seen it while on a sailing ship in a storm (it was in September 1995, if you’re curious). It, and ball lightning, are often confused, although they are two entirely different phenomena. “Physically, St. Elmo's fire is a bright blue or violet glow, appearing like fire in some circumstances, from tall, sharply pointed structures such as lightning rods, masts, spires and chimneys, and on aircraft wings. St. Elmo's fire can also appear on leaves, grass, and even at the tips of cattle horns. Often accompanying the glow is a distinct hissing or buzzing sound. It is sometimes confused with ball lightning.” (from Wikipedia)
Both are rare (St. Elmo’s fire less so than ball lightning), so it’s not unreasonable to believe that none of the crew of the patrol boat has actually seen either.
Yes, I know the actual quote is “Lay on, MacDuff.”
The movie Anthony’s thinking of is Jack Jack Attacks (an Incredibles short), where Violet casts a protective bubble just before the plane crashes on top of the family.
Author’s comments on the Coast Guard’s actions
Ok, I know some of you are going to flip a table when the Anthony orders his crew ashore, to move by the bubble. I can already hear you shouting.
Admittedly, I don’t know what the Coast Guard would do in a situation like this. To the best of my knowledge, there is no magical bubble on a beach on a remote island that causes electromagnetic interference chapter in their training manuals. If anyone who’s actually in the Coast Guard on the Great Lakes knows otherwise, by all means, let me know.
I’ve talked this over with a recently retired soldier, and my father--who’s spent a lifetime on the Great Lakes; both he and my grandfather were in the Coast Guard Auxiliary. In my father’s experience, the Coast Guard on Lake Michigan does little else besides rescue boaters and conduct safety inspections. They typically don’t deal with anything worse than drunk boaters; while their training undoubtedly covers much more than that, they hardly use it. (I’m trained in CPR and as a lifeguard, but I’ve never used either skill in the 20 years or so since I learned them, and it’s hard to say whether I’d remember what to do or not if it came down to it.)
Furthermore, they’re not perfect. I’m not trying to suggest that the Coast Guard is filled with morons--probably 99% of them do what they need to do to the best of their abilities. However, I think (as does my father) that it’s perfectly reasonable for the Coasties to take the actions which they do in my story, since they have no idea what the nature of the bubble is, nor where it came from.
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/Drei_Ringe_von_Krupp.jpg
The Krupp company, which you may be familiar with, was very famous for inventing the seamless railroad tire. The three rings in their symbol there represent those tires, which formed the foundation for their business for a long time. Often in old railroad advertisements they would proudly mention that they use genuine Krupp tires for safety purposes.
1859841
Is this the Krupp which is now Thyssen-Krupp?
1859851
Yeah, they merged in 1999. Krupp is probably most famous for producing artillery for the Germans in both world wars, as well as a large proportion of the Nazi's tanks.
1859877
When I used to commute 40 miles to work, I'd pass the same bright yellow Thyssen-Krupp semi-truck going the other way on the highway every single day. I'm sure there were a lot of other cars and trucks I saw every day, but that one was easy to spot, since it was bright yellow.
1862876
Yep, an interesting company. I thought you might have run into some machine tools made by them or something like that. Between 1948 and 1967 it was owned and operated by a convicted war criminal.
1862888
We haven't got any tools in the shop made by them. I'm actually more familiar with them from their metal sales side, since I used to haul scrap years ago. I think we've gotten Volkswagen parts made by them before, as well.
1863054
Old VWs or the new kind?
1864777
New ones. I've only had the misfortune of working on three older VWs--a dune buggy, a seventies bug, and a seventies bus. Hated them all.
1864781
Really? My uncle collects old VWs, they're the only thing I can even somewhat claim to have worked on (I scraped a bunch of grease off the undercarriage of one.) What issue do you have with them? My understanding is that they are very easy to work with.
1864786
They are, if that's what you're used to. We mostly work on late-model cars (the bulk of our customers own cars less than 10 years old), so we don't have repair manuals or information for those older cars, getting parts is a challenge, etc. A VW is the only thing I've ever set the points on, and I'll probably never do it on anything else.
1864794
What does set the points mean?
1864797
Well, in a breaker-point ignition system, the coil is triggered by two small contacts, which are driven by a gear of sorts, touching, thus collapsing the coil's field and causing a spark. The contacts need to be exactly .005" apart (I think that's the spec)--more or less, and they won't work properly. If they get dirty, they don't work properly. To advance or retard the spark, the whole body of the distributor has to turn, and since various things like engine RPM, engine load and so forth come into play, by the end of the distributor era, there were centrifugal weights, vacuum pots, and thermal vacuum delay valves, and if any of those components didn't work perfectly, the system underperformed. Now a computer does all that, timing the spark to the second, and often firing multiple times during a single power pulse (Toyota, I think, does up to five strikes--one to initiate the arc, two to ignite the fuel/air mixture, and two more to burn the remaining hydrocarbons after the main event has happened).
1864815
Wow, that sounded really impressive despite my not understanding a word of it.
1864822
Well, to make it simpler, think of the points as being a light switch you flip on and off rapidly to make the spark plug spark when you want it to. All of the rest is just to make it more efficient.
1864830
All right then. So you are not used to working with cars (like VWs) that have mechanical timing systems rather than digital?
1864831
Yes, that's pretty much it. When I started working as a professional, it had been about 15 years since the last American cars had carburetors, breaker-point ignition, or any of the other old-school engine controls. I learned in the computer control era, so that's what I know. Heck, by the time I started working, American cars were so metric, I still don't own a complete set of fractional tools. Why spend the money on them?
1864843
I've never heard the term fractional before, I always thought it was called the Imperial system.
1864844
I used to hear it called "Standard," but it isn't the standard any more--not in cars, anyway. Interestingly, in the late 70s, there were GM cars with bolts that had metric threads (because GM was converting) and fractional heads (so they didn't have to buy new tooling all at once). My Oldsmobile is like that.
1864846
That's crazy.
1864849
Not really. If you had a vehicle which was a new design (like my olds, new in 77), and were planning a 10 year production run on that body, you'd know you could spread your tooling investment over a decade, rather than having to spend all the money at once. And, if you later have to replace a bolt, just use a metric one (unless you're doing a concours restoration).
Given the costs of designing an automobile and the production expenses, it makes sense to save wherever they can, whether it's using custom bolts or using the same suspension components on multiple product lines. Chrysler had that down to an art form in the 80s; everything from Omnis to Caravans had the same front suspension, rear axle, powertrain, and instrument panel cluster. Just the body sheet metal was different.
1864862
Yeah, I know it makes perfect sense, I'm just really drunk right now and having trouble organizing my thoughts.
VW's back in the day all used the same engine and base board (I don't know what the proper term is.) Everything from the bug to the micro bus used the same floor structure.
1864869
VW's back in the day all used the same engine and base board (I don't know what the proper term is.) Everything from the bug to the micro bus used the same floor structure.
Probably 'floor pan.' Back in those days, the cars were built like a matchbox car--the chassis included the cabin floor, and the body was bolted to that. Body-on-frame didn't come along until after WW2, if I remember correctly, but of course the VW design predates that. My grandpa, who worked at GM from the 30s to the 70s, called body-on-frame cars "unibody," although now that term refers to frameless cars (like pretty much everything except pickup trucks and vans).
1864877
Floor pan is the exact term I am looking for. That style of construction gives you a lot of interesting possibilities for modifications or custom built cars. You can pull the body off and stick pretty much anything you want on there (so long as you reinforce it enough to keep the whole thing from bending in half.)
1864880
It does, which is one reason so many of them were turned into dune buggies. Of course, by modern standards, the cars had the structural integrity of a wet cardboard box, but back then nobody cared.
I saw an ad for a 20s dodge pickup, which could be bought as just a running chassis, which the buyer would install his own (probaby wooden) body on--and a lot of people did that, to save money.
1864885
Who needs structural integrity when you have a dune buggy?
1865706
Very true!
Thyssen-Krupp also does elevators, I've had a few sites that have them as the contact in case of elevator failure.