🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <87ybiq4...@tzadkiel.efn.org>, Steve VanDevender
<ste...@efn.org> wrote:

> tph@longhorn.uucp (Tom Harrington) writes:
> 
> > Oh, THAT'S RIGHT!  Hard drives and floppy drives spin the other way
> > south of the equator!  A side-effect of this is that they can't be
> 
> Disk units used in space use a full track buffer and special logic to
> reverse the bits in the track buffer when in the hemisphere opposite the
> one of launch.  It's why space-rated computers are so expensive.

But energy is abundant in a polar orbit. They connect the disk to a
generator charging a battery. When they fly over the pole, the output is
enormous. But they have to manually flip the connection before passing
over the other pole, or the generator would rapidly discharge the battery
instead.

And no, they can't use diodes for this, because all the equipment
connected to the system has to be coriolis-savvy or it won't work, and
coriolis-savvy diodes conduct in the opposite direction in the other
hemisphere.

-Ron Hunsinger