Thursday, December 11, 2008

A Restored Boing 40C


My dad pointed out a Boeing 40C recently restored by Addison Pemberton and his team after 8 years, 18,000 hours of work, and 62 volunteers. It's the oldest flyable Boeing airplane in existence (originally built in 1928). Neat story.



It reminds me of an article I read in the latest New Yorker about the near-obsessive level of commitment that John Coster-Mullen has used to learn the details of how the first nuclear weapons were built. Now, the mechanics of these bombs are relatively simple compared to the difficulty of obtaining weapon-grade material, so there isn't much danger in Coster-Mullen's publications. Further, he is working off of declassified photos and documents that are presumably available to any evildoer with a library card, but nonetheless he has had to work in an incredibly painstaking manner to discover all kinds of new things. Hard not to admire the focus of individuals like this.

-t

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