How To Drain Your Dragon

If You Feel A Sense Of Deja Vu -
Take two aspirin and a bottle of gin.  Yes, I did post a blog entitled "How To Brain Your Dragon" a few days ago, but this is completely different.
     Okay, take SpaceX's Dragon capsule - alright, not so much completely different as nearly the same - which went up to the ISS last week.  It's a pretty cool-looking vehicle, which Art can illustrate - 

Thus

     When the nosecone opens up you almost expect Alan Tracey to come floating through ... 
     Anyway, the Dragon made a successful rendezvous with the ISS, making a perfect docking.  The part that made Elon Musk nervous, however, was the descent, as what goes up must come down.
     <short pause as Your Humble Scribe goes and listens to "I'm Mandy Fly Me" over on Youtube as it's a corking song and has those words in as lyrics>
     I suppose the really difficult bit is when you hit the ground, because ground is very hard indeed, not given to yielding at all, and if you're hitting it at terminal velocity (9.8 metres per second squared if I recall the horrid metric calculations correctly) then you have an Ouch! situation.
     So!  Art?

CAUTION!  Bucket and spade not supplied

     Water is a lot more forgiving than rock, and the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans are big enough that you're bound to hit them with a modicum of effort.  In this case the steering was all done by remote control and ballistics as there's nobody in that capsule.
     They did recover it safely, lest you be alarmed.  Art?

Plucked from the briny deeps.

     Conrad is unsure if they intend to re-use this capsule; probably not, given the stresses and strains of it's adventures, and because it would be housing live squishy Hom. Sap. in future.  Still, SpaceX will want to assay the exterior and interior, getting feedback from inbuilt instrumentation and spot checks, and to that end they will have to ensure the capsule is free from saltwater contamination, so it will have to be -
     Quite.

Elon Musk.  As invented by Robert Heinlein.

     All this experimentation is one step further on Spacex's avowed aim towards having Hom. Sap. setting foot on Mars.*
     Now, what will happen if we pour this one ton vat of molten chocolate over the motley?

I Did Mention Takoradi, Didn't I?
Once again Conrad must apologise for words popping up in his mind for no good reason.  For example, this morning it was "Ullage" when I woke up.
     "Thank you, brain," I muttered to myself, rolling my eyes.  We've been here before.  Ullage is that space left unfilled in a container, and usually refers to a liquid.  Art?

Thus

     Back on track.  "Takoradi" is not, as you may suspect, a pasta dish as evolved in Argentina by settlers from Italy, nor yet is it a species of puffer fish as found in the Coral Sea.  It is a port in Ghana (previously the Gold Coast), and the departure point of the Takoradi Route of the Second Unpleasantness.  Briefly put, crated aircraft would arrive by sea at Tak, be offloaded, assembled and then flown across the vastness of Africa in a series of stages by ferry pilots.  This route meant avoiding any interference by those opposed to Perfidious Albion and allowed aircraft to arrive in Egypt all unexpected by the opposition.  Art?
       
                          Unboxing a plane                                               The overland route      It is fair to say that not a lot of people know about this operation, so you are now better informed than you were yesterday.
     YOU LOT!  Stop trying to free the motley by licking the chocolate off!
Thy Rod And Staff-
 - ordshire Regimental Museum.  Ha!  Do you see what I  - O you do.  Yes, that's me sneakily getting back on subject, that being the visit to said museum.  Even tho' I am typing this at work, I have pre-loaded the photographs as of last night, because once again that's me being sneaky.  Art?

Various impedimenta

What you see here are various souvenirs as appropriated from Iraquis and some operational bits and pieces: there's an Iraqui helmet and at upper port, an Iraqui chemical warfare countermeasures kit.  It's not terribly obvious but there is an official map in there, with a tracing paper overlay upon which various phase lines have been delineated.  Conrad strongly suspects that "Phase Line Scorpion" was christened thus by the South Canadians, whilst "Phase Line Dung Beetle" is the product of some ironic subaltern from This Sceptred Isle.

     We now move back in time, to the establishment of the North and South Staffordshire Regiments in the 18th Century. These pictures follow a theme common to British regiments: establishment, service in the 7 Years War, the American <Conrad grits his teeth> Revolutionary War, the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean Wars, the Victorian police-action wars, the Boer War, then the First and Second Unpleasantnesses.

Crimean War vintage

I don't want to bore you - but getting shot by one of these must really, really sting

From America

Napoleonic shizzle

20mm flats, since you ask

More stuff from service overseas

I'm not going to belabour you about the head with more of this today, because we still have LOTS AND LOTS of photographs to post yet, and I'll be going on at length about      those.  O yes indeed.                                                                                                   

Hmmm.  We appear to have picked up the formatting for picture captions and are unable to have text start off from the left hand side.  O well.  A small price to pay for pre-loaded pictures, I feel.  Not too disconcerting?

Finally -                                                                                                                         

It feels odd to be typing that title at 09:26 ante meridian in the morning.  Way back in the day I'd be typing this at 09:26 post meridian in the evening.  I have since learned to box clever over BOOJUM!'s contents, and how to force text over onto the port side.  Mostly.

Let us then celebrate with - LITHIUM WAFERE BATTERY DESIGN!

                                                                                     

 *  Are you in for a hideous surprise then.  Heh.