A Huge Diamond Mine That Helped Build The Soviet Union (2014)
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Re: A Huge Diamond Mine That Helped Build The Soviet Union (2014)
#2In 1955 Soviet Union was already built. The peak of Soviet period is 1965, which is pretty close.
Re: A Huge Diamond Mine That Helped Build The Soviet Union (2014)
#3In 1955 Soviet Union was already built. The peak of Soviet period is 1965, which is pretty close.
Then there's this consideration:
In Europe, most of towns are historic, they're in good places and can take any place in economic system.
In America, there are towns dedicated to mining or specialized farming (rubber?), but they quickly get abandoned when mine is exhausted or the output is no longer needed.
Soviet Union built quite a few towns in remote northern locations, they were way bigger than feasible for mining - like a general purpose settlement. Guess what, now it's hard to rationalize their existence, but people are stuck there and see it as their home. People aren't very mobile in Russia.
I imagine even when diamond mining is over we're going to pretend that this is just another town that can get jobs on its own and it will be held afloat by redistribution. It's going to be pretty miserable place for sure, I imagine.
Re: A Huge Diamond Mine That Helped Build The Soviet Union (2014)
#4 Helicopters can't fly over it—the downward force of the air would pull them in.
Re: A Huge Diamond Mine That Helped Build The Soviet Union (2014)
#5Helicopters can't fly over it—the downward force of the air would pull them in. Can someone explain the physics of this? The air above the hold is at the same pressure as that beside the hole, otherwise there would be a constant wind. Also, above a certain altitude helicopters don't rely on ground effects.
If a hole is deep enough — and a half-kilometer deep hole qualifies — the earth will warm the air inside it. The deeper the hole, the warmer the air. Warm air rises, and cool air sinks, so with a big temperature difference between in-hole air and aboveground air, you get quite a bit of air movement.
Thus, two things are happening. First, the warm air rising from the hole is less dense and gives less lift to helicopter rotors than the cooler air it had been flying through. Since the temperature change is extremely abrupt as the helicopter flies over the hole, the pilot may lose a bunch of altitude before managing to adjust the speed enough (read: increase the spin rate of the rotors) to compensate for the loss of lift.
At the same time, the cool air pouring into that hole from all sides is going to create quite a wind shear. If a helicopter loses enough lift to hit the stream of cold air, it could easily be slammed into the side of the borehole before it ever developed enough lift or power to recover.
https://oregonexpat.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/the-helicopter-...
Re: A Huge Diamond Mine That Helped Build The Soviet Union (2014)
#6> These diamonds were all of a uniform size and shape and were dubbed 'Silver Bears'. While DeBeers could not understand how the Soviets were producing such a large quantity of gem diamonds of such uniform size, and supposedly from one mine that by DeBeers surveys should not be capable of such diamond production, they were, nevertheless, pressured to purchase them all lest the Soviets simply dump the diamonds on the open market, thus flooding it and bringing down diamond prices.
What's the speculation as to their surprising abundance and uniformity?
Re: A Huge Diamond Mine That Helped Build The Soviet Union (2014)
#7> These diamonds were all of a uniform size and shape and were dubbed 'Silver Bears'. While DeBeers could not understand how the Soviets were producing such a large quantity of gem diamonds of such uniform size, and supposedly from one mine that by DeBeers surveys should not be capable of such diamond production, they were, nevertheless, pressured to purchase them all lest the Soviets simply dump the diamonds on the…
I was curious about that particular aspect as well. A little Googling brought me to this rather interesting account of Silver Bears and the market forces at play:
http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/diamond/chap17.htm
(tl;dr: though unconfirmed a noted diamond expert believed the Soviets had created a diamond cutting machine instead of relying on human cutters, though others disputed the idea.)
Re: A Huge Diamond Mine That Helped Build The Soviet Union (2014)
#8> These diamonds were all of a uniform size and shape and were dubbed 'Silver Bears'. While DeBeers could not understand how the Soviets were producing such a large quantity of gem diamonds of such uniform size, and supposedly from one mine that by DeBeers surveys should not be capable of such diamond production, they were, nevertheless, pressured to purchase them all lest the Soviets simply dump the diamonds on the…
The general opinion is this is a synthetic diamond laundering operation. Synthetic diamonds are of course chemically identical to natural, but natural diamonds still fetch a higher price.
Re: A Huge Diamond Mine That Helped Build The Soviet Union (2014)
#9Helicopters can't fly over it—the downward force of the air would pull them in. Can someone explain the physics of this? The air above the hold is at the same pressure as that beside the hole, otherwise there would be a constant wind. Also, above a certain altitude helicopters don't rely on ground effects.
If a hole is deep enough — and a half-kilometer deep hole qualifies — the earth will warm the air inside it. The deeper the hole, the warmer the air. Warm air rises, and cool air sinks, so with a big temperature difference between in-hole air and aboveground air, you get quite a bit of air movement. Thus, two things are happening. First, the warm air rising from the hole is less dense and gives less lift to helicopte…
Nit: most helis have an automatic governor that keeps rotor RPM relatively constant; the pilot adjusts the blade pitch to control lift, and the throttle is automatically adjusted to compensate for the change in engine load.
Re: A Huge Diamond Mine That Helped Build The Soviet Union (2014)
#10> These diamonds were all of a uniform size and shape and were dubbed 'Silver Bears'. While DeBeers could not understand how the Soviets were producing such a large quantity of gem diamonds of such uniform size, and supposedly from one mine that by DeBeers surveys should not be capable of such diamond production, they were, nevertheless, pressured to purchase them all lest the Soviets simply dump the diamonds on the…
The general opinion is this is a synthetic diamond laundering operation. Synthetic diamonds are of course chemically identical to natural, but natural diamonds still fetch a higher price.
I thought there were ways to tell synthetic from natural? Surely DeBeers were particularly interested in discrediting Soviet diamonds and if they could find proof that those were indeed synthetic, they would have used it?