Analysis of Ender Quarry Mechanics

Abstract: The code of the Ender Quarry mod is analyzed, paying particular attention to what affects mining speed. The fastest the quarry can mine is 180 blocks/second. It might take half a million RF/tick to power a quarry going that fast. If you are power limited, adding speed upgrades beyond Speed I will make your quarry slower, not faster.

The Ender Quarry is not open source, but with Java Decompiler it becomes such. The code is uncommented, but most of the variable names are still in place, so it is pretty easy to figure out what is going on. I am using ExtraUtilities 1.2.4b . The code is not obfuscated, except to the degree that interfacing with obfuscated Minecraft requires it. For deobfuscation when required, I used the tables for Minecraft 1.7.10 provided by ModCoderPack 9.08 (but just the tables, not the program).

Is this a spacecraft?

This is not a pipe. (It is a picture of a pipe)

Is this a picture of a spacecraft?

I have discussed my rocketometer project on this blog in depth before. That's it, the purple board in the picture above. I think I can lay claim to it being a full-blown spacecraft.

• It has structure. 
• It has command/data handling. 
• It has a science payload with multiple instruments. 
• It has independent power - it is charged from the rocket payload, but carries its own battery and is capable of operating for the whole mission from launch through recovery. In fact, it did operate on its own power during entry and descent. From the point of view of the Rocketometer, the external power system is ground support equipment.
• It is capable of operating in the vacuum and freefall of space. If it were magically transported into orbit, it would operate for at least a little while (it lacks thermal control). 
• It lacks propulsion and recover, but so do many spacecraft. 

The biggest strike against it is that it was bolted inside another spacecraft. How many other systems in the rocket would I count as a spacecraft under this same definition?

The other biggest strike is that it has no telecom system. I know of spacecraft which have been flown with transmitters but no receivers, but the only spacecraft I can think of that had neither were things like Echo, Lageos, and Starshine. Do those count as spacecraft?