I guess storing all those 1's also adds some weight. It costs on the order of antimatter if you think of it. What's it like, $50 million per 1 billionth of a gram, or so?
This is why I always advocate for the use of specialized negative binary using 0 and -1 for weight-sensitive embedded products. For optimum weight characteristics you flip all unused storage space to -1. Careful though, too much empty space formated this way will result in negative gravitational pull and something like an Arduino with a high capacity SD card will float away.
The only storage medium I can spontaneously think of where 1s are heavier than 0s is punch cards. I hope that is not the current primary storage method in the aerospace industry.
Oh wow. And now that I read this, it dawned on me that any memory technology that is based on storing charge (like DRAM) will have actual, albeit also very very theoretical, mass differences depending on bit value as well...
Weighing would only be slightly better than a simple parity check (a one-bit hash). It misses common errors like transposing two adjacent characters.
However, you can get any number of additional bits by suspending the punch card from various locations along its perimeter, and measuring the angle at which it hangs.
Is there any kind of energy, (and thus mass) associated with the decreased entropy of structured data files on a data storage device vs random noise? I don't recall the thermodynamics of data storage being covered during my college physics class.
Software saved the aerospace industry. Every other way of adding cost to an airplane also adds weight.
He spent most of his career at Lockheed and Rockwell.