One of SPF Senior Member Gets Some Ink

bobbymike

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I really. personally, can't overstate Scott's contribution to the history of aerospace and military technologies. He should be much more famous IMHO.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/why-the-us-militarys-plans-for-a-death-star-collapsed

Aerospace historian Scott Lowther has published some excellent diagrams of Have Sting, a proposed orbital railgun the size of the International Space Station. Having studied a General Electric report on the project, Lowther deduced a fair amount about the cannon’s characteristics.

“This vehicle appears to have everything such a system would need, from power to attitude control, sensors to thermal control,” Lowther said.
 
Re: One of SPF Senior Memebers Gets Some Ink

I would assume my lack of fame is due in no small part to my lack of being published.

Also note: due to the Have Sting article, it was a banner day for the APR blog yesterday... nearly 700 visits to the post announcing the availability of US Spacecraft Projects #3. Number of copies of USSP#3 sold: zero.

Feh.

http://www.aerospaceprojectsreview.com/blog/?p=2416
 
They don't understand what you've put together it is truly historic. Centuries from now they will call your work the Aerospace version of Vitruvian Man.

Yes I know lots good that's doing for you now! :)
 
Re: One of SPF Senior Memebers Gets Some Ink

Make a top 10 weird projects book. Profit!
 
152397412_c996c511cd.jpg


;D
 
The Birth of Aerospace Mythology

OK, so I wrote about the "Have Sting" orbital railgun, and produced some provisional diagrams of it, publishing them in US Space Projects #3. A blog article was written for War Is Boring discussing "Have Sting," based in no small part on my diagrams. OK, so far so good. But then other blogs start writing about Have Sting, and an error is introduced.

Whenever a blog post links to my blog, a "pingback notification" is sent to my blog dashboard. I've just glanced at these, haven't given them much thought. For the most part they seem to be just parroting the verbiage from the War is Boring piece. But with one change: "Have Sting" has become "Have Sling." A "T" became an "L."

Examples:
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/219718-exploring-the-death-star-space-gun-america-never-built

In September, the Aerospace Project Reviews Blog published some fascinating diagrams depicting “Have Sling,” which aerospace historian Scott Lowther described as “[a] General Electric design for a gigantic orbital railgun.” Have Sling was never built, of course.

http://www.usaspeaks.com/news/exploring-the-death-star-space-gun-america-never-built/

September, the Aerospace Project Reviews Blog published some fascinating diagrams depicting “Have Sling,” which aerospace historian Scott Lowther described as “[a] General ...

http://www.usaspeaks.com/news/exploring-the-death-star-space-gun-america-never-built/

http://www.viralnewstrend.com/exploring-the-death-star-space-gun-america-never-built/

And a bunch more, all seemingly the same post over and over.

And if you Google "have sling" and some other terms, some seriously wacky stuff appears, which I'm guessing is the result of some weird auto-translation:

http://www.bbtechnonews.com/index.php/2015/12/19/exploring-the-death-star-space-gun-america-never-built/

In September, the Aerospace Task Reviews Blog site released some remarkable layouts portraying “Have Sling,” which aerospace chronicler Scott Lowther


"Aerospace Task Reviews?"

And:

http://journalfocus.com/2015/12/exploring-the-death-star-space-gun-america-never-built/

Exploring the ‘Fatality Celebrity’ space gun America never built

UNITED STATE protection coordinators did at one time think about constructing a huge Fatality Star-like gun in space as component of the “Celebrity Wars” rocket protection program, as Warisboring’s Steve Weintz advised us this week in the middle of the hullaballoo of the position of The Pressure Awakens.

In September, the Aerospace Job Reviews Blog site released some interesting representations portraying “Have Sling,” which aerospace chronicler Scott Lowther...

... the styles explain a space tool the dimension of the International Space Terminal, each Lowther.


Buh?

So now when people try to research orbital railguns, there's every chance that they will be presented with the fallacious designation "Have Sling."
 
"Exploring the ‘Fatality Celebrity’ space gun America never built"

I wonder what they'd make of Eager Beaver?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReRvtiKSI7s

Chris
 
It looks like a mistake in one blog (maybe the Extremetech one?) reposting the Warisboring blog post, which then has been replicated by blogs simply reposting the repost and not bothering to even read the Warisboring post, let alone Scott's article.

This is what passes for journalism in the modern age.
 
Perhaps the Fatality Celebrity was named by Iain M. Banks?

Chris
 
I'd guess some of those (Celebrity Fatality for Death Star) are run through auto-synonym filters so that they don't get caught in copyright scanning tools.

FWIW, your post here did remind me to go look at your site and purchase some of the USSP issues.
 
TomS said:
I'd guess some of those (Celebrity Fatality for Death Star) are run through auto-synonym filters so that they don't get caught in copyright scanning tools.

Indeed, it's called 'spinning' and is a quick, dirty and horrible way to get content on a website. Generally they're 'made for adsense' sites that earn from ad clicks and other aggressive advertising. It's not so much copyright they're evading but search engines' 'scraped content' algorithms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_spinning

It's outdated and ineffective but that's never stopped the internet before.
 
Gridlock said:
TomS said:
I'd guess some of those (Celebrity Fatality for Death Star) are run through auto-synonym filters so that they don't get caught in copyright scanning tools.

Indeed, it's called 'spinning' and is a quick, dirty and horrible way to get content on a website. Generally they're 'made for adsense' sites that earn from ad clicks and other aggressive advertising. It's not so much copyright they're evading but search engines' 'scraped content' algorithms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_spinning

It's outdated and ineffective but that's never stopped the internet before.

In another life I was going to help a guy build out his web presence. The more I studied SEO the dirtier I felt. Eventually I bailed.
 
Re: One of SPF Senior Memebers Gets Some Ink

Orionblamblam said:
I would assume my lack of fame is due in no small part to my lack of being published.

Also note: due to the Have Sting article, it was a banner day for the APR blog yesterday... nearly 700 visits to the post announcing the availability of US Spacecraft Projects #3. Number of copies of USSP#3 sold: zero.

Feh.

http://www.aerospaceprojectsreview.com/blog/?p=2416

Fantastic work all around.

Quick question: Have you ever attempted to track down and interview some of the people behind these projects? Their families alone might appreciate (and help fund) some insight into what grandpa did at Convair etc.
 
Re: One of SPF Senior Memebers Gets Some Ink

marauder2048 said:
Have you ever attempted to track down and interview some of the people behind these projects? Their families alone might appreciate (and help fund) some insight into what grandpa did at Convair etc.

I have many times, almost universally a disaster. My interest is in the machine, not the politics or personalities, so that's a problem. I'm not a People Person, so that's a problem (I *suck* at interviewing). Most of the time when I've contacted the Actual People and ask them about Orion or Dyna Soar or whatever, the responses are... paranoid. "Why do you want to know about this top secret thing I worked on? How do you even know that the project existed? Do you work for the Chinese? I'm calling the FBI!"

Once I hunted down a Relevant Historical Figure for something I was working on. Couldn't find him, but found his son. Who, to all appearances, *hated* him. Finally got put in touch with The Guy, who was in a group home for people with severe Alzheimer's. That was cheery.

I've had an on/off correspondence with A Relevant Person who is (or at least was, dunno) pushing 100. And it soon became clear to me that his claims were entirely untrustworthy, to the point of being utter BS.

Thrice. THREE TIMES! I've been in the process of a correspondence with A Relevant Person, when all of a sudden the letters/emails stopped coming. Because they friggen' *died.*

The theory "you could get a whole lot of good info/context from The People or from Their Families" certainly is a valid one. Lots of authors have had great success with it. I haven't. I'm'a gonna stick with documentation, I think.

Most of the people who would know about these things first hand are likely dead. Dyna Soar and Orion were more than *fifty* years ago, putting many of the junior engineers well into their seventies and eighties, senior engineers and managers in their nineties and beyond. And the extra sad thing is that I've found that for the most part their families don't give a damn about the programs. I suspect a lot of that is due to the simple fact that the Relevant People didn't really talk about them... they were classified, after all, and most programs are failures (either technically or politically), and that, I can say from experience, is a bummer. And so they don't tell their families a whole lot about it, and any documentation they may have brought home don't mean anything to Junior. Most of my experience with the families of Relevant People has been on ebay, when they're selling of Dad's or Grandad's stuff. They have the impression that it's cool, but they don't know squadoo about it.
 
Thanks for the insights. Archival documents don't lie or misremember, mistate or mischaracterize nearly as much as humans.

Two of the best books I've read recently, Miller's "War Plan Orange" and Zuber's "Inventing the Schlieffen Plan" were almost exclusively based on archival documents.
And with your surname also ending in "er", I'm confident in the quality of your output :)
 

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