Flat Earther spends $20,000 on DIY experiment that accidentally proved the planet is ROUND
(www.dailymail.co.uk)
🌏 Sphere World 🌎
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My last hurrah was YAL-1A. Successful target engagement on 11 Feb 2010. Not that I pushed any buttons, but I did edit the winning proposal and did preliminary designs in the 1970s.
Cool.! I was the driving force behind several directed energy initiatives. I was also the guy behind a lot of other what I call "cool toys".
My connection was mostly through the SDIO and Air Force programs. Did you perhaps ever encounter Colonel Roger Lenard? I also worked in the area of kinetic energy weapons. At Boeing, we developed the Lightweight Exo-Atmospheric Projectile (LEAP), which was the first 3-axis-stabilized solid-propellant KEW (successfully flight-tested in laboratory). We weren't able to market it and had to let it lapse. The Thiokol propulsion technology was picked up by Hughes, which was later absorbed into Raytheon. The Standard SM-3 warhead is a spitting image of our 2nd-generation design concept.
I always liked LEAP. Col. Lenard doesn't ring a bell, but me and names don't get along. I use that part of my brain for other things. I was a contractor advising the SDIO office for a while and did several budgets for them (for just one budget round), then I moved on. Wasted tremendous amounts of money.
Plenty of uncertainty about the direction of programs and how they would pan out. Particle beams were promising, until they realized that it would be impossible to aim them accurately through the Earth's magnetic field. Space-based lasers were interesting, until they realized it would mean storing huge quantities of liquid hydrogen and liquid fluorine in space for the lifetime of the system. Railguns were interesting, until they uncovered all the problems with rail erosion and the fact that the high-Mach projectile would start decelerating from the muzzle immediately at about 10 gs. But, as the Russians say, you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs!