Jul 112011
Sigh.
http://www.astronautix.com/index.html
Due to a persistent denial of service attack, astronautix.com has been taken off line.
Thank you for your support over the last 17 years. I’ll have to consider in what altered media, form, or other hosting arrangement the content of this site may reappear in the future.
Per aspera ad astra
19 Responses to “Astronautix.com taken down”
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NOOOOO
They finally really did it. You maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you. God damn you all to hell!
Oh, That just made my day. I wonder how much of it has been archived on the web archive site…
I went looking for a cached version of the main page, but they had one from July 6, and it had the same message.
There is another website that has the whole Encyclopedia Astronautica website as it was on October 31, 2001: http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/spaceflt.htm
But of course there was a lot added after that.
I’d heard a reference to an attack on Mark’s site a few days back. Any idea if this would by definition have to be a targeted attack, or something not specific to Astronautix? It puzzles me why anyone would single him out (a fervent moon hoaxer?).
A Moon hoaxer was my first thought also. He certainly didn’t write anything politically controversial on the site.
Years back, Sven Grahn had to stop his “Identify The Mystery Satellite” contest also because someone went after him.
I thought that maybe my comment made it but I guess ti didn’t…I hope that at least the sister site
http://www.friends&partners.org or is it friends-partners.org stays on anyway.
Using that address brought up “server not found”.
sorry Pat…you did mention the right site that I was looking for.
Have any other aerospace sites been attacked lately?
You can find the old version of Encyclopedia Astronautica at
http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/mwade/index.htm
It hasn’t been updated since late 2001.
Real Space Models was hacked earlier this week.
Awesome. But at least they seem to be back up and running.
I’m surprised I don’t see anything on the Real Space website about how the David Weeks “Apollo” drawings got shown fairly clearly in Transformers 3.
I wonder if David Weeks received a screen credit?
It’s the Russians! They don’t want the Chinese getting info on or models of the N-1! š
That is just utterly loathesomely despicably reprehensibly damnably absolutely evil, what they did, there. That site had on it only things which were true and beautiful, and nothing which was the least bit bad, or wrong.
Scott, I know you’re not a theist, but you must admit that implies the existence of the Devil. Some primitive tribes don’t believe in the existence of good spirits, only bad ones. This is definitely the work of bad spirits, even if they only exist as bad wetware in the brains of bad people.
> That is just utterly loathesomely despicably reprehensibly damnably absolutely evil, what they did, there.
It’s most likely the result of just some jackass with the ability to cause havoc and the desire to do so, as opposed to some dark conspiracy to shut Mark Wade up or hide some secrets or take revenge for something. I’ve often wondered if the Internet will wind up being a transient thing, eventually wiped from existence by virii, spam, malware and hackers.
> I know youāre not a theist,
Don’t be so sure about that. In fact… *really* don’t be so sure about that.
> that implies the existence of the Devil
Or Loki. Or Coyote. Not a devil, but a trickster out looking to make some chaos.
> Some primitive tribes donāt believe in the existence of good spirits, only bad ones.
Despite some people claiming that this universe seems tailor-made to coddle life, this universe is at best apathetic towards life, and often seems quite antagonistic. So far as I’m aware, when it comes to the things needed for life – climate, gravity, oxygen and so on – the optimum is the “normal,” and any notable deviation from it is Bad News. For instance, if it suddenly rains a lot more (or less) this year than normal, or if the temperature is a lot higher (or lower) than normal, or if the oxygen content goes up (or down) by 5%… life will suffer. I can’t really recall anything except science fiction stories (“Into the Wild Green Yonder,” frex) that involves things suddenly getting *better* for life.
The point being: in the natural world, things are very unlikely to get better, but they can very quickly get a lot worse. As a consequence, once you start applying the supernatural to your explanations, it makes a lot of sense to see evil spirits everywhere… and if you see *good* spirits, they’re usually either weak, apathetic or restrained by some treaty or rules or some such.
I think I have an idea of the difference between right and wrong (see C.S. Lewis) and that was just wrong. Bad guy running bad wetware.
Excellent News!
Ralph Currell over on the sci.space newsgroups located a stored version of the whole website that was current as of October 18, 2010 – which is a whale of a lot better than having just the old 2001 version:
http://web.archive.org/web/20101018084037/http://www.astronautix.com/
I seem to remember Mark Wade not being a big supporter of Mike Griffin–moreover he got at least one thing wrong. The early version of Buran was to have been a top-mount lifting body (MTKVA or something) and he had it carrying 80 tons to LEO, when it was only 30 or so according to Hendrixx book.
In terms of Russian launches, Anatoly Zak, Asif Siddiqi, Philip Clark, Charles Vick (who I think lost rights to his old drawings) and of course, Oberg and Hendrixx are stiil voices of authority. kept hearing Miller was going to redux the Dream Machines, but…
So it is nice to see the archive. It is why I print everything out and look like a hoarder. If it isn’t on paper, it isn’t real. Wade’s work–and Scotts– should be printed in plastic and metal books as part of Long Now.