Message posted by Vahe Demirjian (Member since 04/28/2022) on April 25, 2024 at 20:07:33 PST:
In an October 2003 Popular Communications column, Steve Douglass used the name Blackstar for the so-called "Son of Darkstar" unmanned air vehicle reportedly used during the US invasion of Iraq, more than two years before the article about the non-existent Blackstar two-stage-to-orbit system was published in Aviation Week and Space Technology in March 2006. Given that the name Blackstar was used for a reputed black aerospace vehicle long before the Blackstar article in AW&ST was published, was William Scott unaware of the column by Steve Douglass published in October 2003 mentioning the name Blackstar when he wrote the article about the non-existent TSTO system which he named Blackstar? As Peter Merlin pointed out to me, Mike Dornheim, the senior West Coast editor of Aviation Week & Space Technology, saw to it that AW&ST should not have published the Blackstar article because it contained no concrete evidence that a TSTO system comprising an XB-70 like carrier aircraft and orbital reconnaissance spaceplane existed in the 1990s. In any case, the first mention of the name Blackstar in Douglass' article in the October 2003 issue of Popular Communications is another reason why Scott's claim in a March 2006 AW&ST article about a military TSTO system was sure to be dismissed as unsubstantiated and pure fantasy.
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