Comments on: Sad Day

By: bungo

bungo — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 09:59:00 +0000

@cpwinter: There is now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Len_Cormier
Revise and extend as appropriate.

By: Lee

Lee — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:28:00 +0000

He was more than just a gifted and visionary engineer; Len was a paragon, a model in his personal behavior for all to emulate.

By: J05H

J05H — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:00:00 +0000

Len was one of the great thinkers and doers of the space movement. His concepts of ultra-light launchers were very interesting. He proposed “SpaceShipOne”-type designs (for orbit) before Scaled was even in the space game. His presence will be missed.

By: cpwinter

cpwinter — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 22:34:00 +0000

This is sad news indeed. Once, on Usenet, I expressed to him the hope that he would write some sort of memoir. I suppose he was too busy designing spacecraft. Now it falls to somebody else to write up his life.

Would you believe there’s no entry for him on Wikipedia? It’s time that was corrected.

By: Jon Goff

Jon Goff — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:38:00 +0000

Monte,
Yeah, I agree about him being one of the last people worth reading on usenet. These days if I even bother, I’ll just do a search for one of a few names, to see if they’ve said anything interesting. I think the list is down to three (Jorge F., you, and Derek L., with your name being the most common–Jorge talks about a lot of stuff I’m not as interested in, and Derek’s pure cynicism–you at least balance cynicism with constructive criticism). Which is a pity, because usenet was how I became involved in commercial space development, and where I learned a lot of my early lessons (only some of which have had to be unlearned).

But, it’s sad to see him go.

~Jon

By: Monte Davis

Monte Davis — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 09:22:00 +0000

I’ll miss him especially as one of the last worth listening to on the USENet space groups. We disagreed about how close the “knee” in CATS cost/performance might be, but always amicably and instructively.