"I met a Scotsman named Duncan Lunan at a the International Space Development Conference in Washington, DC."
That name sounds familiar!
Back at the dawn of time, there was a Scot who had become interested in the radio echoes that plagued early experimenters. He wondered if those "echoes" might actually be deliberate re-broadcasts of terrestrial radio signals by an alien satellite as a means of communicating. After all, we would be listening on the frequencies that we use, and by re-broadcasting signals with variable time delay, the alien satellite could transmit information which any intellig entperson could understand.
Except that early experimenters dismissed those radio echoes as noise from atmospheric reflections, and did not look for the information therein.
Our doughty Scot did look for the information. He found a star map with a star missing (Epsilon Bootes?) -- a reasonable way of telling intelligent life on Earth where the alien satellite had come from.
He wrote a book about it. Wonder if it is the same guy?
No idea. If it was him he'd have been in his twenties when he wrote it. I did not meet him until the mid-eighties.
Definitely an interesting character though.
Amazon has a listing for "Interstellar Contact", by one Duncan Lunan, published by Regnery in 1974 -- which is indeed fairly close to the beginning of time as reckoned in these parts. It is a sufficiently uncommon name to suggest that your Duncan Lunan may be one & the same with the author.
If you ever run into him again, Dale, please ask about it. People who heard him talk about the subject back in the day were apparently fairly impressed.
For those who do not know of the Waverider idea, it is a technique for 'surfing' on the re-entry plasma.
That may be, but that doesn't apply to the x-51.
The X-51 is one of a few hypersonic concepts that the US Mil has been working on for quite some time. The purpose of the x-51 is to create an identifiably NOT ballistic missile that can be used to replace a fobs kinnetic bombardment that goes well back to the 80's.
I think the "waves" that are being ridden are manufactured booms from hypersonic flight. I think they used to call the basic method of propulsion a "SCRAM jet" design.
Other than some of the other x-kinetics I saw them talking about developing, in the navy times about 12 years ago, is that they replaced a wicking system for fuel injection with an active fuel pump.
Unless you are talking about another form of wave rider, one that is not the x-51, then applications are different.
Maybe you are thinking about the poseidon based precursor kinetic, which is in essense a ballistic missile with addition acceleration properties in decent.
I think that's how it worked.
Nope. It's a shockwave rider. I found a link to the ASTRA work history written by Duncan Lunan and have placed it on the front page. Check it out.
Right, that's What I knew about the x-51, of course I had to read up on it, cuz I wasn't sure if I was remembering the same system.
Maybe, I was just kept going back to the "'surfing' on the re-entra plasma," thing that was throwing me off.
It kept registering with me, that it looked like you were talking about two different but related systems.
It seems obvious you know more about this than I do. I just remember articles and stuff.
Since I have never been raised to Pope, I need folks such as yourself to question what I say so that I can either defend it or say 'oops'.
Dale, Robert Anton Wilson says that every person on Earth is a Pope (which he defines as "someone who is not under the authority of the authorities"). So on that basis I hereby declare you "Pope". (Me, too.) Feel better now?
But does that infallibility thing come along with your title? ;-)
Alice:
It' the same guy.
The book is called Man and the Stars, I think.