Slow Rocket from Woomera

Space is not normally an area I propose to cover, but this item in today's Age newspaper is worth a note.

At the height of the Cold War when paranoia about Russia's space program was ramping up, a 12-year-old Denis Cox fired off an "urgent" letter to "a top scientist" at the Woomera Rocket Range containing his designs for a world-beating rocket. Now, 52 years later, Cox will finally get a response.

A fellow space aficionado and blogger, Bob Meade, tracked him down after the letter was dredged up by the National Archives of Australia and published on its website as the "Find of the Month" in May.

The publicity caught the eye of David Kilmartin, editor of the Defence Science and Technology Organisation's Connections magazine. Kilmartin has helped arrange a ceremony in Melbourne next month at which Cox will be presented with a framed response from a scientist in the DSTO's hypersonics section.

If only I'd sent off my skool sketches, maybe I'd be getting a response in ~uh~ about twenty more years.

More interesting is the way the connections were made, through blog, newspaper and archive.

James