Internet Scriptkiddies killed Encyclopedia Astronautica

[Urwumpe]

After persistent DOS attacks over the past days, Mark Wade decided to take http://www.astronautix.comoffline until he had found a better way to publish the information.

Well, what is left to be said there, some heroes really managed to prove how worthless they are. Really a great job. Killed the best free source of spaceflight historic information, likely just for fun. Well, what people call fun that have no life and whose girlfriends all have the surname "JPEG".

I thank Mark Wade for all the expensive hours of my life that I enjoyed spending on his homepage, and for the huge amount of data that was gathered there. Orbiter add-on making has become much harder now, that it is harder finding the technical data for old vehicles in one place.

I hope to see it online again soon, but the message sounds pretty frustrated and I can understand the need to think about a better solution.

Per aspera ad astra.

 

[Columbia42]

I really don't know what I'm going to do without Encyclopedia Astronautica. It has been an invaluable source of information of the years and I thank Mark Wade for all of his hard work on the site.

 

[n72.75]

I loved that website...

 

[orbekler]

Here an old cache of the site, noticed by a Forum Orbiter Italia member:

http://web.archive.org/web/20080831014123/http://astronautix.com/

Better than nothing.

 

[Scav]

"Script kiddie" is a derogatory term in my circle. Now we see yet another example why.

 

[garyw]

Not much of what I can say that hasn't already been said by you guys. Many of my rocket based searches on google led to astronauntix.

A friend of mine once said 'The internet is 99% rubbish and 1% per gold' with the loss of astronauntix there is now one less 'pure gold' website.

 

[Scruce]

Killed the best free source of spaceflight historic information, likely just for fun.

Not killed, Murdered.

 

[Zatnikitelman]

I loved that website. It had information on launchers you just can't find without either calculating it yourself, or digging through huge multi-hundred-Megabyte PDF files.
R.I.P. Astronautix

 

[N_Molson]

A very bad blow for add-ons developpement...

Wikipedia data is often random and must be double-checked...

 

[Turbinator]

This perfectly demonstrates the dangers of sharing human knowledge in the digital age. You have access to vast amounts of detailed and specific data on a was range of subject matter, and the next moment you find yourself with nothing. Information stores have to be disseminated and multiplied, it is the only way they are ever going to stand the test of time. Digital data is far more fragile then physical copies, a website can be taken offline and never be seen again, it's digital backup storage medium becomes fragmented and obsolete over time. And unless someone specifically knows of the backup, and it's contents, it is forgotten rather easily. On the other hand, physical hard-copy of knowledge is forever. If someone writes and prints an encyclopaedia on human spaceflight with all the technical data, even long after the library that contained that book closes, it is still every bit readable and accessible, unless we all forget how to read, then spaceflight technical data will be the least of our concerns. That physical book is going to stand the test of time far better than any on-line website.

 

[4throck]

Sad news indeed. I too consulted the site a lot regarding old spacecraft and projects.
Most of the research was unique.

If I may dream a little, Astronautix would return someday with an "export to Orbiter" feature, that automatically created an add-on from all of the data avaliable.
Realistically speaking, all it lacked were the 3D meshes, because all dates, descriptions and figures were there....

 

[Izack]

This perfectly demonstrates the dangers of sharing human knowledge in the digital age. You have access to vast amounts of detailed and specific data on a was range of subject matter, and the next moment you find yourself with nothing. Information stores have to be disseminated and multiplied, it is the only way they are ever going to stand the test of time. Digital data is far more fragile then physical copies, a website can be taken offline and never be seen again, it's digital backup storage medium becomes fragmented and obsolete over time. And unless someone specifically knows of the backup, and it's contents, it is forgotten rather easily. On the other hand, physical hard-copy of knowledge is forever. If someone writes and prints an encyclopaedia on human spaceflight with all the technical data, even long after the library that contained that book closes, it is still every bit readable and accessible, unless we all forget how to read, then spaceflight technical data will be the least of our concerns. That physical book is going to stand the test of time far better than any on-line website.

Unless an arson burns the library to the ground. Same net effect. :dry:

 

[FADEC]

I didn't use Astronatuix very often, but this news is a real shock.

We are entering an age in which digital crime should be charged like real crime IMHO. I call for 5-10 years of prison sentence (and no penalty charge) for persons who paticipate in DDoS attacks or similar digital crime participation. And I am serious. Because it is a prestage of terrorism and not just a peccadillo. I know that it won't be prevented by such a prison sentence but those people have to laid up and get a lot of time to think about their dangerous anti-social attitude. I'm also against wiki leaks and others leaks. Those kind of things are no advantage, they are a threat. It's not compatible with democracy but with anarchy. I'm going to become sick of it.

 

[T.Neo]

Ok, this is seriously, seriously annoying. I don't know who these people are, or why they did this, but I hate them. I can't understand it. Who wants to do something just to be destructive? Why? It is just stupidity, utter stupidity.

I really appreciate(d) astronautix. It was such an expansive and in-depth source of information, that I never actually managed to read much of it... but I am grateful for the information that I did glean off of it.

I think Astronautix is well described by the quote on the home page:

"...the NASA history office directed us to your web site.."

The fact that one person would invest so much time and effort to create such a high-quality repository of information, is really impressive. Which makes it all the worse the fact that some genius(es) (in the very, very sarcastic sense of the word) try to cause trouble with it.

I have read people accusing moon landing denialists of this attack, and if that is true, it would be truely, truely pathetic, that a moon hoaxer is so insecure about their own nonsense that they have to attack other people's hard work because of it.

I really hope Mr. Wade can put this information back up somewhere, somehow, some time in the future. Hopefully without having problems with oh-so-intelligent attackers.

 

[PeriapsisPrograde]

Please excuse my noobiness, but what exactly is a DOS error?

 

[Moach]

Denial-Of-Service

it's the most basic, petty form of hacker attack... it's basically, one runs a script designed to flood a target server with an unrelenting torrent of inane requests - with the sole purpose of rendering it unusable for everyone else....

 

[boogabooga]

Ok, this is seriously, seriously annoying. I don't know who these people are, or why they did this, but I hate them. I can't understand it. Who wants to do something just to be destructive? Why? It is just stupidity, utter stupidity.

No, it's actually quite simple. In a few days, he'll get an e-mail offering to end the attacks for $500 or something. I've seen this before.

Think "pirate," not "kiddie."

 

[Izack]

Please excuse my noobiness, but what exactly is a DOS error?

Attack, not error. It is a (Distributed) Denial-of-Service attack. Fun stuff:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack
Edit: :ninja:

 

[RangerPL]

Anonymous and all the other script kiddie groups are just full of 12 year old social rejects who are teased at school and think that their online activities make them "cool".

 

[Ark]

I didn't use Astronatuix very often, but this news is a real shock.

We are entering an age in which digital crime should be charged like real crime IMHO. I call for 5-10 years of prison sentence (and no penalty charge) for persons who paticipate in DDoS attacks or similar digital crime participation. And I am serious. Because it is a prestage of terrorism and not just a peccadillo. I know that it won't be prevented by such a prison sentence but those people have to laid up and get a lot of time to think about their dangerous anti-social attitude. I'm also against wiki leaks and others leaks. Those kind of things are no advantage, they are a threat. It's not compatible with democracy but with anarchy. I'm going to become sick of it.

5-10 years for being one of dozens, hundreds, or thousands of computers spewing traffic at a server and, gasp, taking it down for a few hours?

Are you completely and totally insane?