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Featured Links:

Baen Books -- Gray is their "Slushmaster" in charge of paper submissions

Orson Scott Card's The Ornery American, which has published four of Gray's essays

Jim Baen's Universe

Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show

Who is the "GrayMan"? Gray Rinehart is the author of one book, Quality Education, and many articles, essays and papers. Check out The Legend of Gray's "alter ego" to find out more about the original "GrayMan" of Pawleys Island, South Carolina.

Jumping Off Point for the Final Frontier

The Space Warfare Forum.

The GrayMan Forum, featuring the Space Warfare Forum, grew out of roundtable discussions Gray started with Mike Lutton back in 1996 or so. Gray and Mike invited fellow members of the 4th Space Operations Squadron to brown-bag lunches at which they discussed various military and political topics. In 1998, after Gray left for another assignment, they carried on conversations and debates by e-mail and slowly added people to the group. The e-mail discussions continued for several years, but the lengthy e-mails got unwieldy and Gray built the on-line forum and invited all comers.

The old e-mail based group discussed such issues as

- The idea of a Douhet or Mitchell of space may not be valid

- The first space war was not the Gulf War (as some have claimed), but was a "Cold War" that started with Sputnik in 1957
-- In the Gulf War, space was a support medium (as it is still today)
-- We don't call the Civil War the first air war, even though observation balloons were used
-- Then has the first space war ended?
-- But why ever fight a "hot" war or battle in (or from) space?

- Some questions
-- Who is the enemy? What threat does the enemy pose?
-- Is fighting in space inevitable?
-- Is the potential gain of fighting a space battle worth the expense? Would the victory be worth the expense? Or would losing be so catastrophic as to justify the cost of fighting?

and eventually produced an article, "Toward Space War," which was published in the Air Force Space Command professional journal, High Frontier.

In its first iteration, The Space Warfare Forum grew to over 100 members, but since most of them were busy with active duty responsibilities, it struggled to survive. A "spam" e-mail attack the summer Gray retired -- and which we didn't catch because our computer was packed for shipping -- soured a number of folks on the experience. In February 2008, however, we migrated to a new server and installed new software for the GrayMan Forum, which should make it more user-friendly and we hope will revive the venture.

Page last
updated on
November 1, 2008