From wired news,

Freelance spacewriter Philip Chein has been fabricating his sources and he has also been given his book great reviews using sock puppets

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It's too bad because I thought his book on Columbia was pretty good, but now I wonder what he might have made up.

Philip Chien

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Thanks for the correction.

Funny that Chien is french for dog.

What's funny it that the so-called "Tribal Curse" on SLC-6 was broken in 1999 by the successful launch of an Athena-2 booster carrying the Ikonos imaging satellite. I remember reading an article or two about the "curse" before that launch, but to publish it again almost 7 years later seems like rehashed sloppy journalism to me. Admittedly, it seems more like the "curse" would get your program cancelled (MOL, Vandenberg Shuttle missions) than to cause your booster to fail.