SATAN pre print - not for quotation, circulation or reproduction

[Andrew Lockley]

Hi,

I don't usually offer preprints of my papers - but then my work is not usually leaked to the media. After consultation, I've therefore decided to offer the attached, to hopefully calm and inform discussion of the matter. Not everybody will agree with my views and actions, but I hope that we can discuss this in a respectful fashion. Its saddening when former co-authors denounce my contribution to the field, for a claimed lack of seriousness. Of course, I've always tried to bring a bit of humour to my work - as Reviewer 2 listeners will be aware. However, the ability to enjoy a joke does not imply a lack of diligence or commitment (I admit to having more of the latter than the former).

Some relevant matters are worth pointing out, from the discussions and events of the last few days:

Zerothly (!), this news was leaked. I've tried to present the work properly, through conference appearance and peer review - but have been forced into early release. 

Firstly, my association with UCL lapsed on 28th February; this fact is entirely administrative and is not related to the work in any way. 

Secondly, my relationship with the university did not require me to formally pre-register any academic work, although this matter was declared informally.

Third, I'm aware of no licencing authority that I should have applied to - other than the requisite flight NOTAM, which was issued. 

Fourth, the initial flight test (with no bulk SO2 payload, and having various non-geoengineering uses) was described in a previous draft paper. This was desked by multiple journals, so there was no deliberate attempt to keep the matter secret, before launching with bulk SO2. 

Finally, the religiously-themed quotes included in the article were clearly marked as draft and were NOT approved for publication. I think this was just a slip by JT, but nevertheless this provides context to my comments. The approved comments used were in a drier and more conventional style. 

A few concerns have been raised, specifically applicable to the manuscript. I address these below, and have also started to incorporate them (where possible) in manuscript edits. 

* Jessie's work discusses balloons, as opposed to proposing them.

* I've been privately advised by a respected friend in the community that whilst Satan is seen as a comic or mythic figure in the UK, is taken much more seriously in some of the USA's religious communities. Almost all of the strong criticism received for the name was from US commentators. I can't change the flight records, but I can consider these cultural issues in other ways. 

*Various people have argued that this test doesn't provide a path to scale deployment, or that it isn't an environmental science experiment, and therefore it isn't useful. It was none of those things - it's a flight test of an aircraft for conducting and potentially monitoring small scale tests of geoengineering and other perturbative releases. Issues with He availability or H2 environmental impact, plus the trash rain / flight tracking issues that this experiment identified, mean that major obstacles to scale deployment remain. Furthermore, the usefulness of the controllable design proposed is limited in controlled airspace, as the ascent rate is too fast for the buoyancy control system described to overcome. This means that monitoring use cases require a sacrificial positioning balloon, for use in controlled airspace. This limits either their sustainability or area of application. 

I welcome further constructive comments.

Andrew Lockley