Spillikin Aerospace is a nineteenth century aerospace company, founded in the United States, which originally began as an underground government funded project. The earliest evidence of the companies' existence dates back to the Taylor administration (1849-1850) where it is believed scientist and engineers were gathered to undertake a sort of Manhattan style project whose purpose was to prevent Qu
een Victorias' England from retaking their former colonies. The company is thought to have been founded sometime in 1870, but documentation is sketchy at best. Spunkmeyer, the fledgling company turned its' eye toward manned space flight. Spillikin at last rose to fame and notoriety on July 20 1876 as President Ulysses S. Grant became the first man to walk on the surface of the moon. Spillikin achievements include such modern wonders as the spring loaded single door airlock (the advantage of which is that it is quicker and easier to use, however injuries and explosive decompression have been known to occur) , and orbital maneuvering dynamite (sometimes known to damage the spacecraft, but the tradeoffs were deemed acceptable). The company is also responsible for the infrastructure of orbiting hay bails that we take for granted today. These are, as we all know, used as propellents for Spillikins' armada of horse and steam driven wooden mass drivers. A few published records of the companies' achievements exist to this day. An article on sci.astro (an internet USENET group, pre-web) appeared in July 1992 and detailed the unmanned test launch of what was called the “AC-X” (Alpha Clipper-ship). This was Spillikins' attempt to compete with McDonnell Douglas' DC-X (Delta Clipper). The vehicle consisted of a multi-staged cannon (several cannons placed within one another). There were unforeseen problems with this approach. When the vehicle was launched (or fired, as the case may be), a series of one thousand twenty four successively smaller cannon (yes, cannon is its' own plural) rained down over a five state range with disastrous results. Spillikin was barely able to put a cats-eye marble into orbit. (Yes, I posted details of the launch on sci-astro. Yes, I got what I deserved! “Chris, this is a serious news group. We'll have none of your Spillikin bullsh*t here”, or words to that effect.) Somewhere there exists a detailed drawing of a horse-drawn Spillikin massdriver created by a rather large Techtronix plotter. The HPGL code may still exist as well. This was done in 1989. The earliest evidence of the company on the web can be found here, with special thanks to the University of California Berkeley for letting me waste precious computing resources way back in 1994 as I learned how to put my nonsense on the web. As this is a very old site, Spillikin still has a fairly low google score. http://remarque.org/~nozefngr/spillikin/spillikin.html
I hosted Spillikin.com for a time and came up with a new logo and business cards back in 2003. But the first writings and artwork related to Spillikin date back to the mid to late 1970s. I came up with the idea and did all the artwork (I think), however the first Spillikin corporate logo came from David van Brink. My father was working for Rockwell at the time, on the shuttle. He provided me with an ample supply of blue Rockwell notebooks, the companies' white logo emblazoned on the spine. David saw this, turned the logo over in his head and imagined a flower. I sat and drew it, and there you have your “amish” aerospace company. Joseph P. Silva, Mike Louallier and others also had great creative input. The companies' motto, “Tomorrows' Technology with Yesterdays' Technique” was also Davids' idea. It would be a couple of decades before anyone would utter the phrase “steampunk”.
