The Thing From Our World
When there’s something strange in the neighborhood.
One might think that the UFO the amateur astronomer saw was a high altitude surveillance aerostat. But the funding for that sort of thing has been declining of late. Aviation Week wrote about the downturn in funding for aerostats and other persistent surveillance platforms just this week. “(Bad) timing is everything in aerospace. At the height of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, airships looked to be the answer to demands for persistent, “staring-eye” surveillance. But problems developing the systems – including, surprisingly, the decades-old technology of building a lighter-than-air vehicle – means they are coming along just as the window of opportunity is closing.”
But what is burgeoning under the Obama administration is funding for Green Energy. One of its technologies are high-altitude wind generators, meant to capture “the power of winds high in the sky by use of tether and cable technology”. Some of the proposed generators are untethered.
Wind towers or tethered floating devices are not the only way to harvest energy from the atmosphere as un-tethered flying units are also capable of harvesting wind energy. In order to do away with tethering, the device would need to use the updrafts and ‘dynamic soaring’ using the energy in wind gradients commonly used by soaring birds.
The storage of energy would need to be considered and according to one of the possibilities an air liquefaction machine is set in motion letting the produced liquid air be the energy storing medium. There is no need to forward the liquid air to the ground continuously, e.g. by means of a pipeline. It can be done in distinct doses, in so called „quanta”, by means of GPS-guided parafoils. Another way is applying molten salt energy storage systems, utilizing heat of fusion. Research is going on all over the world to find even larger heat effects for energy storing, e.g. heat of formation of chemical substances instead of heat of fusion.
Whatever the unidentified flying object might be it was probably designed on earth. Despite the most efforts to find extraterrestrial life all the artifacts that have been discovered so far were made by the human race. Though it seems unlikely it is just possible that the human race is all there is.
In 1950, while working at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Fermi had a casual conversation while walking to lunch with colleagues Emil Konopinski, Edward Teller and Herbert York. The men discussed a recent spate of UFO reports and an Alan Dunn cartoon facetiously blaming the disappearance of municipal trashcans on marauding aliens. They then had a more serious discussion regarding the chances of humans observing faster-than-light travel by some material object within the next ten years, which Teller put at one in a million, but Fermi put closer to one in ten. The conversation shifted to other subjects, until during lunch Fermi suddenly exclaimed, “Where are they?” (alternatively, “Where is everybody?”). One participant recollects that Fermi then made a series of rapid calculations using estimated figures. (Fermi was known for his ability to make good estimates from first principles and minimal data, see Fermi problem.) According to this account, he then concluded that Earth should have been visited long ago and many times over.
“Where are they?” But then you never know. All that needs to happen is to come into contact one alien artifact, one alien race to answer Fermi’s question. Naseem Taleb argues that we are conditioned by past evidence to assuming something is universally true when it only means that we have not yet encountered the falsifying fact. Our beliefs may be skewed by the incompleteness of our dataset. For centuries it was believed that swans were white.
The phrase “black swan” derives from a Latin expression; its oldest known occurrence is the poet Juvenal’s characterization of something being “rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno” (“a rare bird in the lands, very much like a black swan”) …
Juvenal’s phrase was a common expression in 16th century London as a statement of impossibility. The London expression derives from the Old World presumption that all swans must be white because all historical records of swans reported that they had white feathers. In that context, a black swan was impossible or at least nonexistent. After Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh discovered black swans in Western Australia in 1697, the term metamorphosed to connote that a perceived impossibility might later be disproven.
The significant thing to remember is that alien life is not forbidden in principle. It could happen, and therefore it might have. But then quantum immortality is also possible according to some theorists, “if the many-worlds interpretation is true, a superposition of the live experimenter necessarily exists, regardless of how many iterations or how improbable the outcome. Barring life after death, it is not possible for the experimenter to experience having been killed, thus the only possible experience is one of having survived every iteration.”
Mark Adler of NASA speculated that the origins of life were somehow bounced around the solar system during an earlier phase of its formation. In that case “life” is already in the universe and to rediscover it in another form will be like finding cousins.
“Earth and Mars exchanged material in the early days when life was forming on Earth,” says the deputy mission manager for the Mars Exploration rovers.
“Was Mars part of our past? Maybe we are the Martians.”
Well if the high altitude structures are the work of environmentalists then they would appropriately be from Little Green Men. That may be more romantic than finding the things were launched by Janet Napolitano.
Keep watching the skies.
How to Publish on Amazon’s Kindle for $2.99
The Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $8.95, print $9.99
The best sermon in American literature is in ‘Moby Dick’. In it the preacher takes his text from the book of Jonah;
“Jonah is sneeking around the ships at Joppa, he’s running from God because he has found the thing God wants him to do to be hard, as all things God would have us do are hard. Jonah believes that there is a ship built by man that will take him to some place where God does not reign.”
I have come to believe that so much of what occupies our time and our minds; UFOs, missing links, ancient astronauts, parallel universes; are desperate attempts by man to find some way to escape the awful fact that there is a supreme being that can call king or peasant to answer for what we do or don’t do. Some thought or realm or narrative where God does not reign.
The idea of relying on windmills in space sounds like Solyndra on steroids. The dingus may be untethered but the supporters are unhinged.
The image of frozen air packets being vectored to Earth sounds like the plot of a bad spy novel. The terrorists have intercepted a giant gasbag and are going to crash it into Squarseville USA! Oh my God it’s Al Gore!
The top video is obviously a dirigible. There is a similar dirigible that flies around the San Francisco Bay Area. It’s cool when the dirigible flies directly overhead at low altitude (a bit like the opening scene in the original “Star Wars”). The bottom video is a high altitude balloon.
I’ll be more interested when I see a UFO that looks like this:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FMN6g9ai6pc/T_EAOi3q4CI/AAAAAAAABqc/cV4kO1Wgi3U/s1600/juggernaunt.jpg
or this:
http://www.gizmag.com/htv-2-splash-down-confirmed/19606/picture/140551/
Here’s a picture of an Identified Flying Object that is actually a spacecraft (currently on Mars):
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA14834.jpg
Maybe the guy in the second video’s telescope was out of collimation. In the first video it sure looked like a blimp or dirigible to me.
John 3
New International Version (NIV)
Jesus Teaches Nicodemus
3 Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2 He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.[a]”
4 “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!”
5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit[b] gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You[c] must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”[d]
9 “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked.
10 “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? 11 Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. 12 I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? 13 No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man.[e] 14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up,[f] 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”[g]
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+3&version=NIV
NO BEMS ALLOWED
Way back in 1957 a science fiction magazine called Fantastic Universe published my short story No Bems Allowed, for which I received the munificent sum of a penny a word. A BEM, incidentally, is a Bug Eyed Monster, and the premise of the story, as I recall, was that no alien invasion of Earth could be successful because we had been conditioned by science fiction stories to expect a hero to emerge and save us all. I think this is still true. So long as there are white horses and shining armor there will always be heroes.
The silver ships came drifting down
As silent as the clouds
And landed softly in the fields
Surrounded by the crowds
Of curious who came to see
What it was all about
When suddenly the doors flung wide
Erasing any doubt
That here were monsters in the flesh
Antennaed and bug eyed
Who calmed the crowd with noxious gas
Except for those who tried
To rush the ships and save the world
Defiant unto death
While in the crowd one steel eyed man
Remarked under his breath
That –well you know just how it ends
The hero finds a way
To jam the Bems’ antennae that
Left them with naught to say
And after that he – well you know
With germs or something worse
He left the Bems a rotting heap
Their ships a waiting hearse
Their hyper drive he figured out
And sent the ships back home
A message in their language told
Them never more to roam
This part of Galaxy six eight
Four twenty two N A
For if they did he’d see to it
They’d not live out the day
Your heroes come when they are called
One knows not who they are
Until the day the monsters come
Then Katy bar the door
rickl…
The reflectance is so strong that the optics are jammed/ we squint.
But…
It’s another DHS blimp. Same design as video number one.
NASA wants us to ignore what all ancient texts say of earth’s history, and instead marvel at this guy’s mohawk.
It was metal and survived deep space, meaning heaven. Heaven is space. Angels are aliens. They aren’t just analogous, they are synonyms.
The reference to the snake in the wilderness in the end of passage is a reference to Numbers 21:4-9
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers+21%3A4-9&version=NIV
New International Version (NIV)
The Bronze Snake
4 They traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea,[a] to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way; 5 they spoke against God and against Moses, and said, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread! There is no water! And we detest this miserable food!”
6 Then the Lord sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died. 7 The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you. Pray that the Lord will take the snakes away from us.” So Moses prayed for the people.
8 The Lord said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.” 9 So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.
Walt 6 -
http://openlibrary.org/works/OL6699714W/Fantastic_Universe_May_1957
impeach obama/10
WOW! Thanks! My only copy got lost somewhere over the years, and thanks to you I find the ancient mag is available on Amazon. Is this a great country? Is this a great site? My heartfelt thanks again.
Walt
Walt – 11
You are indeed welcome, glad to help out.
O/T
Petraeus Throws Obama Under the Bus
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/petraeus-throws-obama-under-bus_657896.html
With all that is happening right now in our world, Wretchard’s post looks something like a screen door on a submarine. Is there a message behind the message? Something like:
http://www.mysterypile.com/ufo.php
8. Baobo
Heaven is space. Angels are aliens. They aren’t just analogous, they are synonyms.
…….
Actually the Judea/Christian tradition locates God and even his created world –heaven — outside of nature. That means that God and heaven are not somewhere above the clouds or somewhere out in space or even analogous to space.
Rather God and heaven are outside of the known universe; Beforethe Big bang.
According to communist tradition the natural scientists and religion teaching have always been separate. Not so. They only separated a couple hundred years ago.
A huge seismic event–a paradigm shift for the ages– happened about 30 years ago when the natural scientists concluded that the universe began with the big bang. That is, the vast immensity of stars and galaxies began some 14 billion years ago as a tiny speck of nothing.
Somehow something came from nothing.
What stunned everyone about this conclusion is that that just pretty much restates Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
(It is a curiosity that big changes in the natural scientists view of the universe typically coincide with with big changes in the religious world. For example, the change from a geocentric world view–that is that the sun revolves around the earth– to a heliocentric view of the universe–that is, that the earth revolves around the sun… only began in the 1500′s with some of the work by Tycho Brahe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho_Brahe Johannes Kepler http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler
This coincided with the protestant reformation–which represented a paradigm shift in religious world views in the West.
Both Christianity and geocentric world view date back to the 1st and 2nd centuries AD with the birth of Jesus and the writings of Ptolemy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy )
OT: from Ace’s place.
>>Rush has an interview with a Special Operations planner [a Lieutenant Colonel who called in to the show this afternoon] who says that in an in extremis situation, as the attack on Libya was, the good guys would not have needed an explicit order to protect US personnel. Their standing general orders to protect US citizens and personnel would have already enabled them to act, absent a contrary order.
Only a negative order* would have stopped them.
The Rush interview is well worth listening to. The guy calling in is obviously what he claims to be (unless he’s some kind of virtuouso faker who can fluently explain details of Special Operations planning and protocols).<<
Click the link and scroll down to where you see Rush Limbaugh in his office to play the interview (I can't give you a more direct link, as I'm not a member of the Dittohead Nation! but I did hear this guy live this afternoon, and my hair was standing on end). Listen to the whole thing:
http://minx.cc/?post=334282
*Which would have to come from SecDef, SecState, or POTUS, no lower rank. Ambassador = Four-Star Equivalent Asset. Attack on any ambassador goes via Flash Traffic Message system, straight to the Officer of the Watch in the White House Situation Room.
Also, planes are always kept "strip-ready" and can be airborne in 5 minutes in an emergency. And there's more. . . .
I am generally familiar with the principles of aircraft construction and operations; that is, I know what an aircraft looks like and acts like. So when I see things whizzing through the air at high speeds making turns that would mash a pilot to pulp I know that I am seeing something that exceeds known design parameters. I know that when the bridge crew of a destroyer at sea far from land is silently buzzed by something that pops out of nowhere and after a few minutes accelerates from pacing us at 15 knots to out of sight over the horizon in under 5 seconds, and nobody among those two dozen trained officers and men know what the hell it could be (and it came back the next night too), I have the sneaking suspicion it is nowhere marked “Made on Terra.” I know that when I see a glowing green globe large enough to show a visible disk pop over the horizon at 0230, hover, shoot to higher altitude, hover, pop down to where only half is showing over the horizon, and is then joined by a second similarly bouncing up and down, all of which is also seen by the bridge watch and the lookouts while cruising the South China Sea, I am fairly certain that I am not witnessing drunken Irish weather balloons gone astray.
Just because we haven’t been formally introduced, though we’ve taken notice of each other, does not mean that there is no one there.
6. Walt
Being one of ‘the ancient ones’, maybe you can help me find the source of a bit of doggeral thats been stuck in my head since the early sixties; its from a paperback collection of sci-fi whose author I can’t recall and the book has long since turned to powder; this is all I recall;
“What’cha gonna do when the rockets come
And the whole town blows up baby?
What’cha gonna do when the rockets come
And there ain’t no town no more?”
Ring a bell anyone?
I consider the “study” of UFOs to be a hopelessly unproductive exercise. The “field” has been subject to so much misinformation, hoaxes, nutjobs, and ridiculous interpretations of data as to render it impossible to analyze. It’s fun to read a little bit, but only in the same way that Science Fiction is.
Having said that – I have spoken to three different USAF officers who flew formation with “something” – things that were explicable only as intelligently controlled machines with characteristics unlike any of any known aircraft.
In one case, in the mid-50′s, the vehicle was not performing in any extraordinary manner, well within the capabilities of many other aircraft of the day – but was a 4 ft dia 2 ft thick shiny disk with no visible propulsion system flying at about 300 mph, a speed just a bit too fast for the B-25 that was trying to fly formation with it. It was seen at quite close range, no more than 50 ft or so, and everyone aboard the B-25 agreed with what they saw – they were all told to sit down and separately write down a description of their experience as soon as they landed.
In the two other cases the vehicle exhibited truly extraordinary performance characteristics.
In the case of the B-25 incident, the formal report was removed from official Air Force records by persons unknown. In one of the other formation flying cases the USAF flight crew was told in no uncertain terms to not disuss what they saw with anyone.
I have also talked to four other very reliable people who saw things from the ground that appeared to be an unknown craft.
So, I donno…
16. Tamquam
There was a report a few years back by a British airline crew of a ufo that approached headon at supersonic speed, then zipped past under their wing.
Both pilot and co-pilot were RAF fighter jocks with over ten thousand hours between them and they made some very interesting observations;
1.Having experienced supersonic flybys in the RAF they were pretty good at estimaing closing speeds, they both were struck by the absense of a sonic boom
2. The UFO coming head-on then diving under their wing put them immediately in the wake of the UFO; they reported absolutely no turbulence at all.
It is not possible to move a solid object, from a bullet to an airliner, through the atmosphere at high speed and not create a sonic boom or turbulence of some kind; it isn’t possible for a solid object to perform the manuevers, at speed , that these things have been reported, by competent observers, to perform.
The only explanation that rhymes with the observable data is that they have no mass, like a projected image.
That is my considered opinion as an expert carpenter and one time helicopter crew chief. [ we didn't fly that fast ]
I have been fascinated by UFOs since I was eight…am now sixty-four. Have read all the major books and listened to or read most of the evidence both ways. Have become convinced there is something here. Jacques Vallee thinks its some shadow aspect of ourselves…Jungian, I think. Others say they are little people from space. Some think they are a Biblical visitation.
Could not tell you…but I swear…there’s just too much eyewitness testimony for it to be imagination/fraud. Lots of it is…of course…fraud, I mean. But only one sighting has to be true.
Was rather stunned when Edgar Mitchell, the astronaut who spent over 7 hours walking the moon came out a couple of years ago and said…”yes” Roswell happened. He grew up there…and after the moon “old-timers” who were around in 1947 and had first hand knowledge went to him and told him their “truth”.
Mitchell also says he had the “honor” of being briefed on the top secret knowledge that the US and other countries have been in contact with at least one alien race.
This guy holds a real Ph.d. from MIT. Just sayin’.
I think there is something here.
The first video certainly appeared to be some kind of lighter-than-air vehicle. The second video did not show the object, as nearly as I could tell, but was instead an after-the-fact interview with the “amateur astronomer” who had observed something and photographed it.
Without commenting on the possibility that extraterrestrial flying vehicles exist, it is certainly true that lots of reported sightings can be explained by natural phenomena. As a sailplane pilot who uses standing wave (or “mountain wave”) for long distance flight, I know that lenticular clouds (altocumulus standing lenticularis) can sometimes look very much like the typical “flying saucer”. A number of western states, including northern NV where I live and Utah, have mountain ranges that trigger these mountain waves given the appropriate conditions. I also know that last week was a particularly active wave time — our first for this season (mountain wave is typically a stable air phenomenon and cold air is generally more stable). Several soaring flights of 300-500 km were flown out of Minden, and a pilot who launched out of Mojave and used the wave generated by the Sierra range flew his sailplane 1360 kms. in the wave last week.
Finally, I was a passenger in an American Airlines flight traveling from Chicago to Reno at 36,000′ last week and observed numerous ACSL and SCSL clouds as we crossed mountainous terrain along our route of travel.
All of which is not to say there was no man-made or extraterrestrial object in the skies above Utah, just that the location and atmospheric conditions could well explain some or all of the sightings in perfectly natural ways.
15. beverly
That call was a setup.
http://www.dinocrat.com/archives/2012/10/26/who-made-the-benghazi-decision/#comment-511567
Rush knew the script in advance.
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/10/26/are_some_in_the_chain_of_command_still_haunted_by_carter_s_failed_rescue_in_1979
Check out paragraph 4 below the picture. Rush says:
“Look, I believe you. You’re talking about watch desks. That tells me you know what you’re talking about.”.
The caller had not mentioned watch desks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler
Kepler lived in an era when there was no clear distinction between astronomy and astrology, but there was a strong division between astronomy (a branch of mathematics within the liberal arts) and physics (a branch of natural philosophy). Kepler also incorporated religious arguments and reasoning into his work, motivated by the religious conviction and belief that God had created the world according to an intelligible plan that is accessible through the natural light of reason.[1] Kepler described his new astronomy as “celestial physics”,[2] as “an excursion into Aristotle’s Metaphysics”,[3] and as “a supplement to Aristotle’s On the Heavens”,[4] transforming the ancient tradition of physical cosmology by treating astronomy as part of a universal mathematical physics.[5]
I take it back- they are totally different concepts, and don’t associate me with anyone here.
Walter Adams @ 19: “The only explanation that rhymes with the observable data is that they have no mass, like a projected image.”
Interesting idea. And if UFOs are really projected images of some kind, then maybe they have no way to communicate with the denizens of the planet. Simply collect data and transmit it back home — even at the speed of light, that means years or decades.
This put me in mind of Stanislaw Lem’s novel ‘Solaris’ (which became a rather different Russian movie and then a dreadful Hollywood one). After searching the galaxy, mankind finally finds another life form — an ocean which occupies a planet. But the ocean has no interest in communicating with human beings. Come to think of it, I went on a date like that once, long ago. Maybe the extra-terrestrials are here already!
So it’s a big long zeppelin (rigid frame) as a test floating over the Rockies as a surrogate for the Hindu-Kush and either it was taking off or landing, or got blown down low, or someone wanted to see how low it could go before being spotted.
Sometimes a zeppelin is just a zeppelin.
A wind-farm-in-the-sky is a flight of fantastical imagination. As for it being a potential new energy horizon or an effective surveillance platform, it fails in comparison to other readily available options. Could it be an alien close encounter or yet another government boondoogle?
Where is Occam’s Razor when you need it.
Gents:
First one does appear to be a blimp or zeppelin. Probably a zeppelin, based on the diameter to length ratio. Looks like this from the Southwest Research Institute. I did not know that they had got the funding to build it, but I know they have been working on this sort of thing for some time.
http://www.swri.org/3pubs/ttoday/Fall10/PDFs/Sentinel-in-the-Sky.pdf
Second one looked to be highly reflective, which would probably indicate a silvered mylar skin. That would not be compatible with the Sounder vehicle which was supposed to be solar powered or to receive beamed power from the ground. Why a silvered skin? How would this look when it was not on line with the observer and the Sun?
Put me down as agnostic on alien UFO’s. Not likely, based on our present understanding of the universe, but lots of anecdotal evidence form credible sources that SOMETHING FUNNY happens now and then.
Maybe from the dimension next door, where the Sasquatches live or the future, from which they can visit us but not touch anything, which also seem unlikely, but, as Mr. Holmes said: “When you eliminate the impossible, the Truth is whatever remains, however unlikely”.
So, how then do we tell what is impossible and start the process of elimination?
Walter Adams/17
Sorry, doesn’t ring any bells. Can’t even think of an sf writer of that period who would have written a song lyric in a story. Theodore Sturgeon maybe, but can’t think of anyone else.
Funny thing about UFOs is when they have lights for flying at night… somehow they mastered interstellar travel but not night vision goggles
er @ 28: Second one looked to be highly reflective, which would probably indicate a silvered mylar skin.
Looks to me like could be the same one, different appearances being just clear sky versus icy clouds, viewing angle, sun angle, etc. Silver skin could indicate heat as part of the lift system. This is much longer in proportion than the one in your link, 3x or more, size being an element of stability as well as payload, hard to judge absolute size but I think it would not at all fit in that stadium.
We’ve got several blimps and zeppelins cruising around Los Angeles, have for years, but nothing this size.
I don’t know, but what or whoever they are, I hope they get here soon.
22. Roy Lofquist
There looks to be more to the story that will come out.
In this piece Navy replaces admiral leading Mideast strike group
http://centurylink.net/news/read.php?rip_id=%3CDA25UFI00%40news.ap.org%3E&ps=1011
In this piece
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will nominate Army Gen. David Rodriguez to succeed Gen. Carter Ham as commander of U.S. Africa Command and Marine Lt. Gen. John Paxton to succeed Gen. Joseph Dunford as assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced Thursday.
http://www.stripes.com/news/obama-to-nominate-army-gen-rodriguez-to-lead-africom-1.193564
Now remember Leon Panetta mentioned that Ham was in the decision chain that decided not to help the men in Benghazi despite evidence that they did have real time information. http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/102612-631040-panetta-claims-real-time-benghazi-intelligence-lack.htm
“(The) basic principle is that you don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on; without having some real-time information about what’s taking place,” Panetta told Pentagon reporters. “And as a result of not having that kind of information, the commander who was on the ground in that area, Gen. Ham, Gen. Dempsey and I felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation.”
So this story has more legs.
For possible directions for this story to go see.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2951099/posts
I don’t think the two videos are of the same critter.
I also don’t think that the aircraft in the previous link is their current generation.
The aircraft in the first video probably has a series of spherical gas bags, which determines the diameter and they are in parallel along the horizontal axis which determines the length. Shrink wrap a skin over a cylindrical framework, mixture of carbon fiber compression struts and tension cables and you would have something like what the video shows.
Second video: One reason to have a reflective skin is that it may be photovoltaic cells. Earlier SWRI projects put the PV cells inside a clear bag, but NASA had two programs for “atmospheric satellites” that had PV cells on bot top and bottom of the wings. The Earth’s albedo is high enough to make the bottom cells worthwhile, particularly over water.
Here’s a link to the Pathfinder, showing the reflective surfaces.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Pathfinder
It set the altitude record for powered (non-rocket) flight, before crashing off Hawaii. Ya could look it up …
VoteOutIncumbents @ 20,
Like Buzz Aldrin, Edgar Mitchell holds a doctor’s degree from MIT. Also, like Buzz Aldrin, Edgar Mitchell is a courageous astronaut, hero, patriot and holder of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Some people claim that Buzz Aldrin lost his marbles after he became an alcoholic but I strongly disagree. Unfortunately, I’m not so sure about Edgar Mitchell. The entertainment media tried to claim that Buzz Aldrin saw a UFO but Aldrin denied it and says the media took some remarks he made out of context about seeing some space debris from the Saturn V.
I have never seen any credible evidence that UFOs are extraterrestrial technology. The best UFO pictures have always proven to be forgeries.
Eggplant #35:
I saw an interview with Gordo Cooper in which he described a disk shaped craft landing at Edwards AFB while they were running some flight tests back in the early 1950′s. I think they even got photos of it, which were confiscated.
Most UFO pictures are so blurry they could be anything, or don’t look like anything or are faked. But there were some shots taken in McMinnville, Oregon, I think it was, around 1950 or so that seem to have passed the analysis of experts.
The best UFO book I have ever read is a fairly recent one, UfOs by Leslie Kean. She mianly simply interviewed some people who saw things. Thus the book is only about 50% crap rather than the 95% crap of a typical UFO book.
“I have never seen any credible evidence that UFOs are extraterrestrial technology. The best UFO pictures have always proven to be forgeries.”
The best evidence is falsifiable in case people panic. It’s like saying the best hoaxes are hoaxes.
This seems like an opportune time to mention Hollow Earth Theory. If you have 2 hours to spare, this video examines cartographic evidence of an opening at the North Pole, rather like the blastopore opening of an embryo. (Don’t confuse this with the rumored stargate under Lake Vostok leading straight back to Atlantis.)
RWE,
As you have probably experienced yourself, aerospace engineers like to gossip amongst themselves even though they’re not supposed to. Over the years I’ve been in situations where people talked about Cold War classified stuff and I found myself thinking “Oh wow!”. I’ve heard stuff that would have featured prominently in “Aviation Week” or the “National Enquirer” but never saw the light of day. I’m confident that if UFOs really were extraterrestrial I would have heard about it. I might add that it makes no sense that no extraterrestrial artifact has ever been found. The Apollo astronauts left junk all over the Moon. Likewise, the Mars landers left junk scattered all over Mars. Where are the extraterrestrial equivalents of a cigarette butt, empty beer can or used oil filter? The ancient Romans and Moslems worshiped meteorites as holy objects. If found, ET’s beer can would have had a temple built around it. The complete lack of physical evidence makes no sense at all….
Those UFOs are simply delivering more aliens to vote in our upcomimg election.
What I keep wondering is why is that “film-maker” being kept incommunicado until after the the election. Whose payroll was he on? Has he now been abandoned, or is he in protective custody, or is he really just an individual who decided one day to make a video that just happened to be picked up by al-jazeera and who now just happens to be a failed scapegoat? Seems unlikely, to me.
The aliens have landed and they’re not friendly.
Eggplant,
The difference is that both Mars and the Moon are geologically dead except for the occasional small meteorite impact, and the Moon is meteorologically dead as well – Mars not quite.
Anything such as you describe, left on Earth’s surface, would be corroded away or at the very least buried in sediment within a remarkably short time – at least in geological terms. In the right (or wrong) place, it might even end up at the bottom of the ocean or even subducted into the mantle.
Fletcher Christian @ 41 said:
“Anything such as you describe, left on Earth’s surface, would be corroded away or at the very least buried in sediment within a remarkably short time …”
I agree with you. Someone would have to actually see ET’s vehicle land and collect the litter after ET flew away. If ET landed 4000 years ago, then all physical traces would probably be gone (large traces like a jettisoned descent module might show up in a coal mine). Of course if ancient humans saw ET come and go, they might have recorded the event through cave paintings or religious traditions, e.g. the book of Ezekiel, Quetzalcoatl, etc. This is a familiar and often used device in science fiction. The take away conclusion is that ET has probably not visited our solar system within recorded history.
Fletcher Christian also said:
“The difference is that both Mars and the Moon are geologically dead except for the occasional small meteorite impact, and the Moon is meteorologically dead as well – Mars not quite.”
If ET left something on Mars, it would keep almost forever. The Martian surface is actually more preservative than the lunar surface. On the lunar surface, everything is being eroded away by micrometeorites. However the Martian atmosphere is just thick enough to shield against micrometeorites but thin enough to not be particularly erosive. The Martian environment is the geological analog to formaldehyde, i.e. random rocks on the Martian surface are millions of years old. There has been extensive orbital reconnaissance of the Martian surface and most of the old Mars landers have been found. If there was any large ET hardware on Mars, we would have probably found it. Of course since Mars is a lifeless ball of rock, ET would probably have found it uninteresting and gone straight to Earth. A planetary system that ET would probably find very interesting would be Saturn. Because of its rings and low radiation levels, Saturn would be an obvious place for ET to refit an interstellar vehicle, i.e mine deuterium from the rings to refuel their vehicle. The Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn should have seen something left behind by ET. Some things I have seen that I originally thought might be litter from ET are the equatorial ridge around the Saturn moon Iapetus and the asteroid Kleopatra. Unfortunately the size of Iapetus’ equatorial ridge and Kleopatra’s diameter are too large to be credible as artificial objects. So far, I have seen nothing that I would call an extraterrestrial technology.
Edgar Mitchell, Gordon Cooper, and now Ken Johnston…former director (I think) at NASA all claim(ed) alien visitations are real. Johnston says NASA has used film “strippers” since the early sixties to remove alien artifacts from publically released space photos.
Never have seen one myself…but in 1970 my parents driving between Lansing and Detroit saw a saucer shaped object moving along I-96…my Dad claimed people were pulling over and watching it. It was a late afternoon spring day. Later the sighting was written up in local newspapers…state police saw it but refused to comment on what it was.
Re: all the photos have been explained…don’t think so…see the McMinnville, Oregon picture from the early fifties.
Don’t laugh…but personally I suspect it’s Biblical. End times and the Nephilam (sp?)…you remember your Bible?
Eggplant #38:
I suppose that one could argue that all this talk is evidence of something going on, such as the USAF pilot reports I mentioned, but I prefer to take that argument and flip it 180 deg.
Back in the mid-70’s one of my college physics professors when asked about a recent UFO sighting replied, “When you consider where they would have to be coming from, certainly outside our solar system, you have to realize that if they did not want you to see them then you would not.”
A very valid and strong point, how many unauthorized people had seen an F-117 stealth fighter before it was unveiled to the general public? There were people who claimed to have, but their reports were so inaccurate that they must have been lying or mistaken. And that was basically an ordinary airplane that they just did not want us to see.
So if the UFOs are so bad at being not-seen, and at the same time have not landed next to the Washington Monument and asked to talk to the President or landed at Dulles and asked to see the Air and Space Museum, or tried to audition for American idol, then what are they doing, really?
UFOs are a subject that are useless as subject for reasoned debate given the lack of mutually agreed upon data. Still, it remains an important question. Serious people like Fermi and Sagan took opposite sides on the question.
That said, I’ve read two books that offer substantial input. The first is “Introduction to Planetary Defense.”
http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Planetary-Defense-Extra-Terrestrial-Invasion/dp/1581124473/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1351450201&sr=1-1&keywords=planetary+defense
Conclusions? 1) guerrilla warfare since the energy required for interstellar travel dwarfs our technology by orders of magnitude – even 50 megaton space mines. 2) Earth governments have every incentive to keep any knowledge they have secret from their own people and from other governments.
The other was “A Field Guide to Extraterrestrials”
http://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Extraterrestrials-Patrick-Huyghe/dp/038078128X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1351450290&sr=1-1&keywords=field+guide+to+extraterrestrials
The book is a compilation of similarities between sightings as a way of identifying patterns. Its main takeaway is that, like the movie “Men in Black,” there is an active political scheme taking place above our heads without our knowing.
As for me, I’ll just wait and see how it turns out. I suspect that we’re just an eco-tourist destination in a nature preserve and that’s fine with me.
Here’s what I saw once:
Very high a contrail behind a craft I couldn’t really make out and spaced out along the contrail, at regular intervals, would appear a donut-shaped circle around the contrail, like a smoke ring. This continued until it went out of sight, over central Texas.
Some time later I recall reading something about a ”pulse jet” and wondered if this might’ve been it.
Walt,
http://openlibrary.org/works/OL6699714W/Fantastic_Universe_May_1957
Please tell me your secret to immortality.
-s
There was a raft of UFO sightings in NW Alaska in the early 1980s by local natives in the Bush. When asked to draw what they saw, the pictures looked a lot like the front view of the F-117 as you would look right down the long axis of the jet. At the time, they were doing cold weather testing of the Black Jet out of Eielson. Cheers -