History Kecksberg: History Channel, James Oberg

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The discussion centers on the Kecksburg incident, where a mysterious object reportedly crashed in Pennsylvania in 1965, sparking various theories about its origin. Some participants argue that the object was a fireball or meteor, while others believe it may have been a secret military satellite, specifically the KH-4A, due to the timing and description of the object. Eyewitness accounts are debated, with skepticism about their reliability and the lack of physical evidence supporting the fireball theory. The presence of military personnel and government agents at the scene raises further questions about a potential cover-up. Overall, the event continues to fuel conspiracy theories, as many feel the truth remains obscured.
mouseonmoon
not sure if this has aired before, but it mentioned Gumble/SC Fi's (in 2003,forget when)

This was excellent--at least Cosmos 96 was debunked (James Oberg even reaches this 'conclusion',yet begins his own 'conspiricy theory' ---mindboggling; perhaps his 'balloon solutions' should be re-studied by his fellow debunkers.)

Yet the 'solution' would seem to be a 'fireball'--presented by an amature astonomer-well done, if you don't allow witnesses to get in the way--
all witnesses are 'unreliable'


The most curious event in all of this is actually 'two guys in suits' show up
and have a 'talk' with...sounds like MIBS!...but sorry to say,only witness testimony here...


tonight, there's a show of interest: Alien Agenda-abductions
10 PM EST History
 
Science news on Phys.org
I'm not sure what to think of the fireball explanation. The big problem is the physical evidence - the trees. If these were damaged when claimed and as indicated by the core samples, then the meteor explanation gets a little tough to buy. It also does seem that the Cosmos 96 pod cannot be the explanation. There were no other re-entries or missile tests that evening.

Note that the proponent of the fireball explanation completely ignores the physical evidence and instead bases his theory on eyewitness accounts. Sounds like pseudoscience to me.
 
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The 3 independent eye witnesses describe an 'acorn shaped' object. 2 independently describe
'strange writing'-John Murphy took photos-? Other witnesses were being held back-saw from distance smoke/glow.

Why have no State Troopers come forward? Why have no 'army' guys come forward?
Did the National Guard respond? Where did the 'troops' come from? Are there any records of this event? These would seem to be simple answers to simple questions--yet nothing!
(So what if they were using 'army trucks/equipment/uniforms'...doesn't mean they weren't
'special' units.)

At least 3 reporters there and no one interviews the guy 'in charge'?

Cosmos 96 was 13 hours earlier and officially nowhere near USA. "Orbital debrie" has been ruled by NASA. The object was seen in Canada ...The local reports suggest it landed thereabouts, but officially next day "NO physical evidence"-from State Police.

What did John Murphy see? Who were the 2 suits who identified themselves as "government agents" to Ms. Mazza. And why does Murphy 'change' after the interview--edits and censors his radio program- stating specificly that no government agent of any branch had 'contacted him', but that witnesses had called requesting that they be removed and some that they've 'changed their story'.

This story is the 'smoking gun' of government conspiricy---Blue Book report is from Acme, PA (funny huh-old cartoon fans of Bugs and Road Runner-)...couple agents 2 hours, nothing.

"Quite a number of miltary guys were there" --and not one of 'em has spoken yet-who's your leader?

What's the point in secrecy about this now?
 
I agree that the fireball meteor makes little to no sense unless it or a fragment came down in Kecksburg. If it did there would have been no secrecy. The more I look at this story the more convinced I am that the government was [and is still] hiding something. That doesn't mean that ET was involved but at this point, to me it seems impossible that nothing happened in Kecksberg. So long after the event one must wonder why we don't know what happened. Stories like this certainly lend credence to conspiracy theories.
 
One interesting note in all of this. We are supposed to believe that a passing meteor has caused even families to go separate ways with extreme animosity towards each other. This event virtually split the town of Kecksberg down the middle, and still does nearly forty years later, according to residents.

It seems that irrational skepticism can even destroy families.
 
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What REALLY happened at Kecksburg!

Hi,

I am Paul Everitt and I live in Louisville, CO. I went to high school in Huntsville, AL and the parents of many of my classmates were actually rocket scientists. I am also a WWII history and aviation buff.

This is a precursor to the Kecksburg incident. It took me about 10 minutes on the internet to solve this case! I passed this information on to the SCI-FI channel and never got an acknowledgment. All the information that they gave fits this scenario. Personally I get very aggravated at people who attribute an extraterrestrial origin to things that they can't explain after 30 seconds of examination.

Something re-entered the Earth's atmosphere in December of 1965. It is supposed to have maneuvered before it crashed. It was heading north to south. The military came at got it. It took a crane and a flat bed truck to move it. GREAT secrecy surrounded this object.

It wasn't any alien spacecraft !

Go online and look up the Discoverer/Corona series of probes. The early ones were basic research and test of concept vehicles. The later ones were spy satellites. The Discoverer series was unique in the annuals of the American space program. They used FILM cameras. The FILM had to be recovered before they were of any use. The Discovery series of probes re-entered the atmosphere and had a parachute deploy and the probe was to be recovered in mid-air by an aircraft. Later versions did land. NASA recently tried to recover a sample collection probe this way, but the balloon failed to deploy. You probably got to watch it crash into the Utah desert on CNN.

These were very secret missions. I can find very little information on these missions. Some of the missions are still classified, hence the secrecy. The mission that crashed in Kecksburg is KH-4A 1027. This is a spy satellite that was launched from Vandenberg AFB on 4:07 pm Kecksburg time on December 9th, 1965. The records that I have found incident that is was recovered two days later due to attitude control problems. They DON'T indicate if it was recovered in mid-air or from the woods of Pennsylvania. If KH-4A 1027 crashed in Kecksburg it would have had enough time to complete ALMOST one polar order. The KH-4A is listed on the launch documents at 1500 kg.

Now I realize that the timing is very tight, but I find it VERY INTERESTING that a spy satellite was launched on the afternoon in question. Since the launch would have been closely monitored, the exact flight path would have been known. This is how a recover team could have been on site so quickly. The acorn like description matches the expected configuration of satellite equipped with a heat shield for re-entry. In the cold war era of 1965, the military would have wanted this satellite to stay under wraps. The KH-4 series is a predecessor of the current KH-9 series.

Mystery solved. Any questions?
 
Sounds very promising. Do you have links to the pertinent data?

My first choice when I saw the Gumbell show was the Russian thing that was launched. This would explain the alleged strange writing. I wouldn't expect a rural Pennsylvanian to recognise cyrilic lettering. However, if it was a US craft, do you have any leads on what the "hieroglyphics" were?
 
I have passed this suggestion on to Jim Oberg. Perhaps he will be able to comment on this. If this is a good and new suggestion then Oberg will get the information out.
 
From Oberg:

The launch on December 9 was into a low polar orbit with inclination of 80 degrees. The booster took off to the south from California, and when it came around again 90 minutes later, , its ground track was more than 1000 miles WEST of California -- nowhere near Pennsylvania. No connection with the Kecksburg stories -- zero.

If you examine the animation of a polar orbit at http://www.thetech.org/exhibits/online/satellite/4/4b/4b.1.html you will see how each pass is farther west, due to Earth's eastward rotation. This is explained in more detail at http://www.newmediastudio.org/DataDiscovery/Hurr_ED_Center/ Satellites_and_Sensors/Polar_Orbits/Polar_Orbits.html (wrap!) which addresses polar orbits with inclinations of greater than 90 deg, but over a period of a few hours, the westward shift is almost the same as for those with inclinations of a bit less than 90 deg.

Understanding how orbits move through space, and how satellites move through those orbits, is a critical part of assessing space object candidate solutions for the Kecksburg stories. The accuracy of ground observations of the fireball meteor puts very tight constraints on any manmade satellite theory, and actually seems to eliminate them entirely, assuming that the 'fireball' was caused by the same stimulus that also created the putative 'recovered object'. It seems more likely to me that the fireball sightings and the geometric illusion of it falling into nearby woods led to all subsequent stories, without requirement for any actual hardware recovery.

Careful assessment of such orbital motion finally allowed analysts to confirm the official USAF report that the reentry earlier that day of the stranded Venera probe had to have occurred far, far away from Pennsylvania -- the original launch date, some weeks earlier, is known from Russian records, and the shifting of the orbit through space can now be calculated on home computers, and confirms the original USAF statements about the ground track of the orbit. When it was passing over Pennsylvania, it was many hours earlier than the sightings of the fireball.

So -- study orbits, practice by visually observing satellites (www.heavens-above.com), and keep watching the skies.

Edit: You can find Oberg at http://www.jamesoberg.com/
 
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  • #10
That is a great and comprehensive response from Oberg. I thought pauleverit might have been on to something, but it doesn't look like it, from the Oberg analysis.
 
  • #11
zoobyshoe said:
I thought pauleverit might have been on to something,

So did I. It was a good effort Paul. :approve:
 
  • #12
Reporter sues NASA, alleges UFO cover-up

PITTSBURGH - Leslie Kean wants NASA to come clean about what happened in the woods of Pennsylvania 40 years ago today.

...NASA officials say there are no documents to release and what the witnesses saw was debris from a falling Soviet satellite. [continued]
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/1209scifi-lawsuit09-ON.html
 
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  • #13
Nasa didn't read Oberg.
 
  • #14
Yes, I can believe that they don't have any information, but I am a little surprised that they are sticking with the Russian satellite story.
 
  • #15
...that is, esp since they don't have any information.
 
  • #16
Yes, it's interesting that they know what it was, since they can't find any information about it.
 
  • #17
A NASA spokesman told the Associated Press that the agency was asked at the time to examine metal fragments taken from the site. That examination led to the theory that the fallen object was a Russian satellite. Unfortunately, NASA now claims that all documents relating to its investigation have been misplaced.

Needless to say, that dog-ate-my-homework explanation only fuels the imagination of skeptics who believe that something more significant than a rock from space or an errant satellite landed in Kecksburg [continued]
http://www.cumberlink.com/articles/2005/12/10/editorial/editorial/daily01.txt
 
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  • #18
Some of Mr. Oberg's recent comments on this:

"I wondered a long time (as a 'space expert') if it might have been
the Soviet Venera probe reentry vehicle, and the 'tracking data'
released by the USAF was misdirection to conceal the actual
US possession of the vehicle. But in recent years, with access
to Soviet tracking data, it now is clear the off-course probe
would have been over another part of the world during the
reported fireball. It DID enter the atmosphere earlier that same
day, a coincidence that we all over-interpreted (in hindsight).

But the USAF was definitely interested in retrieving falling
satellites (I was on active duty from 1970-1978, I saw many
of the alert messages of 'imminent decay'), while keeping any
recoveries of them secret (UN treaty required they be returned
to country of origin, while intelligence types didn't like that).
My own 'reconstruction' of the event was that the imminent decay
of the high-interest Soviet probe (it shared many key systems with
Soviet thermonuclear warheads) sparked DoD messages to all
locations to be aware of any 'meteorite falls' and if reported, go
take a look, discretely. The rest is, if not good history, then
good story.

The 'acorn' shape, for example, does look VERY much like the
actual probe. But it turns out, nobody seems to have reported the
shape until years afterwards, after some investigators had showed
recently-released photographs of the probe design in question. Now,
if there are published accounts of the acorn shape before, say, 1985
or so, that would be interesting!"

James Oberg
Spaceflight consultant to NBC News

Again, as I do, you can follow Oberg's work at
http://www.jamesoberg.com/

See also: http://www.debunker.com/Kecksburg.html

It seems to me that Oberg is the guy who would know about Russian satellites and meteors, but I'm not convinced that we have the entire story yet.

James Oberg, 56, had a 22-year career as a space engineer in Houston, where he specialized in NASA space shuttle operations for orbital rendezvous, as a contractor employee. He worked at the Johnson Space Center in Houston 1975-1997. In support of NASA's spaceflight operations he has written books on Rendezvous Flight Procedures, on Mission Control Center console operations, and on the history of orbital rendezvous. In honor of his pioneering work on developing and documenting these space shuttle rendezvous techniques, he was named by the NASA-Area "Association of Technical Societies" as their 1984 "Technical Person of the Year". In 1997 he received the "Sustained Superior Performance" award for designing the complex first Space Station assembly mission.

He has written ten books and a thousand magazine and newspaper articles on all aspects of space flight. Among these books are: Red Star in Orbit, generally considered the best inside portrait of the history of Soviet space activities through 1981; New Earths, the world's first non-fiction treatment of the far- out futuristic topic of "terraforming" or "planetary engineering"; Pioneering Space (with his wife as co-author), a broad and insightful view of the human side of the spaceflight experience; The New Race for Space, which described the development and prospects for closer US/Russian space flight cooperation; and Uncovering Soviet Disasters, a penetrating analysis of secrecy and technological shortcomings in the former USSR which received wide praise around the world and even in post-glasnost Moscow. His last book, "Theory of Space Power", commissioned by the US Space Command, described how the United States has achieved space superiority and how it can exploit and maintain it into the next century. He also contributes key articles on space topics to several leading encyclopedias and annual reference books. In 2001 the books "2001: A Martian Odyssey" and "Star-Crossed Orbits: Inside the US/Russian Space Alliance" are scheduled to appear.

Oberg is widely regarded as a world authority on the Russian space program. He has several times been invited to testify before Congress about the problems facing the Russian space industry. He is also on the editorial board of "Air & Space" magazine, sponsored by the Smithsonian's "National Air and Space Museum", and of SPECTRUM, the monthly magazine of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. He provides expert assessment and forecasts of Russian space industrial and technological elements for corporate and government clients.

Mr. Oberg has been the space consultant for ABC News and several foreign networks. He has also been the space correspondent for United Press International, and has written columns for space Internet sites from space.com to Galaxy Online to msnbc.com. His book "Red Star in Orbit" was the basis of a 1991 PBS NOVA mini-series devoted to new revelations about the history of the Russian cosmonaut program, and has been optioned to HBO for an up-coming made-for-TV movie. He was consultant and catalog contributor to the two auctions of Russian space memorabilia held by Sotheby's in New York, to the sale of a flown Vostok spacecraft by Kaller's America Gallery of NY, and has been a science display advisor to many planetariums, galleries, & museums.
http://www.jamesoberg.com/profile.html
 
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  • #19
Oberg continues:

I checked with the guy quoted at NASA. He tells me
he never said 'all files have been lost'. NASA has sent lots of stuff to the
FOIA requesters, and it's been all just collections of contemporary press
clippings. Two boxes of additional material, that had been sent over to
archival research per standard document procedures, were logged in over
there, but now cannot be located. They've been pulled and shown to
researchers before, but apparently last time they were retrieved they
didn't get refiled properly. The question remains, what would they
presumably have shown, since NASA wasn't supposedly even involved,
the US Air Force was. The quoted NASA guy also never said that NASA
had examined fragments of the object -- he tells me he said that one memo (previously released) speculated that 'fragology' (examination of recovered fragments) might be applicable in this case, as it had been in other cases (all on record) of satellite and meteorite recoveries. So there's lots of garbles to go around.
 
  • #20
quotes:James Oberg
Now,
if there are published accounts of the acorn shape before, say, 1985
or so, that would be interesting!"

The question remains, what would they presumably have shown, since NASA wasn't supposedly even involved, the US Air Force was... lots of garbles to go around.

A NASA spokesman told the Associated Press that the agency was asked at the time to examine metal fragments taken from the site. That examination led to the theory that the fallen object was a Russian satellite.

=====

Again, more mindbogglin' 'facts'> why would there be 'fragments' of the 'acorn' to begin with?

held by NASA and not USAF? (Blue Book says nothing found).

there's a 'fireball' and 'fragments' > yet eyewitness accounts 'acorn with writing'.
There seems to be 'fragments' from the 'fireball' recovered from other places?


(who kept the Mogul fragments of Roswell? why not a record of 'disposal'-signed and dated ... the maid threw it out?> I had the chance to ask Stanton Friedmen if USAF or anyone had any 'fragments' of a Mogul baloon>there's nothing, not even an i-beam example of one known to exist.))

----

The arborist now says the tree limbs damage was the result of ice/snow.
Makes perfect sense of course- ergo no 'evidence' that something actually
came down to that spot 'out of the sky'.
(ground impression?)
Geoarchaeologist J. Steven Kite > no evidence of/for " high-speed impact of a meteor or other large object".

Haven't found any 'soldier' reports-in spite of all the reports of armed soldiers at the scene no one has announced 'I was there'? Who took over the guy's farmhouse as 'headquarters'? This is the 'elephant in the room' no one sees-?

It's possible Stan Gordan has this info-he seems to have done the most research on this incident:

UFO researcher's video explores several theories about 1965
crash in Westmoreland County
Wednesday, September 09, 1998
By David Templeton, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
http://www.post-gazette.com/magazine/19980908ufo1.asp
re: Stan Gordon
-----

Stan Gordon's website:
http://www.westol.com/~paufo/


====
photo of Russian 'acorn':
http://astronautix.com/craft/vena3mv4.htm

=====
other reports:

Sci Fi Channel-Backed Researcher Pressing NASA For 'UFO' Files
Joe Mandak
Associated Press Thu, Dec. 08, 2005
Source: The Times-Leader - Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
http://www.timesleader.com/mld/timesleader/news/local/13360634.htm
Mandak reports Dave Steitz ,NASA spokesman as relating,
"...there's no cover-up: the "UFO" was a Russian satellite but government records documenting it have been lost..."

"Kean said, Nicholas L. Johnson, NASA's chief scientist for orbital debris, determined the object couldn't be a Russian satellite or any other manmade object after studying the orbital paths of known satellites and other records from 1965."

=====
Kecksburg To Mark 40Th Anniversary Of Purported UFO Crash
Source: The Tribune-Review - Pittsburgh,
http://tinyurl.com/a6r64
By Sam Kusic
Tribune-Review
Tuesday, December 6, 2005
======
The Kecksburg UFO Incident
Source: The Daily Courier - Pittsburgh,
http://tinyurl.com/7e64m
By Mark Hofmann
Daily Courier
Tuesday, December 6, 2005
==========
Pa. Town's UFO Fest Backs Fire Department
Source: United Press International - Washington, DC,
http://tinyurl.com/d7bmw
12/6/2005

=====
"The first rule in keeping secrets is "nothing on paper""-CIA Director Richard Helms
=====
 
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