Space Shuttle Over Kansas: A Discussion

[russ_watters]

Russ, the Aurora is available for in flight simulation on the X-Plane flight simulator.

Why not take the Aurora on a few simulator flights to effectively test the Aurora's flight performance and capabilities?
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Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Plane_(simulator)"

I own X-Plane, it is one of the best flight simulators out there. You can also fly, on Mars, a plane designed for that purpose. Needless to say, that plane doesn't exist either.

The wiki on the Aurora is quite informative and the first sentence particularly helpful:

Aurora (also credited as the SR-91 Aurora) is the popular name for a hypothesised United States reconnaissance aircraft, believed by conspiracy theorists to be capable of hypersonic flight (speeds of over Mach 5).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_(aircraft )

Being the fan that I am of the Lockheed Skunk Works, I really wish that it would exist. I even have a book specifically about the Aurora. Sadly, it is mostly science fiction.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

But we certainly have advanced aircraft designs not yet intended for public knowledge.

Note also that wiki is no more a definitive source than is a game.

 

[nottheone]

For someone who claims to have some relevant knowledge, this post shows surprisingly little knowledge and a lot of attitude. "The slow lens excuse", for example - some cheap point and shoot cameras have surprisingly slow cycle times. It can take a total of couple of seconds to focus, capture, record, refocus... and that has nothing at all to do with exposure time, which is what the quote was actually referring to. You're mixing two completely separate issues.

A slow lens (high f ratio) is a simple and reasonable explanation for why the craft is not sharp but the tree is.

This is what he said, "The only problem was I had a real slow lens... . I wasn't planning on taking a picture of anything moving," he said.

This implied to me that he had a camera with a removable lens, not a fixed lens camera with auto-focus. I assumed he was something of a photographer. It also implies that he had another faster lens. He says he takes still life photo's as a hobby, again it implies he isn't using a POS. And as I said it takes a considerable amount of time for even a fast plane to disappear from sight on a clear day. It would have had to disappear in a couple of seconds for him not to take another shot so anything moving that fast would have made the one he did take blurry. I saw a bolide once which was presumably over a hundred thousand feet up going pretty fast (Much faster than any plane anyway since it never came down) and it took 5 minutes to disappear over the horizon. It was classic, it was burning different colors and left a smoke trail, that was on the east coast in the late 60's, reported by hundreds. The newspapers said an expert called it a bolide, not my term

As far as the AWAC goes, a close look at the picture is showing a white glare off of the fuselage right above the cockpit area which would be air and match the background sky color if it was an AWACS.

Since no SAAB I have ever seen has something stuck on the top like in the picture it doesn't look like that either to me.

Sorry to be so uninformed but I'm only 58, maybe when I have as much knowledge and experience as you I'll have better opinions. Like I said I have been known to be wrong but I can't see how ANY camera could have prevented him from taking more than one shot.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Possibly related to advanced [secret] aircraft testing:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/northcounty/20060423-9999-1n23bigboom.html

Note also that secrecy is one of the primary reasons that the Groom Lake testing facility [Area 51] exists. I think it is a foregone conclusion that the military has secrets, but by definition that means that we likely don't know anything about speed, range, altitude, avionics, stealthiness, etc. Those would be the big secrets.

 

[DaveC426913]

Sorry to be so uninformed but I'm only 58, maybe when I have as much knowledge and experience as you I'll have better opinions.

Better opinions require knowledge, sure, but what they require even more of is logic and critical-thinking skills. This is why I challenged your first post. It's mostly rhetoric it doesn't really contribute to solving the problem.

Like I said I have been known to be wrong but I can't see how ANY camera could have prevented him from taking more than one shot.

I ask again: what is your point? Is it your claim that this UFO account is best explained by the witness lying? Because if it isn't then this line of reasoning is pointless.

 

[DaveC426913]

btw, I was thinking of an E-3 from approximately a 1:00 or 2:00 view.

This was what I saw at first too. But now that it's been Neckerized*, it only makes sense from a 4-5 o'clock position. It just doesn't work from a 1 o'clock position. 1] The wings don't match up tip-to-tip and, 2] what do you think the sun is glinting off on the nose?

* see what I did there?

 

[russ_watters]

But we certainly have advanced aircraft designs not yet intended for public knowledge.

Yes, certainly.

Note also that wiki is no more a definitive source than is a game.

I disagree - wiki, at least, is a source and/or has sources. A game isn't a source and doesn't have sources - at least no sources that are publicly available. In this case, the manual doesn't even tell us what is intended by the Aurora plane in the game - so we don't even know if some random programmer who doesn't necessarily know anything we don't believes it to exists or not. The fact that it is in the game doesn't tell us anything about whether or not it exists.

Also, as do most people in this forum, I chose the wiki source because it is easy. However, it does include as a source, a book I have, "Skunk Works", which is a primary source by someone "in the know" at Lockheed (the director of Skunk Works) at the time the code name was accidentally released. If you like, I can type in the quote, but what I said in the first quote is a paraphrase of it. There is actually some interesting discussion of the issue - including a statement that the gov't did solicit Lockheed's help in developing such a plane and that Lockheed declined because they knew it wasn't possible.

 

[Orion1]

Russ, what is the maximum altitude and velocity of the Aurora in X-Plane?

The research and development of a SR-91 Aurora to replace the SR-71 Blackbird is plausible.

Does X-Plane have a SR-71 Blackbird?
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[nottheone]

Since my original posts I got the photographers email and asked him some questions. Here is his reply. He also sent me a 3meg original jpg. His words in underline, he used my email and pasted his answers in.

Hi, interesting pic. Some of my friends and I have been arguing about this and I was wondering if you could clarify a couple of things.

Is it going left to right? Object was traveling from left to right.

Did you use film or digital? I used a digital Canon 40D Camera with a portrait lens

Could you explain a little clearer why you only got off one picture? None of us can understand why you had only time for one shot. I have seen fighters take off at full afterburner and it takes a couple of minutes to get out of sight on a clear day. Mostly because of the surprise of the moment, not being ready to take a photo. Also the area was lower and surrounded by trees so it moved out of view very fast.



Any chance of getting an original digital image so I can see if there are any details I can enhance? I have attached to photo, good luck. This has caused me nothing but grief and, if I had it to do again, I would just delete to photo and move on.



Looks like I wasn't too far off. He was using a good camera with a removable lens and the slow lens thing wasn't really the reason he got only one shot. His story is a little different than what was posted in the other sites. If anyone wants the original jpg leave me a note with an email and make sure you don't have an attachment limit.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Yes, certainly. I disagree - wiki, at least, is a source and/or has sources. A game isn't a source and doesn't have sources - at least no sources that are publicly available. In this case, the manual doesn't even tell us what is intended by the Aurora plane in the game - so we don't even know if some random programmer who doesn't necessarily know anything we don't believes it to exists or not. The fact that it is in the game doesn't tell us anything about whether or not it exists.

Also, as do most people in this forum, I chose the wiki source because it is easy. However, it does include as a source, a book I have, "Skunk Works", which is a primary source by someone "in the know" at Lockheed (the director of Skunk Works) at the time the code name was accidentally released. If you like, I can type in the quote, but what I said in the first quote is a paraphrase of it. There is actually some interesting discussion of the issue - including a statement that the gov't did solicit Lockheed's help in developing such a plane and that Lockheed declined because they knew it wasn't possible.

By definition there is no such thing as a qualified source for projects that are still classified. Therefore there is no way to discuss the subject.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Russ, what is the maximum altitude and velocity of the Aurora in X-Plane?

The research and development of a SR-91 Aurora to replace the SR-71 Blackbird is plausible.

Does X-Plane have a SR-71 Blackbird?
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This subject [Aurora] is closed.

 

[DaveC426913]

A quick dialing up of the saturation reveals a couple of things:

1] There's a distinct colour difference between the "engine nacelle" and the rest of the craft. I don't what what that might mean, but what I do interpolate from it is that the sillouette is divided at that point between major surface planes: the "engine nacelle" is behind, the wing is in front - as we've been assuming.

But I'm not sure what to conclude from the fact that the upper tail tip is the same colour as the fuselage/wing. If the colour can be interpreted as major surface planes, that tail tip should be the same colour as the (vertical) engine nacelle, not the (horizontal) wing/fuselage.


2] The part we've been assuming is a cockpit canopy (dome, far right) indeed looks even more like a cockpit canopy.

 

[DaveC426913]

I'm trying to break away from my/our preconceptions of how we're interpreting what we're seeing. Our brains are telling us this is a cigar-shaped-winged craft with a tail engine seen from about 4-5 o'clock position. As long as we keep seeing that we'll stay stuck in a rut. So I'm trying to right-brain this: lose the symbols.


1] The glints off the craft don't make sense. There are between 5 and 7 major glints, depending how you count them. These glints will be from highly oblique angles where there's almost total reflectdion of sunlight off large, rounded surfaces.

I can see why there'd be a glint off the backbone and off the canopy. I can even see a glint off the wing leading edge.

But why would there be a glint off the tail tip? It's too high to be off the nacelle, so why would there be a large, round shape for sunlight to reflect off at the tip of the tail? Are we possibly misinterpreting?

2] Why does the right wing tip bend downward yet the left wingtip does not? Is that downward dip actually the wingtip? Or is it somethjing hanging down from the nose of the craft?


Is it possible we are seeing what we expect to see, not what is really there?

 

[DaveC426913]

Hi, interesting pic. Some of my friends and I have been arguing about this and I was wondering if you could clarify a couple of things.

Hey, why don't we simply ask him what he saw? Did he see wings? Wing-mounted engine nacelles? Tail-mounted nacelle? Whatever he saw, he knew it was weird enough to be worth a pic.

notthteone? Do you think he'd be amenable?
If so, don't send right away. Let's compose a list of questions we can ask him and send them in one swoop. He sounds unhappy about this experience; we may scare him off.

 

[nottheone]

I sent him a followup with those questions right after I got his first answer, he hasn't answered it yet. Since I got his email from a ufo site I have a feeling he may be getting a lot of unwanted attention. I was surprised he answered the first one and actually sent me the picture. If you come up with some more I will try again.

I think it looks more like it's heading away from him to the right at about 1:30. It looked to me like it was toward him at 4:00 at first. The thing sticking down on the right does look more like it's on the nose. Almost like a IR/laser pod/dome. The bright spots look like lights. The pixel pattern around the edges of the object seems to be uninterupted so it doesn't look like a quick paste job. There appears to be a large lens flare to the right which he may have mistaken for the glow when he was looking through the viewfinder, I think that camera has a through-the-lens type viewfinder so he would have seen what was in the picture.

All I can say is I wish I had seen this.

 

[russ_watters]

By definition there is no such thing as a qualified source for projects that are still classified. Therefore there is no way to discuss the subject.

Now I'm confused - what forum are we in here and what are we discussing? Since when is a "qualified source" relevant at all in this forum? We're discussing a newspaper article about an eyewitness account by an amateur of an unknown object here, not a peer reviewed paper or Lockheed press release! If a "qualified source" is a requirement, most of the threads in this forum should be closed!

 

[Ivan Seeking]

We discuss claims of and evidence for unexplained phenomena, not conspiracy theories. We try to find prosaic explanations for specific claims, but we don't play guessing games about classified technology.

No specific prosaic explanation can itself lack any credible references. So we might guess that the craft was part of a black project, but there is nothing more can be said on that point because by definition we can have no credible references. The entire point is that the explanations offered can be verfied as credible and do not amount to just more internet noise.

 

[wolram]

If i tilt my laptop away from me until a distinct outline appears, it looks nothing like any aircraft i can imagine.

 

[nottheone]

... The entire point is that the explanations offered can be verfied as credible and do not amount to just more internet noise.

Which was my point about the slow lens, it wasn't a credible excuse GIVEN THE FULL CONTEXT OF WHAT HE WAS CREDITED WITH SAYING which implied to me he had a good camera and he did in fact. As it turns out his actual comments to me made a completely different excuse which IS credible (assuming there actually ARE depressions and trees in Kansas, it looked pretty damn flat and treeless to me when I drove through it :)

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I think the real point here is that whatever it is, beyond a complete hoax, there is no reason to think it is anything but a military or test aircraft.

I'll leave the thread open for those who wish identify what specific craft may have been photographed, but I think we all agree that this UFO is for all practical purposes, an IFO. At the least it did not reportedly exhibit any capabilities beyond those of earthly aircrafts.

As for the afterglow reported, I tend to assume that this was simply the evening sun reflecting from the vapor trail.

 

[nottheone]

I agree, this doesn't have anything ET about it. As unidentifiable as it is, it looks pretty terrestrial to me.

_______________________________

In my experience 50/50 odds have a 90% chance of being wrong 100% of the time, and so do statistics like this.

 

[dlgoff]

Well, I'm glad I started this thread. Thanks all for a very good discussion. "...I think we all agree that this UFO is for all practical purposes, an IFO..."

 

[russ_watters]

I agree with Ivan's last post - and if nothing else, this has been a good exercise in photo interpretation.

Btw, I played with some models of an E-3 in flight simulator - if I can find one with a better paint scheme for this, I'll post it, but I found a few interesting things:

-It is possible for under-wing engine nacelles to disappear given the correct viewing aspect (1:00, low).
-Wintip mounted antennas (static dissipators?) can appear like downard curved wintips from some angles.
-This isn't an E-3 - the configuration of the tail and "dish" are not right. They are too close and the dish is too low. Could be a different, similar configuration awacs, though.

 

[DaveC426913]

Well, I'm glad I started this thread. Thanks all for a very good discussion. "...I think we all agree that this UFO is for all practical purposes, an IFO..."

Well, it's still a UFO, it's just of terrestrial origin.

 

[nottheone]

If this enhanced image gets approved it's darker but the contrast is clearer and the flares are clearer making them look like lights. Not sure what is going on but I read the file as just over a meg but when I upload it it says 36.5k so it may not pass.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Well, it's still a UFO, it's just of terrestrial origin.

Yes, an UFOOTO.

 

[Orion1]

nottheone, that image appears excellent!

how did you enhanced the image?
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[nottheone]

nottheone, that image appears excellent!

how did you enhanced the image?
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Corel Photo-Paint, one of the contrast lenses. I only spent a few minutes with it. Later I spent more time trying to get something out of the black area but there isn't much there that I could find. It seemed to have a little smooth gradiation towards the center.

 

[junglebeast]

Here's what I interpret in nottheone's touch up...

 

[DaveC426913]

Here's what I interpret in nottheone's touch up...

well, it's certainly a fresh perspective, I would not have considered that upper tail-and-pod to be a horizontal wing-and-pod.

But your extrapolated interpretation doesn'r hold water if you now compare it back to the original image (instead of nottheone's touched up version).