Kecksburg : 50 Years after the "Strange Object in the Woods"

a reply to: mirageman

Fasicinating case and a great OP. Job well-done, MM! S&F!!

originally posted by: JIMC5499
Kecksburg is about an hour drive from where I live. Several years ago I went on a tour of the area. I walked through the woods where this happened. When it was pointed out, you could see where something fell through the trees quite a while ago by the broken branches and damaged tree trunks.

Personally I lean towards it being the film capsule from a Corona satellite.

Random thought, but if you have one, have you ever considered wandering the crash site with a metal detector?

I've always felt all along this was the MK2 at re entry. The size of the object doesn't seem to match anything "UFO" or disk related. Size, Shape, and descriptions match the MK2 almost spot on. While I do believe we have been visited by aliens, this certainly doesn't seem other worldly to me sadly.

a reply to: Gothmog

It was most likely cosmos 96. Sorry.

originally posted by: EngineerGuY
I've always felt all along this was the MK2 at re entry. The size of the object doesn't seem to match anything "UFO" or disk related. Size, Shape, and descriptions match the MK2 almost spot on. While I do believe we have been visited by aliens, this certainly doesn't seem other worldly to me sadly.

Whilst the MK2 RV theory is current flavour of the month it is being heavily challenged by others.

Kevin Randle's excellent blog has some interesting comments : kevinrandle.blogspot.co.uk...

David Rudiak is claiming that the MK2 was too small compared to witness descriptions and that the hieroglyphics explanation (i.e weld marks) is dubious. He also states that re-entry craft of the time had no 'soft landing' capability. He also quotes email correspondence with Larry Lemke, a retired NASA rocket scientist.

Lemke is basically explaining that the MK2 RV was launched on Dec 7th 1965 on a Thor missile (ICBM). It could only survive short sub-orbital missions and had a limited 1 hour of battery life. So, Rudiak says, it is unlikely it could have survived for 2 days before landing in Kecksburg.

So it's still somewhat of a mystery.

originally posted by: Iamnotadoctor
a reply to: Gothmog

It was most likely cosmos 96. Sorry.

What makes you believe this as the best explanation?

a reply to: mirageman

Ok I'll humour you.
Let's say it wasn't Cosmos 96, or a meteor.

It must have been aliens from another star system, that mastered the technology to fly at the speed of light.
There is an out of focus photograph of an object that looks like a big old steel bell, we are being informed that this is possibly the vessel that these aliens traveled here in, at light speed.

One thing we do have is zero scientific evidence that any life form exists on any other planet other than earth.

a reply to: Iamnotadoctor

Oh for god's sake, absence of proof is not proof of absence.

a reply to: Eilasvaleleyn

That's fine if you want to live your life without any facts in it.

originally posted by: Iamnotadoctor
There is an out of focus photograph of an object that looks like a big old steel bell, we are being informed that this is possibly the vessel that these aliens traveled here in, at light speed.

Is there such a photograph or is that part of your hypothetical?

This article from a few days ago claims it's "probably" identified, not Cosmos96 and not aliens.

Five decades later, the Kecksburg UFO is identified (probably)

The unidentified flying object that came down Dec. 9, 1965, they say, was a General Electric Mark 2 Re-entry Vehicle that had been launched by the Air Force as a spy satellite, but fell out of orbit.

There seems to be a size mismatch and this references a drawing (which mirageman posted) rather than a photo:

“It was not a 10- to 12-foot object,” he recalled. “It was small, the size of two suitcases.”

But Jerry Betters, a Pittsburgh jazz vocalist who died in 2007, told investigators it was larger than that, and the military truck carrying it had a white star on the door. He drew a picture of it and had it notarized.

So I'm back to what I said in my first post in this thread, which is that we need official disclosure to resolve what it was, if anything. Maybe it hasn't been declassified yet but after 50 years it's certainly enough time to declassify it as I don't think we need spy capsules like that anymore with permanent spy satellites. The researchers in the article concur:

“We need confirmation from NASA or the Air Force. We’ve left messages. but we’re not getting any phone calls back,” he said.

originally posted by: mirageman
Hello again Arby. I think what we have here is a genuine UFO case (in that we are dealing with one or more flying objects that remain unidentified). ...
Tim Printy has provided an awful lot of information on Kecksburg in his freely downloadable Sunlite magazines if you or anyone else wants to take a peek:

Sunlite 3_6 Magazine (Kecksburg)

You may have already seen it?

Yes I saw it thanks, and it's hard to read that without getting the idea there was a meteor. But something else could have happened besides the meteor, glad you agree that's possible, and we still don't know what it was. Seems a bit small to me for an interplanetary spacecraft from another solar system, so if there really was something else besides the meteor, my guess would be a man-made and not alien object.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Yes I saw it thanks, and it's hard to read that without getting the idea there was a meteor. But something else could have happened besides the meteor, glad you agree that's possible, and we still don't know what it was. Seems a bit small to me for an interplanetary spacecraft from another solar system, so if there really was something else besides the meteor, my guess would be a man-made and not alien object.

I think our friend Iamnotadoctor, thinks I was going for the ET spacecraft angle. When in fact I think that is probably the most unlikely scenario. The US military tend not to go chasing after downed meteorites so to me it all suggests that they believed something 'valuable' or 'dangerous' had come down in Kecksburg and went out searching for it. The Cosmos 96 probe would be one such item, and any airborne military/space hardware would also be on that list.

Surely after 50 years we'd know about it by now.

Or is it possible that this was nothing but a meteor, a false alarm, and the military came out of the woods empty handed?

We are definitely lacking some information here.

originally posted by: Iamnotadoctor
It was most likely cosmos 96. Sorry.

Nope, it probably wasn't Cosmos 96.

That theory has been rejected by most skeptics and, it appears from MOD files, also by the British Ministry of Defence for reasons that - while not entirely conclusive - mean that it is not "most likely" Cosmos 96 caused any part of the Kecksburg reports.

The Mark 2 capsule theory is, um, even more flawed.

There was more spirited debate at Kevin Randle's blog.

Im not so sure of any declassification argument anymore. Regardless of what happened at Roswell, its clear the last official explanation was never taken seriously by those who wrote it.

a reply to: Aazadan

Me and about 10,000 other people over the years.

a reply to: IsaacKoi

Nope, it probably wasn't Cosmos 96. That theory has been rejected by most skeptics and, it appears from MOD files, also by the British Ministry of Defence for reasons that - while not entirely conclusive - mean that it is not "most likely" Cosmos 96 caused any part of the Kecksburg reports. The Mark 2 capsule theory is, um, even more flawed.

For the full details of why the Mark 2 capsule theory fails Isaac has now produced a very detailed thread explaining it all :

Kecksburg UFO – GE Mark 2? MUFON researchers can't keep it up long enough