UFO Tumbles Toward Shuttle Cargo Bay And It's Small!

originally posted by: MStubbs
On my YouTube channel I leave all the comments posted for everyone to see, good or bad.. including Jim Os..and I post the raw footage, which sometimes is hard to follow without a commentary. I'm sure people will find what I'm showing a little hard to follow at first, as it is raw footage, but that's the best way to present it.

Hopefully you post the specifics like the date/time of the recording and other specifics, which will make it easier to follow since we can look up mission details. You did post the STS-80 mission reference in the video linked below, but didn't post a specific date/time which might be helpful, especially if I wanted to try to look up any mission notes that may have been made about the event in the video you posted.

originally posted by: inert
a reply to: MStubbs

The thing is that to determine what these objects are, you need to know the actual mission, what phase of the mission they are in, what they have recently done, what the orientation of the shuttle is, and what the nature of the conversation with ground control has been like.

I completely agree and there are too many "UFO videos" without such context.

Having watched hundreds if not thousands of hours of Shuttle Missions, I have never seen anything suspicious that couldn't be explained by something operational. You need to know a lot more about what's been going on and not a 5 second clip with no context.

There's one video in particular where I've struggled trying to figure out the path the object is following, how far it is from the camera and how the distance is changing. I'm sure it's not defying the laws of physics, but it's a bit unusual. The object (probably a small ice flake or something?) does start out looking like a completely normal piece of perhaps out of focus debris when it comes into view in the shade of the lower right corner at time 3:37, and it continues to look completely normal as it passes out of the shadow at 3:43 and gets much brighter as it reflects more sunlight, so this transition seems to suggest it's rather close to the camera to me. But after that, I have a hard time visualizing in 3-D what is happening with the object's trajectory, as seen in the 2-D image.

I speculate maybe the reason it has apparent motion to the left, then seems to stop relative to the camera (may still be moving away in distance?), then starts showing apparent motion to the right might be due to relatively larger atmospheric drag on the ice particle compared to the shuttle, because it's so small, sort of like how a mouse can fall from 30 stories and live while a human can't. Same atmosphere but different surface area to mass ratio etc.

It seems maybe the photographer could be interested in the object too because they zoom in on it (along with two other objects) at about 6 minutes.

NASA UFOs STS-80 "Smoking Gun" clip UNCUT queued to time 3:37

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Arbs…I go into some of that vid STS-80, here www.abovetopsecret.com... with closeups screenshots etc

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a reply to: Arbitrageur

Yes, admittedly an interesting and curious object, and the mesmerizing effect on the observer comes from the fact that, as you point out, and the zooming in proves the photographer seems to be interested in it.

Notice the object is flickering? Yet, I think we could explain that behavior. For my computations I would like to know whether someone can confirm whether the lens surface of the camera is curved or flat, and if curved, what the radius of curvature is.

But let's start from basic principles and see how far we can go. Assuming it is an ice crystal, is it just frozen water? And what kind of water, that is, non-azeotropic or azeotropic? If it is a two-component droplet, we need to know what the second component is. Only then can we perform the complex computations of the detailed thermodynamics and variable physical and transport properties, coupled to a complex dynamics of a droplet moving along a curved surface which, to complicate things, is changing its phase (evaporating) as time progresses.

This means the correct way of handling this peculiar problem is from the point of view of flow mechanics with a phase change. The formal definition of this kind of problems is this: the analysis of a two-component droplet on a curved surface which is moving, so that the mass and energy distributions determine the thermodynamic state of the system, which in turn sets the conditions for the phase change. The phase change then affects the transport of all physical quantities, which in turn acts on the dynamics of the phase change itself by evolving the interphase boundary conditions. The droplet is evaporating at an unknown rate, therefore the entire dynamics of the system under investigation is complex.

We need to know the momentum, energy, and the vapor mass fraction, from which we can compute the mass and heat fluxes integrated over the droplet surface. We need to assume an spherical droplet, and we need to assume buoyancy is negligible.

A key remainder: the droplet radius changes due to evaporation, so its size will decrease as time passes (namely: the size of the ice crystal gets smaller and smaller).

All in all, the behavior of the object in that video is consistent with an evaporating droplet moving on a curved surface which, in turns, moves, except for one intriguing detail: the flickering.

The flickering is not random: it has a pattern. Where does the flickering comes from?In my opinion, as the icy droplet evaporates, it passes through a liquid phase which reflects (as if it were a mirror) the flickering light of an unknown source. I ignore whether the spacecraft has flickering lights that could act as the flickering light source which is reflected by the droplet, but if it has indeed those lights, suffices for us to know the flickering rate in order to check whether it matches the flickering rate we see in the video.

(Yet, there are two things that perplex me. I assume the cameraman is a human and not an automatic image recognition system, therefore I must assume the guy is an experienced astronaut who, by necessity, has had to having seen those droplets several times. Why then zooming in? Why being interested in that specific droplet? Second, are not there other videotapes from different missions showing that same droplet behavior? My only comfort is that the droplet is not just ice water, but azeotropic water, that is, a mixture of water with some other compound, which are known to have a slightly different physical behavior, and hence the human operating the camera was not familiar with those kind of droplets.)

originally posted by: Direne
a reply to: Arbitrageur

Second, are not there other videotapes from different missions showing that same droplet behavior? My only comfort is that the droplet is not just ice water, but azeotropic water, that is, a mixture of water with some other compound, which are known to have a slightly different physical behavior, and hence the human operating the camera was not familiar with those kind of droplets.)

See post ……posted on Jun, 11 2022 @ 11:40 PM from www.abovetopsecret.com...

There’s different STS missions with moving purported droplets compared …

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a reply to: Ophiuchus1
Thanks for the link. I read the astronaut's blog where he says they are all normal looking ice crystals etc and I don't have any issue with that claim, since as I said I think the object I pointed out is likely an ice crystal or some other ordinary debris relatively close to the camera. I'm just not sure of the reason for the apparent change in direction and some other aspects of the trajectory, which I expect is due to some completely prosaic reason; if not the reason I speculated then some other prosaic reason. It's much easier for me to understand the direction changes in the thruster firing videos, where in some cases we can even see a little light on the edge of the video from the thruster, then the particles suddenly change direction, which all make perfect sense. But in that STS-80 object which appears at 3:37 the apparent direction change is not sudden so not due to a thruster firing like in the other videos showing that.

I didn't see anywhere in the astronaut's blog where he addressed that specific object/issue, and he admits he wasn't looking at the objects real time where is 3D stereo vision might have shed some light on the trajectory, so while I don't have any reason to disagree with anything he says I didn't find his commentary particularly helpful in clarifying my puzzlement.

originally posted by: Direne
a reply to: Arbitrageur

Yes, admittedly an interesting and curious object, and the mesmerizing effect on the observer comes from the fact that, as you point out, and the zooming in proves the photographer seems to be interested in it.

Notice the object is flickering? Yet, I think we could explain that behavior.

I don't see the flickering in the object that enters the lower right of the "NASA UFOs STS-80 "Smoking Gun" clip UNCUT queued to time 3:37" linked video, just a change in lighting at time index 3:43 where it goes from shadow to sunlight. So I'm not sure you're talking about the object I was trying to point out that becomes visible in the lower right, at about time 3:37.

I do see some flickering in other objects in that video, and I do see definite flickering in "UFO" in the video in the opening post which is likely due to a non-symmertrical object tumbling, as suggested by the Superman 2 clip posted on page 1 by Mandroid7, which may be a reasonable if not completely accurate analogy of how tumbling objects can appear to flicker, since I doubt general Zod is trapped in the tumbling ice crystal or whatever it is, but otherwise that object too appears to flicker.

Planetary scientist Thomas D. Jones, PhD, was an astronaut on four space shuttle missions (STS-59, -60, 80, and -98). On April 18, 2011, he wrote:

"I have spent many hours gazing out the shuttle windows during my 53 days in orbit, under all lighting and orbiter attitude conditions. The objects seen in the STS-80 videos are ordinary debris particles or ice crystals, some hit by shuttle thruster blasts that cause a change in their motion. Local lighting conditions also change the brightness of some objects as they drift into or out of shadow. I have never seen any evidence in space or on earth of spacecraft or phenomena not explained by our routine space operations in the shuttle or Space Station programs. My crewmates and I have not seen any evidence for UFOs or spacecraft of 'alien' origin or behavior. The STS-80 videos are records of normal space shuttle operations and optical phenomena."

He also had some choice words regarding the unending stories claiming that astronauts have seen and photographed mysterious alien craft in orbit:

"It is regrettable that so many spaceflight-minded young people have their enthusiasms exploited by misinterpretations of such shuttle videos. These inaccurate theories about what the videos show – some naïve, some possibly deliberately misleading – waste a great deal of productive energy. Insisting that astronauts have seen alien vehicles is incorrect: a deliberate falsehood. This myth wastes years of healthy curiosity and diverts it to pseudo-scientific wild goose chases, and is a disservice to the fantastic and dedicated work done in orbit by Space Station and shuttle crews, and their support team on Earth. Those still arguing about non-existent UFOs seen by space shuttle crews are wasting their time. Worse, they are misleading young explorers who don’t deserve to miss out on the genuine thrills and wonder of the spaceflight experience, its importance for the advancement of our species, and our understanding on the home planet and our universe."

a reply to: Shadowhawk

I wonder what he would say about Navy Commander David Fravor on the unidentified object he saw flying in the sky during a training mission?