Famed NASA Astronaut almost, kind of, (not really) says Extraterrestrials are here!

reply to post by RICH-ENGLAND


Yes Rich, funnily enough, some of us performers can actually work the knobs as well.

reply to post by The Shrike


Your point is well taken. And yes, sometimes you just have to confront those who fall into the category you mentioned.

you're either with us OR the terrorists.....

Originally posted by tsurfer2000h
reply to post by JimOberg

 

I must ask you if you have any way to back up your claims? Again I see you throwing out opinions and trying to make them sound factual. So russian ufologists have no clue as to what they are doing? Again I ask can you back that claim up with any evidence? If so please post it and if not please quit trying to demean people and acting as though they have no clue what they are talking about. I would go as far to say that there are those who know more than you do about this subject. Please just backup your claims when you make those statements about other people. Again show something other than what you have wrote.

If you want to start a new thread on Russian UFO myths, by all means do so and I'll see you there.

Your demand that I post evidence on Russian cases is merely proof that you haven't looked for what I have already published and posted for decades, so I have no confidence you'll read any of it if you haven't started yet.

The STS-80 video and the claims by Mr. Clark McClelland about the crew's own role as eyewitnesses is what this particular thread is all about.

I have published a technical reconstruction of the circumstances of the video which offers the prosaic explanation of drfiting nearby objects sunlit, or some becoming sunlit as they drift out of the shuttle's shadow.

I have published reasons to be cautious about too-eager credulity regarding Mr. McClelland's undocumented assertions of the actions and opinions of some of the STS-80 crewmen, including his claim that he personally witnessed a TV view of one of them, Dr. Musgrave, also being present during a meeting with an eight-foot-tall alien on an earlier shuttle mission. I can find no justification in believing that story is anything but imaginary.

We have published multiple comments and messages from both Dr. Musgrave and Dr. Jones, crewmen on STS-80, denying in whole and in part Mr. McClelland's allegations.

All of this evidence has apparently not had the slightest effect on your decision to accept as true the original story from Mr. McClelland.

Originally posted by The Shrike
Comment on what you see in the video not the extraneous data that ain’t worth a hill of beans! You see an object that is NOT a damn ice particle or debris or the result of a water dump or some other kind of dump hauling over the surface of earth. It draws the attention of an astronaut who makes attempts to find it in the darkness until he/she locks in on it and follows it for a distance. Comment on that sequence!

Don't you owe us a comment yourself on your promise to provide evidence that an astronaut radioed down to Earth that 'we still have the alien spacecraft in view'? Didn't you offer that event as part of the support for your belief that this happens all the time in space? As I recall I posted evidence that the message was a hoax -- and you apparently shut up about it entirely. I apologize if I overlooked your response (or if I've confused you with another poster), but so far, I haven't seen it.

No one is wasting your time. It's the other way around. You're always asking for data that no one has unless they know where in NASAdom to possibly look fot it IF it was available to the average Joe. You're closer to NASA sources than possibly anyone on any forum in the world and it should be as easy as 1-2-3 for you to find it.

So you demand I do YOUR homework too? And you claim that even without you knowing anything about the context of the scene, you still can understand it perfectly? We certainly DO have clashing approaches to investigating unearthly videos, fer shoor.

No, a person defending an extraordinary claim needs to himself provide the evidence that it cannot have a prosaic explanation. Demanding that a skeptic PROVE it's not unexplainable while intentionally preventing a thorough investigation is bad form. Besides, if I got that data, you likely wouldn't believe me anyway, if your past conclusions are any guide.

Daytime, nightime, who cares? You pulled this on STS-48!

I'll be quoting you on this in future discussions.

Trial? We don't need no steeenking trial! Knowledge? We don't need no steenking knowledge! We know the verdict we want, and have wanted from the beginning. Investigation? It's only a waste of time.

What does the video show to you? What do you see? What do you think about what you are seeing as you watch the video? Almost all to a man/woman on this and any other forum would say that the astronaut manning the camera is videographing a classic UFO.

Well, when you tally the votes of the defiantly ignorant, what do you think you have proved?

And, BTW, you keep mentioning Story Musgrave as an astronaut who doesn't admit that he has been surprised by videos that have been shown to him of space objects and over on Unexplained Mysteries I posted his comments after watching the STS-80 video shown to him and he does say he is baffled (he didn't use that word but the one he did means the same, semantics!) at the materializing UFO. You, very choosily, do not include his pro-unknown-object(s) comments. Same ol', same ol'.[

I thought I had mentioned it, are you sure you just didn't decide to skip over what I'd written? Musgrave was cold-cocked with a video he hadn't ever seen before (and which by his surprised reaction he hadn't even witnessed eyeballs out the window in flight, contrary to McClelland's claim), and the producers withheld from him the illumination conditions of the view (shuttle casting a full-dark umbra backwards along its flight path, pointing towards the receding still-dark horizon) so stuff suddenly 'appearing' genuinely looked weird. When he later saw my report on the authentic context of the sequence, and the ambiant lighting, he immediately concluded that this was the explanation for what had puzzled him. I posted his message -- ask him or Jones yourself.

That does seem to be the approach of the UFO community on this particular case, doesn't it? Try to keep their target audience as unaware as possible of the contextual facts of the encounter. Accuse the holders of any contrary views -- astronauts, flight controllers, posters here -- of being liars.

Are you even capable of admitting that the described illumination conditions -- a shuttle casting a full-dark shadow cone away down its field of view, with a dark Earth horizon background, the shuttle being bathed in just-risen sunlight that is undetectable except by the lit-up small nearby particles? This situation is fundamentally unearthly so it's no mystery why people who insist on interpreting it in earthside terms can be misled -- but can you even conceive it is possible, in space, sometimes?

Originally posted by JimOberg
That does seem to be the approach of the UFO community on this particular case, doesn't it? Try to keep their target audience as unaware as possible of the contextual facts of the encounter. Accuse the holders of any contrary views -- astronauts, flight controllers, posters here -- of being liars.

just to reiterate.... there weren't any 'contextual facts' in your 'report'.... just assumptions based on your own observations.....

f you want to start a new thread on Russian UFO myths,

See, condescending language yet again. They're Russian therefore they are myths. No, we want you to answer the question you were asked.. Why is it that the Russians are happy to talk about their experiences, in uniform and the Americans aren't/don't have any at all?

When a ranking Russian officer says of UFOs in general. "Of course we went after them , look we catch one and we can use its' tech we would have had the Americans under the cosh"... How refreshingly honest.

Meanwhile you are still towing the party line and sneering like a school kid at the very idea of their existence.

Originally posted by JimOberg

Originally posted by The Shrike
(snipped my comment)
Don't you owe us a comment yourself on your promise to provide evidence that an astronaut radioed down to Earth that 'we still have the alien spacecraft in view'? Didn't you offer that event as part of the support for your belief that this happens all the time in space? As I recall I posted evidence that the message was a hoax -- and you apparently shut up about it entirely. I apologize if I overlooked your response (or if I've confused you with another poster), but so far, I haven't seen it

That wasn't me as I don't deal with those subjects (astronaut communications)..

So you demand I do YOUR homework too? And you claim that even without you knowing anything about the context of the scene, you still can understand it perfectly? We certainly DO have clashing approaches to investigating unearthly videos, fer shoor.

You know that I'm an excellent researcher but the data you request is beyond my ken. Besides, all I've asked you to do is comment, if you so desire, on what we all see and speculate upon. People looking at videos of unusual objects whether in space or above our heads usually doesn't think of data. They're going by what they see and what life's experience has taught them to come to a conclusion that has to be temporary because all of the unknown data remains unknown.

No, a person defending an extraordinary claim needs to himself provide the evidence that it cannot have a prosaic explanation. Demanding that a skeptic PROVE it's not unexplainable while intentionally preventing a thorough investigation is bad form. Besides, if I got that data, you likely wouldn't believe me anyway, if your past conclusions are any guide.

But all I/we are asking is for your comments as a respected expert on space matters (on this particular video) since you and we are viewing the same thing and even though we haven't been in space we are still viewing the same thing and based on your knowledge you can come to conclusions that make sense. We are almost all aware of the debris surrounding the shuttles. But when astronauts videograph objects that are not the known debris, your brain has to question what you're seeing. Not debris. Not ice particles. Not thruster results.

Daytime, nightime, who cares? You pulled this on STS-48!

I'll be quoting you on this in future discussions.

You have in the past so nothing will change as I have not changed my mind as to what one sees in the STS-48 video and I'm glad to have on my side the esteemed physicist Jack Kasher and a ton of other non-nuts who think your explanation is out of this world!

(snip)

Well, when you tally the votes of the defiantly ignorant, what do you think you have proved?

I could be considered defiant but not ignorant. I don't think I've proved anything nor have I strived to prove anything. I simply present my opinion and I criticize opinions of others when they clash with common sense and logic, as deduced by me.

(snip)

I thought I had mentioned it, are you sure you just didn't decide to skip over what I'd written? Musgrave was cold-cocked with a video he hadn't ever seen before (and which by his surprised reaction he hadn't even witnessed eyeballs out the window in flight, contrary to McClelland's claim), and the producers withheld from him the illumination conditions of the view (shuttle casting a full-dark umbra backwards along its flight path, pointing towards the receding still-dark horizon) so stuff suddenly 'appearing' genuinely looked weird. When he later saw my report on the authentic context of the sequence, and the ambiant lighting, he immediately concluded that this was the explanation for what had puzzled him. I posted his message -- ask him or Jones yourself.

Musgrave was not "cold-cocked" with a video he hadn't ever seen before. It's immaterial whether he'd seen it before or not. The point being that here is this experienced astronaut being shown a video the contents of which he found baffling because even though he'd been in space and claims to have seen some odd objects, the "UFOs" shown in the video were, to him, baffling. He sounded as if he had never seen large, white, round objects materialize from under the clouds and speed off. As an experienced astronaut he could have simply said that what is seen were ice particles, debris, etc., and fluffed it off. But he didn't. He expressed total wonderment.

That does seem to be the approach of the UFO community on this particular case, doesn't it? Try to keep their target audience as unaware as possible of the contextual facts of the encounter. Accuse the holders of any contrary views -- astronauts, flight controllers, posters here -- of being liars.

Others may do that but I don't. You can't quote me there.

Are you even capable of admitting that the described illumination conditions -- a shuttle casting a full-dark shadow cone away down its field of view, with a dark Earth horizon background, the shuttle being bathed in just-risen sunlight that is undetectable except by the lit-up small nearby particles? This situation is fundamentally unearthly so it's no mystery why people who insist on interpreting it in earthside terms can be misled -- but can you even conceive it is possible, in space, sometimes?

When you express yourself like that only a fool would counter you so not being a fool I won't. But the conversation is not about what you state. The conversation is about the many anomalous objects not anywhere near the shuttle that are zoomed into. That are tracked. That stop astronauts from continuing their narration for just a few seconds but the silence is louder than speech.

When you are asked for your point of view, those asking, myself included, take into account that you're highly educated in the space field but we also know that you cannot describe as an astronaut 'cause you haven't had the experience. Like us you are earthbound and can come to different conclusions than us but your conclusions violate our common sense.

Let's stay sane inside of insanity.

edit on 5-11-2010 by The Shrike because: Format.

edit on 5-11-2010 by The Shrike because: Format again.

reply to post by The Shrike



Bro, you need to clean that last post up a bit.


Edit: I meant that in a nice way.

reply to post by JimOberg


I once had a talk with an airline pilot who flew across the Pacific frequently. I asked him if he ever saw anything "strange" during any of his flights. His answer wasn't that surprising.

"If any pilot values their job, they never openly discuss these things."

Think about it ....


Why are the old timers coming forward with this "things we are not allowed to talk about" info?

Why wait until before they die? Why not disclose what they saw when they saw it? Is it because there are folks like you ready to make them out to be constipated intellectuals? Maybe put their job at risk?

Originally posted by FireMoon
No, we want you to answer the question you were asked.. Why is it that the Russians are happy to talk about their experiences, in uniform and the Americans aren't/don't have any at all?

You mean like cosmonaut Afansyev? Do you consider his comments credible?

Here: www.ufoevidence.org...

reply to post by JimOberg


Persoanlly, i find him a darn sight more credible than "It's truth but not as we know it Jim Oberg"

Originally posted by FireMoon
reply to post by JimOberg

 

Persoanlly, i find him a darn sight more credible than "It's truth but not as we know it Jim Oberg"

It's a common temptation to quickly believe input that already agrees with what we believe, and we're all subject to that bias. That's why serious investigators know to make themselves check even harder stuff that they recognize as reenforcing pre-existing views.

So when you read (from Sightings TV) that "In April of 1979, Cosmonaut Victor Afanasyev lifted off from Star City to dock with the Soviet Solyut 6 space station," a reasonable first step would be to verify checkable facts:

Did Afanasyev blast off in April 1979?

Do cosmonauts lift off from 'Star City'?

Did Afanasyev dock with a space station "Solyut 6" (a typo for "Salyut 6")?

You are able to perform these simple checks, I presume. Please do so and report results, and the implications of those results.

Are any of those statements true?

With those results, you may make an estimate of how much you can rely on the narrator's description of the Russian commentary from Afanasyev. You may feel it is justified to try and determine how much of the original Russian is being accurately translated. Or not -- depends on your calibration from the article's first three alleged facts.

Jim just answer the question....

Why do their people feel free to speak of it, whether it's moonshine or not and why do your people avoid the question?


Oh and i gave you a link to the quotes from the Russians i am interested in stop trying to deflect yet again.

Originally posted by FireMoon
Meanwhile you are still towing the party line and sneering like a school kid at the very idea of their existence.

BTW FYI the phrase is "toe the line", not "tow the line", which makes no sense at all.

And I'm not sneering at the undeniable existence of unexplainable reports, I'm sneering at the mindset of people who pretend their eager-believer gullibility makes them intellectually and morally superior.

Originally posted by FireMoon
Jim just answer the question....

I've lost track, which one? As you recall, I've asked questions about responses to my investigation of the STS-80 case, and about acceptance of the repeated testimony of two of the crewmen, and those are probably higher priority questions since that is the theme of this thread.

Why do their people [Russians] feel free to speak of it, whether it's moonshine or not and why do your people avoid the question?

Well, US astronauts don't avoid it, They -- eg Runco, Musgrave, Jones, Smith, others -- do answer it, and you don't LIKE their answers so find creative ways to disbelieve them.

Oh and i gave you a link to the quotes from the Russians i am interested in stop trying to deflect yet again.

i looked back several pages and didn't see the link, please repeat it.

I just don't see a wall of silence on the part of American astronauts (as well as those from more than a dozen other countries who also have flown on US spacecraft). Here's an example of an astronaut describing an unexplained space visual phenomenon very explicitly:

March, 2001: Andy Thomas, career astronaut, veteran of both Mir and the International Space Station, looked out the window of the ISS toward the approaching horizon. He was off-duty, in between shifts, when suddenly he saw a shimmering ring of fire lying flat on the surface of the earth. Instead of its coming closer, which is what Thomas expected, the ring pulled farther ahead; from his perspective, as a result of foreshortening, it eventually flattened out. Thomas could clearly discern features of the Earth’s surface sliding beneath the burning, crimson rim. It was like nothing he had ever seen. It was like nothing he had ever heard of any other astronaut having seen, either. He was absolutely baffled.
“As the ring came nearer and nearer to the horizon, I almost lost sight of it,” Thomas explains. “But then, this bright light appeared in exactly the same place. And, a moment later, I was looking at a rising full moon.”
Thinking that the ring must be some sort of rare multiple reflection phenomenon, created by the moon’s image hovering below the horizon, Thomas returned to the window an hour and a half later, ready to observe the apparition again; this time, he had brought his recording equipment.
But, despite the scheduled moonrise, nothing happened. “The moon rose normally. There was no ring of fire. Some atmospheric condition must have changed.”
The space station now was orbiting the Earth a thousand miles farther east. Whatever localized conditions had created the original apparition no longer existed. Neither Thomas nor any other astronaut has seen such a thing since.
But the memory and the awe, like the thing itself, continue to hover on the edge of the known universe.
“I don’t know what it was,” Thomas says, six years later, “but I know that I saw it.”

seedmagazine.com...

Right Jim... they talk about it do they. only through you... Here's a direct challenge.. Contact the History channel and tell them you have a rake load of astronauts want to do a programme where they talk about UFOs with their Russian counterparts.. They will jump at the chance to make such a programme.

Simple isn't it?. Till then quite the eternal deflection and answer the question

Oh and tow toe... you;re wrong, both are used and the derivation is unknown. In fact many believe it was originally tow.. There is no right or wrong on that one..

Originally posted by FireMoon
Right Jim... they talk about it do they. only through you... Here's a direct challenge.. ....

We're talking about STS-80's famous video here, and the quality of the evidence for it being extraordinary, and about my argument that one needs more than a superficial visual glance at the screen to make a sound judgment of what is being shown -- one needs context, illumination conditions, and direct eyewitness reports. I provide them, all checkable independently.

Many folks seem not to want that info - worse, they seem to want to NOT see that info, and they don't want other people to see or believe it either. Interesting attitude.

The most striking realization I came to when examining the context of the most famous 'UFO videos' -- STS-80, 48, 63, 75, and others -- was that the particular illumination conditions were all the SAME but RARE, a very short and special condition with the shuttle emerging into sunlight while the exterior camera was pointed back down track, away from the sun, towards the distant still-dark horizon, with no other sun-bright shuttle structure in sight so that the camera's Automatic Gain Control (AGC) circuit maxed the sensitivity to small points of light.
The orbital conditions only pertain for at most two minutes every 90+ minute orbit, and the camera's pointing -- deliberately to avoid having any body elements in the field of view so as not to glare-out the AGC and lose sensitivity -- was specifically for a science observation program called the Mesoscale Lighting Experiment (principal investigator, Skeet Vaughan of NASA-Marshall).

If this concentration of 'famous cases' were accidental, the odds against them ALL occurring in these particular circumstances are truly astronomical.

But I argue that the appearances on the videos reflects a cause-and-effect process that directly allows small nearby shuttle-sourced debris to become visible (while responding to various sources of episodic shuttle out-gassing from more than a hundred potential sources).

I think this is a useful insight into understanding the true genesis of such scenes.

I'd like to share it with other folks genuinely interested in what these scenes might be evidence for -- and NOT evidence for.

Other issues -- save for other threads.

Originally posted by FireMoon
Right Jim... they talk about it do they. only through you.....

You're imagining things. Jones sent an email to somebody else, quoted not long ago on this very thread. Get a grip and stop editing reality to confirm your own opinions.

Anybody can get the technical data.

Here's an example of the data charts from STS-48 that show how the zig-zag UFO pulse was a steering thruster:

www.igs.net...

Why? This is a thread about what astronauts see and don;t see even though you have avoided the question about STS 82, which has been duly noted.

If your people are so desperate to clear this all up it's simple. Contact the History Channel and give them a list of astronauts willing to talk on camera with their Russian counterparts about what is seen and isn't seen on these missions.

The adjudicator will be a person from a *neutral* country Professor Jim Al-Khalili would be my choice, great TV presence and very natural in front of a camera and qualified up the wazoo.. The History Channel does a lot of joint ventures with Channel 4 over here in Britain. I'm sure, given their remit, they'd be only too happy to climb on board and probably provide a venue for the show. So 6 of your people, 6 Russians, neutral adjudicator and MC and simultaneous translation/ subtitles for both the Russian market and the English speaking markets. It's not like it would cost a huge amount in the scheme of TV shows, no fancy sets etc. in sure we can sort out, through the respective websites a number of specific video clips to be discussed and maybe the Russians would supply a few of their own.

It's Friday November 5th a month from now, post the names of the astronauts who would be willing to take part with some kind of factual evidence they would do so. I look forward to hearing back from you then.