The Black Knight Satellite - more questions than answers

a reply to: PlanetXisHERE

Different angles maybe? I think we'd have to see the full dimensions before coming to such a conclusion.

originally posted by: PlanetXisHERE
This......

Which is not the same as this, which is manmade:

And looks like something manmade.



Though the disinfo specialists would have us believing they were images of the same object. Those who can think for themselves can tell they are different.

The wicked witch of the west might have been dabbling here in the 1930's and some of the theoretical math supporting the hat might trace back as far as the pyramids.

Earliest date for an extraterrestrial craft should have been March 20, 1951.

a reply to: PlanetXisHERE

Please post a link to your source so that we can authenticate the images.

a reply to: PlanetXisHERE
You would be wrong:


You realize these were photographs taken moments after each other, correct? The photo on the left is your original "craft", while the photo on the right is your man-made object. The photo on the left had to be flipped horizontally in order to give the correct matching image of the right, or vise versa. Someone has suspiciously flipped the image at some point:


Below is the man-made image overlayed and rotated to match the craft image underneath. The opacity is set at 65% on the overlayed man-made image. As you can see, the matching shadows of the clouds show they are images taken moments after each other. There's no doubt this is the same object:


Think for themselves... Hmmmmm.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: Vrill
More likely an old story that's grown in the telling. Accumulating more unrelated items as time goes on.

I have my own "Black Knight" theory...and if true, the first mentions of it would be more in the mid sixties. I think the Time article cite is bogus.

Because I think...I found the 'source material'. Complete with references to dead Russians in capsules etc.

a reply to: Bedlam

I've always wondered how many cosmonauts were sacrificed for the program. Always figured that some were actually lost in orbit.

How do you possibly have time to track down such a thing lol.

originally posted by: framedragged
a reply to: Bedlam

I've always wondered how many cosmonauts were sacrificed for the program. Always figured that some were actually lost in orbit.

How do you possibly have time to track down such a thing lol.

I already knew it, it just took a long time to ferret it out of my long term storage. I recently had a long time to contemplate, and it suddenly dawned on me what I was recalling. I'm pretty sure way upthread (if this is the same thread...it was similar anyway) I said something like "I've heard something like this, somewhere", well, the topic came up telling "campfire stories" at some point over the last four months or so and it dawned on me why I felt I had heard this before.

I had. It was a novel, 65 or 67. Read it as a small yoot about 72. Reread it last night. It hits every high point in 'Black Knight' lore if you just keep part of the Maguffin and throw the framework away. Polar orbits, weird course changes, sightings of it in orbit about other nearby celestial bodies, dead Rooskies in early '60s shots, interfering with space launches, the whole enchilada. Even the appearance. My personal theory - if I go pony up the $30 to buy access to Time's archives, I will find no mention of it at all, and that part of the legend is fabrication. The supposed article's premise is loony anyway. I think "Secret of the Marauder Satellite" by Ted White is the original source material for Black Knight, and I bet you can't find a substantiable reference prior to that.

Those "secret dead cosmonauts" stories were around from the earliest days of the Space Race, it was the first big space history myth I dug into. Here, from forty years ago, preliminary results validated by hindsight -- www.jamesoberg.com...

originally posted by: JimOberg
Those "secret dead cosmonauts" stories were around from the earliest days of the Space Race, it was the first big space history myth I dug into. Here, from forty years ago, preliminary results validated by hindsight -- www.jamesoberg.com...

Yeah, but "SOTMS" was the only place I've seen the Black Knight (in drag as the bad guy in the story) associated with dead Rooskies.

If White didn't take a list o' Black Knight lore and build a faux Heinlein juvenile around it, then I'm still convinced it was the launchpad for most of the Black Knight legends.

Hell, it might have been a source of a lot of the dead Rooskie tales, too, a lot of the details in the novel match up to the stories you hear, complete with HAM radio operators, famous last words etc. In fact, I bet if I go look at the novel, I'll find that the second capsule's commander's final log entry from the novel ends up being word for word one of the "HAM operators" final messages in the tales on the net. It sounded awful familiar.

originally posted by: Bedlam

Yeah, but "SOTMS" was the only place I've seen the Black Knight (in drag as the bad guy in the story) associated with dead Rooskies. If White didn't take a list o' Black Knight lore and build a faux Heinlein juvenile around it, then I'm still convinced it was the launchpad for most of the Black Knight legends.

Hell, it might have been a source of a lot of the dead Rooskie tales, too, a lot of the details in the novel match up to the stories you hear, complete with HAM radio operators, famous last words etc. In fact, I bet if I go look at the novel, I'll find that the second capsule's commander's final log entry from the novel ends up being word for word one of the "HAM operators" final messages in the tales on the net. It sounded awful familiar.

I really think you've got something here.

So much of the evolved myths have dreamlike qualities, I thought it would be impossible to deconstruct them all the way back. I had thought of movies [and even radio dramas], but a kid's SF book wasn't in my field of vision.

Really REALLY helpful work. Can I share this with space myth buddies on the Facebook 'space history' site? If you could m2m me your real name that would lend gravitas, but it's not required.

originally posted by: JimOberg

I really think you've got something here.

So much of the evolved myths have dreamlike qualities, I thought it would be impossible to deconstruct them all the way back. I had thought of movies [and even radio dramas], but a kid's SF book wasn't in my field of vision.

Really REALLY helpful work. Can I share this with space myth buddies on the Facebook 'space history' site? If you could m2m me your real name that would lend gravitas, but it's not required.

I'm awfully flinchy about that. IRL I actually do work at/with some pretty fun places...Tom Bedlam = Tom [redacted] would not be a good advertisement for future contracts, as some of the things I relate are thinly veiled Bowdlerisms of RW projects.

You may feel free to claim it for yourself, if you like. I found my copy online at openlibrary.org, it's only 160 pages or so. Other than being a bit sketchily written, it's not that bad. Ted's definitely not Spider Robinson or John Varley though, in terms of writing imitation Heinlein.

eta: hey, If I ever get to do my movie script, it's going to be as Thomas Bethlehem. There's always that, I guess.

Sorry, I had the book still stuck in my eReader, anyone who wants can now check it out.

Such an interesting anomaly. Hard to know for sure if it's an intelligently made object or just a bit of debris. Either way, it's amazing a more concerted effort hasn't been made to picture, video it or even discover what it is. I think it's that fact that kind of adds to the mystery around it.

Would be incredible if it was discovered to be some sort of old alien vessel just floating about up there. Wishful thinking though!

originally posted by: DaemonD14
Such an interesting anomaly. Hard to know for sure if it's an intelligently made object or just a bit of debris. Either way, it's amazing a more concerted effort hasn't been made to picture, video it or even discover what it is. I think it's that fact that kind of adds to the mystery around it.

Would be incredible if it was discovered to be some sort of old alien vessel just floating about up there. Wishful thinking though!

It is not at all wishful thinking.

The question you have to ask yourself is this, "if the Black Knight satellite existed, would the public be told about it?" Of course not.

originally posted by: Bedlam
a reply to: Phage

Anyone got a subscription to Time and see if the supposed article from the OP even exists? Not sure I want to drop $30 to find out.

It is so obvious this thing was alien. Astronomers from around the world watched this thing for a week or so back in 1960 and couldn't figure out what it was, of course they would have eliminated the obvious things. It had a polar orbit, nothing any earth craft could accomplish then. Also was estimated to be at least 15 tons, again far larger than anything anyone on earth could put up at the time.

Here is the text from the Newsday article:

From the Newsday blurb 9/1/1960:

(Newsday) By: Bob Caro

It’s not a satellite and it’s not a meteor. Any astronomer can tell you that. And he can tell you its color and, to some extent, its speed. [There's just one thing he can't tell you - what it is. He can't even guess.] That’s the status at the moment of the ”week-long nationwide attempt to identify the mysterious REDDISH object that has been circling the earth since last Thursday.” Astronomers all over the country admit that they’re puzzled. One, Frank Judson of Chicago’s famed Adler Planetarium says ”I’ve been watching it for

Here is another site which has a bunch of links to other pictures and articles:

Article with links to pics

originally posted by: DJW001
a reply to: PlanetXisHERE

Please post a link to your source so that we can authenticate the images.

Link to NASA archives

originally posted by: PlanetXisHERE

originally posted by: DJW001
a reply to: PlanetXisHERE

Please post a link to your source so that we can authenticate the images.

Link to NASA archives

Yup, nice photos of a lost thermal cover from STS-88.

originally posted by: PlanetXisHERE
The question you have to ask yourself is this, "if the Black Knight satellite existed, would the public be told about it?" Of course not.

Oh, irony, where is thy sting?

originally posted by: PlanetXisHERE....
The question you have to ask yourself is this, "if the Black Knight satellite existed, would the public be told about it?" Of course not.

The question YOU should ask is this -- if anything remotely resembling the 'phantom satellite' of the 1960s existed today, how could any government keep it secret when world-wide amateur space watchers and listeners have far sharper senses than big governments half a century ago [eg, www.satobs.org]? Being so blissfully unaware as you are of such independent actors on the space monitoring arena, it's no wonder your fact-free and reality-defiant musings intersect with the normal universe so sporadically.

a reply to: JimOberg

Oh, please.

It's so really easy to be made to see or not see or forget something, these days….
Along those lines, Mr. Oberg, I'd have to ask you, what is your estimation of many people's theories that we are living in a simulation, or at least, a non-reality overlay, or augmentation of simulation, atop reality?

And yes, I'm totally serious.
Tetra50