The Black Knight Satellite

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by Wolfenz

 

Pentagon doesnt know what is it !!

Correction. At the time they didn't know what it was.

ya think ! they would looked into Discovery 5s casing or some part of it ?

Yes. They did.
Satellite


And, from the OP:

It took two weeks for Dark Fence's scientists to check back through their taped observations, and to discover that the mysterious satellite had first showed up on Aug. 15. The Air Force surveillance center also checked its records to provide a list of everything else that was circling in the sky, and its computers worked out a detailed description of the new object's behavior. The evidence from both Air Force and Navy pointed to Discoverer V, fired from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif, on Aug. 13.

edit on 6/3/2013 by Phage because: (no reason given)

They did what i seen in the news paper clipping that YOU (Phage) had just Posted
it said ( MAYBE ) ( Probbely ) as Not Actually Confirmed

Mystery Rocket Maybe the part of the Discoverer Rocket
news.google.com...,3553304&
dq=polar+satellite&hl=en


Repost

(You'd need a subscription to the New York Times to read the whole article, unfortunately). The first Defense Department report said the satellite was about 19 feet long, and weighed possibly 32,000 pounds! The next report withdrew that claim, and replaced it to “as big as an oil truck”. Yet another report stated they had tracked the object by radar for months (then later amended to weeks). The final, “official” report on February 24, 1960 then states it as part of Discoverer V:

However, Discoverer V (launched as part of the Corona project), launched August 13, 1959, and fell to Earth September 28, 1959. The payload was 450 pounds (far, far less than that stated for the mystery satellite in the Defense Department's own reports). It is a simple task to examine pics of the Black Knight satellite and compare it with pics of the Thor-Agena A rocket that launched and a Corona satellite. Can you see any similarities? (not even accounting for the size and weight of the Black Knight, and keeping in mind that the rocket portion fell to Earth).

So what do we have here a Back out of the claim first claim?

Mystery Satellite Tumbles through space !! Feb 11 1960
news.google.com...

ok Phage let me retype this word for word what the artcal has said ....

Navy tracker who keep a continuous watch on all space objects said they knew where all Discovery rocket casings whereabouts and that this object was not one of them the only indication of the mystery satellite size came in the pentagons comment that the object is slightly smaller then the Discoverer carrier Rocket these rocket are 19.2 feet long and 5 feet diameter weighing 1,400 pounds at burn out their ejectable capsules weigh 300 pounds

ok... well 19 feet is right but not 5 vs 14 foot diameter and 1,400 vs 32,000 pounds and slightly smaller ??


but then again Phage you may be right .....


see this !

Thor-Agena

Thor-Agena-A 16 launches between 21 Jan 1959 and 13 Sep 1960 The Discoverer 14 satellite used in the Corona spy satellite program was launched by a Thor-Agena-A. On 1960-08-19 usable photographic film from the satellite was recovered by a C-119 recovery aircraft. This was the first successful recovery of film from an orbiting satellite and the first mid-air recovery of an object returning from Earth orbit.[2]

en.wikipedia.org...


but what about from the first estimate of the size !! of the object ?

Spy satellite which means maybe the pentagon refused to reveal it to the public and even its own military
if its our spy satellite that is whether a part of a rocket or not ...

reply to post by gort51


You're correct, The real Black Knight was a British launch rocket for the blue streak missile. However, This thread is about The Black Night Satellite, not rocket. Also, Arthurian literature contains many stroies about a Black Knight, but thats another discussion.

Hope that helps. ~$heopleNation

reply to post by Wolfenz

So what do we have here a Back out of the claim first claim?

What is the source of the 32,000 pound claim? I can't find one.

Navy tracker who keep a continuous watch on all space objects said they knew where all Discovery rocket casings whereabouts and that this object was not one of them

It was not the rocket casing which was the issue. It was part of the "recovery vehicle". Initial radar estimates of the size of the object, "smaller than a Discoverer second stage", were later refined.

Yes, the Corona satellites were very secret. However it is hard to hide the rockets which launched them so the public was told (under the cover name "Discoverer") that the satellites were for research and testing for orbital maneuvering and re-entry.

Originally posted by Wolfenz

ok Phage let me retype this word for word what the artcal has said ....

Navy tracker who keep a continuous watch on all space objects said they knew where all Discovery rocket casings whereabouts and that this object was not one of them .....

Nobody ever, then or now, keeps a 'continuous track' on passive space objects, it's an absolute physical impossibility.

Once or twice a day you may get a pass through a radar fan and get an estimate, of varying accuracy depending on range and aspect angle. About as often, you may get a 'hit' as an object passed through the 'Fence' -- but without any usable speed or direction measurements.

The calculations required to correlate those 'hits' with a catalog of orbiting objects of different size and origin, was daunting in the early years. Most objects weren't transmitting, and nobody could read their license plates or even tell much about their shapes and sizes except by guessing based on brightness and radar signature.

Confusion over which object was what, was frequent and not unusual.

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by Wolfenz

 

So what do we have here a Back out of the claim first claim?

What is the source of the 32,000 pound claim? I can't find one.

Navy tracker who keep a continuous watch on all space objects said they knew where all Discovery rocket casings whereabouts and that this object was not one of them

It was not the rocket casing which was the issue. It was part of the "recovery vehicle". Initial radar estimates of the size of the object, "smaller than a Discoverer second stage", were later refined.

Yes, the Corona satellites were very secret. However it is hard to hide the rockets which launched them so the public was told (under the cover name "Discoverer") that the satellites were for research and testing for orbital maneuvering and re-entry.

edit on 6/3/2013 by Phage because: (no reason given)

well the 32,000 pound question is on all over conpriacy sites but to find a legit site that says it well


And now for somthing differnt

mmm size of a oil truck 1954 to 1960 Black knight satellite claimed first 32,000 19 feet
mmm size of a school bus 1971 to 1986 KH-9 Hexagon spy satellite legit 30,000 60 feet


Declassified US Spy Satellites Reveal Rare Look at Secret Cold War Space Program
Roger Guillemette, SPACE.com Contributor
Date: 18 September 2011 Time: 09:03 AM ET

The massive KH-9 Hexagon spy satellite on display at the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center, after being declassified on Sept. 17, 2011. Longer than a school bus at 60 feet in length and weighing 30,000 pounds at launch, 20 KH-9 Hexagons were launched by the National Reconnaissance Office between 1971 and 1986.

www.space.com...

can a Space shuttle have a 32,000 payload ?

reply to post by Wolfenz

Well the Hubble telescope weighs 24,500 pounds and was launched with a shuttle. How's that?

But this is what carried the KH-9


BTW, Discoverer 5 was carrying a KH-1, about 750 kg.

Originally posted by Wolfenz
can a Space shuttle have a 32,000 payload ?

Saturn-V's carried 95,000 lbs to translunar trajectories, and Chang Zheng V boosters in maximum lift staging can put 50,000 lbs in LEO. What's any of this got to do with the STS-88 pix of the dropped thermal shroud for a Node trunnion pin?

Carrying heavy payloads in shuttles required they have trunnion pins to lock them securely in the bay, for launch and landing. That's even more critical than weight.

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by Wolfenz

 

Well the Hubble telescope weighs 24,500 pounds and was launched with a shuttle. How's that?

But this is what carried the KH-9


BTW, Discoverer 5 was carrying a KH-1, about 750 kg.

edit on 6/3/2013 by Phage because: (no reason given)

Cool, interesting but that was in 1990 thanks .... but 30,000 lbs KH-9 in 1971 is interesting but was there anything available to launch a satellite of 32,000 lbs in 1954 59 or 60 ?

Originally posted by JimOberg

Originally posted by Wolfenz
can a Space shuttle have a 32,000 payload ?

Saturn-V's carried 95,000 lbs to translunar trajectories, and Chang Zheng V boosters in maximum lift staging can put 50,000 lbs in LEO. What's any of this got to do with the STS-88 pix of the dropped thermal shroud for a Node trunnion pin?

Carrying heavy payloads in shuttles required they have trunnion pins to lock them securely in the bay, for launch and landing. That's even more critical than weight.

what avoiding the question and now your going to say somthing about a secure hold down pin

all i asked if a Space Shuttle can carry a paylod of 32,000 pounds

ok is that a yes or a NO

and yes thank you i know about the saturn v well we did go to the moon with it in 1969 Right ...?

Originally posted by Wolfenz
Cool, interesting but that was in 1990 thanks .... but 30,000 lbs KH-9 in 1971 is interesting but was there anything available to launch a satellite of 32,000 lbs in 1954 59 or 60 ?

to What evidence is there, that there ever WERE any artificial satellites of that mass in the 1950s?

Sputnik and Sputnik-2 each left a rocket stage of about 13,000 lbs in orbit in 1957-8, and an Atlas missile massing about 9,000 lbs went into orbit in 1958.

But so far we've seen no reason to think anything bigger went up earlier. No evidence at all.

Originally posted by JimOberg

Originally posted by Wolfenz
Cool, interesting but that was in 1990 thanks .... but 30,000 lbs KH-9 in 1971 is interesting but was there anything available to launch a satellite of 32,000 lbs in 1954 59 or 60 ?

to What evidence is there, that there ever WERE any artificial satellites of that mass in the 1950s?

Sputnik and Sputnik-2 each left a rocket stage of about 13,000 lbs in orbit in 1957-8, and an Atlas missile massing about 9,000 lbs went into orbit in 1958.

But so far we've seen no reason to think anything bigger went up earlier. No evidence at all.

Im not asking what evidence im asking if the Soviet or Americans had the technolagy to put something up in space an object of 32,000 lbs in orbit in say in 1960

not saying if it did but could they ? in 1960 during the Cold War ....

C'mon here people - surely one of the main features of this fantastic story is that this thing is supposed to have COMMUNICATED with us. That seems to have got lost in this tread.

Well as promised I did a bit of armchair research (what a fascinating story), but unfortunately, like so many of these stories, the more you pull as the loose threads the more threadbare it gets…

But first, perhaps two or even three stories are being muddled here:

1) The picture of the black flying car thing – nice picture and lots of speculation.
2) Black Knight satellite reportedly first detected in 1954 before we (presumably) had any man-made satellites.
3) The proposed alien probe parked nearby that has been generating long delay radio echoes that’s perplexed physicist since the 1920s.

Perhaps they are all related, perhaps not.

The 1920s references queried in this thread relate to researchers noting long delayed echoes (LDEs) from the Dutch shipping radio station PCJJ in 1928. Normally, if a radio echo is heard from a radio station, the delay is about one seventh of a second as it travels around the earth bouncing between ionosphere and ground.

In Nature, 3 November 1928 radio engineer Jorgen Hals describing unusual echoes – delayed by between three and 30 seconds and much longer than could be explained by normal radio-wave propagation.

Hals also worked with physicists Carl Stormer and Van der Pol (from Philips – the electronics company) as they confirmed the existence of these echoes

Up to this point, as an experienced broadcast radio engineer including using communications satellites, I think the story seems to hold together. LDEs have been very occasionally reported (mostly between 3 and 30 MHz) since the 1920s. Although we have more sophisticated equipment to detect and measure them, the bands are much more crowed now and such echoes are more difficult to detect, particularly by casual observers.

LDEs used to be pooh-poohed by radio propagation engineers (like me!!) but there are now theories possibly explaining their origination. Unfortunately their rare and erratic nature makes them extremely difficult to study.

In 1960 Prof. Ron Bracewell proposed that an alien probe sent from another civilization which had spotted that the Earth had the potential to evolve a technological race. This probe could be parked in a Lagrangian point and it waits until the civilization discovers radio waves, which it then stores briefly and retransmits to draw attention to itself. Interesting idea, but why not just transmit something rather than doing the store-and-forward thing very, very occasionally?

Jump to the 1970s when Duncan Lunan (who is a founder member of the Glasgow Science Fiction Writers’ Circle), following Bracewell’s hypothesis, tried to ‘decode’ the messages described in the 1920s and published his results in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society.

He plotted the delays on a graph that “revealed” a star map and a message which Lunan decoded as:

"Start here. Our home is Upsilon Bootes, which is a double star. We live on the sixth planet of seven, coming from the sun, which is the larger of the two. Our sixth planet has one moon. Our fourth planet has three. Our first and third planets each have one. Our probe is in the position of Arcturus, known in our maps."

I also think the message is a very great deal to extrapolate from timed echo delays plotted out on a graph. The original timing I guess would have been approximate, given the equipment probably used at the time – no computer logging or digital clock for them! So any minor errors would make any graphical interpretation of the data speculative at best.

But I do think that it’s yet another really good story that starts to melt under the spotlight…

(BTW, assuming this satellite exists, I quite like the reasons AckAckAttack34 has proposed for it not being snatched by some agency or other.)

Also to follow up, it now seems that the evidence -- including a comment from a direct eyewitness, Jerry Ross -- is strong that the original STS-88 photographs show a dropped thermal cover intended for installation on a trunnion pin on node-1 of the ISS. The real-time NASA TV, as shown in the escerpt from the Scene List, showed and discussed the accidental loss, as it was happening.

Many people here, without that evidence, offered creative and innovative possible explanations for the object in the images. That's a natural part of problem-solving, try to imagine all possible solutions.

But the next step is to apply real-world constraints to the long list of possibilities.

I'd like to hear from any of those early proposal suggesters as to whether they are now satisfied that the pictures show a mundane piece of 'space junk', or if they don't believe that, why not?

Thanks!

Jump to the 1970s when Duncan Lunan (who is a founder member of the Glasgow Science Fiction Writers’ Circle), following Bracewell’s hypothesis, tried to ‘decode’ the messages described in the 1920s and published his results in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society.

Our home is Upsilon Bootes

So they know what we call their star.

A 1920s message. I doubt astronomers talked about star maps and astronomy on the radio waves much in 1920 something. If the radio waves were picked up at their home or relayed, add more time into the past. Even some instant reception still leaves it at the Earth 1920 level. But they know about our astronomy terms.

That seems to indicate that this civilization would have had contact with written information or persons on Earth. So why not just give the message to people on Earth instead of putting it in a satellite for us to find at some point.
Seems the idea is that that civilization sent and parked a satellite here.

So they decided to leave us an 'easter egg'.

Really doesn't seem to make much sense.

reply to post by roadgravel


On a plaque on the side of the voyager space probe's we have placed direction's and data to our Earth, inside there is a gold record and record player with greeting's and medical information on our species and culture's, we have on numerous occasion's sent intergalactic greeting's via radio transmitters, Adolph Hitler also did so, Even non deliberate we have been transmitting radio wave's for over 100 years now into the ether as they once called it, so why would a specie's whom may have detected us as potentially a space faring world at some point in the future have not initiated a safe contact or even sent us on a wild goose chase to see how advanced we are, there may be only a replica satellite in orbit around a planet in the epsilon bootes star system but I believe it to have actually been from here, not alien and to have been launched a long time ago by a now no longer extant civilisation.

Just one final thought what if we are the one's whose home is epsilon bootes and it was left for us by our ancestors when we for whatever reason became castaway on this planet though were they originated is open to debate.

This might seem overly imaginative but for any speculation all options must be examined.

It is or was real though.

Originally posted by LABTECH767
This might seem overly imaginative but for any speculation all options must be examined.
It is or was real though.

Imagination is important. These are good exercises.

Important not to get carried away by the story tellers, also. Check to make sure what the nature of any alleged transmissions were, and that even in these hypotheses, the object was out near the Moon, NOT anywhere near Earth where it could be seen or radar tracked.

It's also important to keep up to date with Lunan's thinking on his Epsilon Bootes interpretation, and I had lost track, too, until another helpful ATSnik posted a recent link to it, on an earlier 'Black Knight' thread. Good info there.

Originally posted by rubberchicken
Up to this point, as an experienced broadcast radio engineer including using communications satellites, I think the story seems to hold together. LDEs have been very occasionally reported (mostly between 3 and 30 MHz) since the 1920s. Although we have more sophisticated equipment to detect and measure them, the bands are much more crowed now and such echoes are more difficult to detect, particularly by casual observers.

How much penetration of the ionosphere do you get at 3MHz? It's not a really good band to do satellite communications with - the ionosphere's pretty reflective down there. Until you start getting up into the 10MHz area, you won't get much through the ionosphere, and even then it's pretty reflective/opaque most of the time, especially during the day.

I wouldn't think a satellite would be a likely source for LDEs in the 3-10MHz range, maybe 3-20MHz if you're getting daytime LDEs.

reply to post by Phage

What is the source of the 32,000 pound claim? I can't find one.

Page 18 of Flying Saucers Magazine, June 1960, MuMeson Archive.

www.mumeson.org...

easy to prove or disprove with the invention of telescopes

Originally posted by Gazrok
reply to post by Phage

 

What is the source of the 32,000 pound claim? I can't find one.

Page 18 of Flying Saucers Magazine, June 1960, MuMeson Archive.

www.mumeson.org...

This is a GREAT link!!

Gazrok, as you know, UI posted a long memoir about Palmer on the adamski thread. but here's a brief excerpt for Black Knight questers:

I had the pleasure of working with Palmer after he had moved to Amherst, Wisconsin, to continue his magazine publishing career late in life. He bought 'Space World' magazine from Otto Binder and I did a lot of my earliest writing for him, on Russian space mysteries. For free.

Once, in the winter 1974, I even had the opportunity to spend a weekend at his home, while on a business trip to Chicago. I rented a car and drove up.

We never talked about the Black Knight, as far as I can recall. Too bad.

These back issues show how wildly off-base his understanding of spaceflight was, but how keenly he understood the desires of his subscribers.

Are there any more issues of the magazine online anywhere?