Live data from Hacker News

American Airlines confirms UFO contact over New Mexico on Sunday

viewfromthewing.com

261–270 of 299 posts

Re: American Airlines confirms UFO contact over New Mexico on Sunday

#261
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know that the government kept the SR71 secret in the 50s and 60s and the stealth bomber secret in the 80s and 90s. There’s a great book called Skunk Works that details how massive military aviation advances were kept secret for decades. Now, we’re 60 years on from the Blackbird and 40 years on from the stealth bomber. We know the military has operated drones for decades and that Russia has hypersonic missiles. I f…

Reports and witnessing of UFOs are not something that started happening only in recent times. And by recent, I mean the last ~80 years (which is far longer than the 10-20 year window). You can find examples - stories and depictions of UFOs - throughout the history.

There have been stories throughout history of ghosts, supernatural powers, witchcraft, dragons, Bigfoot, a flat Earth, etc.

Eye witness testimony is notoriously poor evidence on it’s own.

Of course anything is possible, but stories alone are not sufficient evidence since we do have a history of misinterpreting things or making things up without physical evidence and buying into it en mass.

Re: American Airlines confirms UFO contact over New Mexico on Sunday

#262

Why poo poo this? This is what really irks me when people laugh this stuff off and spout off something about Fermi's paradox without even understanding it. Fermi's paradox only asks simply "if statistics say they are everywhere, well then where are they?" What if the answer is simply: "Zooming all around us and we occasionally see one". Period. The rest is assumption. Fermi's paradox does NOT presuppose contact. That…

>Why poo poo it? That's what I don't understand.

I think many people take a certain comfort in the assumption that we basically have the universe and the nature of reality figured out. They can accept the possibility that there may be some microbes buried deep on Mars, because it doesn't disrupt their world view or understanding of the nature of reality. But to consider the possibility that there are actually "alien" intelligent beings from other worlds, other dimensions or places unknown flying around on earth shatters their entire understanding of how the world works. It turns all of their assumptions about the universe, the history of our planet and the nature of life itself on its head. Its too much for many people to even contemplate, so they reflexively look for mundane explanations that fit into their perceived understanding of reality. For those predisposed to cling to the safety of what they think they know, the further idea that the government could have been aware of this phenomenon for decades while lying about it and covering it up is just another bit of paradigm busting trauma. The possibility is just too frightening for some, so they refuse to consider it (consciously or not).

Re: American Airlines confirms UFO contact over New Mexico on Sunday

#263

Why poo poo this? This is what really irks me when people laugh this stuff off and spout off something about Fermi's paradox without even understanding it. Fermi's paradox only asks simply "if statistics say they are everywhere, well then where are they?" What if the answer is simply: "Zooming all around us and we occasionally see one". Period. The rest is assumption. Fermi's paradox does NOT presuppose contact. That…

If there are aliens, we are in deep shit. There are two poles: Either the aliens are extremely rapacious, or very enlightened. If they're rapacious, we are weak annoying ants to be crushed. If they're enlightened, a cursory examination of our history and treatment of the world would show that we are extremely rapacious, and need to be contained or destroyed. So no matter where on that continuum, we are either destroy…

Do you worry about how rapacious a cockroach is on a distant island in the middle of the ocean? Even if, one day, you decided to visit that island and see what this distant place was like, would you feel compelled to seek out the cockroach and destroy it? Would you worry about the possibility that a million years from now the cockroach might develop the technology to escape its island and challenge you?

Re: American Airlines confirms UFO contact over New Mexico on Sunday

#264
post #5

> it looked like a long cylindrical object that almost looked like a cruise missile type of thing – moving really fast right over the top of us. Vaguely Identified Flying Object

The article really jumps to conclusions. This missile shaped and moving like a cruise missile in a part of the US where they test missiles, was probably... a test missile.

Especially given all of the hypersonic missile development going on right now.

Re: American Airlines confirms UFO contact over New Mexico on Sunday

#265
post #260

Fwiw, the skies over Arizona were loaded with contrails today. Very unusual to see this kind of volume. All of the aircraft appeared to be heading due west in the direction of Las Vegas (Nellis AFB) and southern Cal. The last time I witnessed this degree of activity was in early 2020, one day after the drone strike on Iranian General Soleimani. The whole sky was a crisscross mesh of expanding vapor. In these circumst…

Most military aircraft don't fly any faster than civilian airliners. In fact many of them are slower. Fighters can reach supersonic speeds in some circumstances but seldom do so outside of controlled exercise areas. You can't reliability differentiate between civilian and military aircraft just by watching contrails from the ground.

Missiles, on the other hand...

Re: American Airlines confirms UFO contact over New Mexico on Sunday

#266
post #31

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/30121/chinas-high-spee...

That's the first thing I thought of when I heard about this. If the US was testing its drones, I think it would prefer to keep them in a restricted airspace. On the other hand, if I were a foreign power looking to flaunt my new drone tech, I'd take it over the area that seems to be rife with sensitive bases. Still, it's most likely this is a US drone on a long range testing mission(or just flying off course due to a…

For hypersonic vehicles, restricted airspace is too small. They need to be able to fly into commercial airspace to demonstrate range, guidance systems, etc...

Re: American Airlines confirms UFO contact over New Mexico on Sunday

#268
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cruise missiles are able to fly in controlled and uncontrolled airspace on Military Training Routes (MTR). There are procedures in place for a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) to be requested and published that alerts other operators of the hazard to flight.

Speaking as a pilot, If there was a NOTAM I can guarantee with 100% certainty an airline pilot would know about it. Also the military doesn’t screw around with this sort of thing, I think the chance is virtually nil they intentionally flew an unmanned aircraft that close to an airliner.

It's not military. It's private weapons development company. There's no payload, so they do not need to notify commercial airliners, and it's a classified project, so they cannot anyway.

They are testing hypersonic missile systems for both ABM and warhead delivery.

Re: American Airlines confirms UFO contact over New Mexico on Sunday

#269
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a huge mystery how an airline pilot could possibly see a cruise missile shaped object right outside of the White Sands Missile Range. Probably aliens.

There is absolutely zero chance a cruise missile would be fired without closing the airspace to civilian aircraft. The pilot was at 37,000 feet and said the object was above them. Commercial planes top out at about 42k feet and would have shown up on ADS-B. A U-2 flying at 60k would look like a long cylindrical object about the size of a cruise missile (in the same way a 747 looks small from the ground), and not show…

If a private weapons contractor was testing a new hypersonic missile without any warhead on it, under a classified program - it seems to me that they would need to fly it outside restricted space to test long distances range and guidance systems.

As long as they were not at commercially used altitudes, it seems to me that they wouldn't advise anyone.

Re: American Airlines confirms UFO contact over New Mexico on Sunday

#270
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what they used to say about rocks falling from the sky. Right up until 1803. https://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/L/L_Aigle.html "Ernst Florens Chladni, was the first to publish (in 1794) the idea that meteorites might be rocks that originated not from Earth, but from space....The scientific community of the time responded with resistance and mockery." - Wikipedia

None of that is relevant today. Cameras are everywhere. External cameras, GoPros in cockpits. Ball lightning stories disappeared with mobile phones. Ufo stories are also disappearing. It's less and less likely that everybody just happens to miss opportunity of taking pictures.

Camera's are definitely everywhere. Recently a meteorite struck Belgium. Lot's of videos and around 200 people testified of seeing it.

The difference can be lots of things of course: densely populated, maybe seen from further away etc. But it's indeed peculiar that now in the smartphone age, we hardly see any UFO's on video, relative to how many camera's there are.

https://www.nieuwsblad.be/cnt/dmf20210124_98361639

Post reply on HN