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US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

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Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#381

Post by akiselev »

mcpackieh wrote: post #367
akiselev wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying a Apple M2 Max is mundane because you've got a CPU from the 80s. The interesting part isn't the mirror but how they made it. They're obviously not mundane, otherwise NASA would have designed Hubble to use equivalent optics. Any actually interesting technology would be under a Secrecy Order [1] and the patents wouldn't see the light of day, perhaps ever. The few examples we know of were definitely c…

> That's like saying a Apple M2 Max is mundane because you've got a CPU from the 80s. Yes, exactly. Give a modern Apple CPU to some chip experts in the 80s and they'd no doubt be amazed and have many questions about the details, but they would have a theoretical basis for understanding the premise of the thing. Give the same chip to Isaac Newton or Archimedes and it would be a completely different story. To them, a C…

We've got a theoretical basis for warp drives [1]! Casimir effect-based propelentless propulsion! Nuclear engines in spaaaaace! How much more theoretical basis does your contrarianism demand?

We've got a theoretical basis for almost any alien technology that comes short of violating the conservation of momentum or breaking the speed of light. Doesn't mean we're any closer to making an SSTO space ship.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#382

Post by RetpolineDrama »

tptacek wrote: post #306
vadansky wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the now-discredited "Gimball Video" Source? I don't think there was ever a consensus that it was discredited. Googling "Gimbal Video discredited" doesn't give me anything definitive.

As I understand it, that video illustrates either a camera glare artifact, or alien technology very carefully tuned to replicate a camera glare artifact.

You understand it wrong, this is a spurious and frankly absurd claim propagated by Mick West, which has been repeatedly debunked by _actual fighter pilots_.

Ex: https://youtu.be/Tyw4JA00AMc

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#383

Post by heavyset_go »

subsubzero wrote: post #362
tptacek wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, that video illustrates either a camera glare artifact, or alien technology very carefully tuned to replicate a camera glare artifact.

yeah the person(Mick West) who did the debunking is a retired gaming software engineer who is also somewhat of a known troll and has zero background in the field of avionic systems used by the fighter pilots. Some of his debunking statements are borderline absurd, you have a sighting that is seen on FLIR, radar and has an eyewitness testimony along with video and his statement is the pilot who has flown for 10 years…

Here's my post in response to a comment in the "US urged to reveal UFO evidence after claim that it has intact alien vehicles" HN thread[1] from a few weeks ago that addresses this:

> Watch the introduction to the 4 hour UAP panel that NASA hosted a few days ago[2], they address this.

> According to NASA, even highly trained and experienced pilots can easily be fooled, and often reported UAPs are artifacts of the technology that detects them, or are indeed things like weather balloons. For example, NASA even used the example of Navy pilots being fooled by a procession of commercial airplanes queueing to land at an airport 40+ miles away from their base.

> They also emphasize that radar, detection systems, etc are not scientific instruments that are suitable for the detection or analysis of this phenomenon. They emphasize that the technology that the Navy et al. use are strictly optimized for defensive/offensive interception of conventional weapons. That's to say that they're calibrated for war and not for accurate scientific observation.

> Going back to the procession of airplanes waiting to land, according to the instruments available to pilots and their own observations, those airplanes were doing things that were impossible to do without bending the laws of physics. Yet all they were were just a bunch of airplanes doing what all airplanes do.

> > Due to the supposed feeds and eye witness accounts, it seems infeasible there is a 'weather balloon' type explanation

> Pilots and their systems are fallible, you'd have to assume some argument from authority to believe otherwise.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36216745

[2] Public Meeting on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (Official NASA Broadcast): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQo08JRY0iM

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#384

Post by mcpackieh »

runjake wrote: post #376
tptacek wrote: post #292

Ezra Klein just did a long interview with Leslie Kean (a popular author and Coast to Coast AM guest) about her article in "The Debrief" --- where it went, after the Washington Post wouldn't run it on her time schedule --- about David Grusch: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas... It does not make Kean and Grusch's claims sound a lot more credible. Some of Kean's sources are proponents of thin…

> she cites the now-discredited "Gimball Video". (sic) When/where/by whom was the Gimbal video discredited? I’m especially curious because I’m somewhat of an “expert” in the area (having worked on those sensor systems and seen tons of footage in a former life) and I think it’s a legitimate object of some sort [1]. Though I don’t believe it’s extraterrestrial. 1. Eg. The footage of a purported object speeding right ov…

By Mick West numerous times, for instance here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#385

Post by KineticLensman »

bloopernova wrote: post #351
joshuahedlund wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All entertaining to speculate, but it's classic human-centered thinking to suppose that aliens would be regularly appearing a few thousand feet or so from us, but never ever anywhere in the rest of the billions of miles of our solar system and everywhere else in between here and wherever they came from (in addition to their conveniently never appearing within clear view of regular citizens' phones or cameras and neve…

I'd love to look at this solar system panopticon that you apparently have access to. We know vanishingly little about the day to day movements of the largest solar system objects. Anything smaller than a medium city is incredibly difficult to find and track.

> Anything smaller than a medium city is incredibly difficult to find and track

Sorry, but we routinely track asteroids that are less than 100 metres in size [0]. We track objects in orbit down to a few cm in size [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_Terrestrial-impact_La...

[1] https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/news/orbital_debr...

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#386

Post by baja_blast »

throwaway4aday wrote: post #197
aredox wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost all of Earth's population carries a camera (with their phones), and yet sightings of UFOs (or any cryptid) have been at an all-time low. https://xkcd.com/1235/

Dude, you can't even get a good picture of the moon on most phones without some AI assistance. How the hell are you going to snap a clear photo of something much smaller and dimmer? A challenge for the incredulous, bring me some high quality cellphone pictures of airplanes at night without using any extra equipment like tripods, lenses or stabilizers.

smartphones are optimized for selfies thus the lens is super flat. Any photo I try to take at a distance looks awful, and moon photos are even worse. You'd be better off taking these pictures with a 1960's film camera with an actual lens. Not only did standard cameras have 4.5k resolution (35mm) but the lens allows you to zoom in!

And get this 70mm cameras are equivalent to 18k.

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#387

Post by nradov »

heavyset_go wrote: post #354
nradov wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your comment. Russia has no real capability to fly surveillance aircraft over US territory. They can barely manage to fly to Syria without breaking down.

I said: > China/Russia/whoever As a placeholder for potential US adversaries who might have the motivation do something like this. If you don't like that I said Russia, ignore it and fill it in with China.

Come on, be serious. China can't even get the metallurgy right on turbine engines. Never mind flying saucers. If they are doing any airborne surveillance over the US homeland then it's either with spy balloons, or cheap little short-range drones launched by agents on the ground.

https://www.airandspaceforces.com/china-air-force-may-take-a...

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#388

Post by jstarfish »

throwaway4aday wrote: post #363
jstarfish wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa, that's far from true. They would not be able to duplicate an AK-47 as-is, no. Their reverse-engineering efforts of its components would absolutely advance all of their other tech, even if none of it ever produced a working firearm. The gun is inspiration-- an outcome to work towards. Producing gunpowder and trying to create a musket out of reeds may not work out, but would have led to their independent discover…

Without knowing what gunpowder is, can you discover how to make it just by looking at a sample if you are a stone age tribe? The only part of it you'll be able to identify is the charcoal. The other components are going to be unknown to you and besides that they are so finely milled into the powder that they are inseparable without techniques for decanting and knowing that you had to evaporate the water to get the sa…

I agree, but that's the point-- they're going to try a lot of things to achieve those ends. They may not create a single component of a functional firearm, but they're going to develop a lot of unrelated technology in trying. Even if we never made it to space, the attempt would still have given us Velcro.

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#389

Post by CapricornNoble »

echelon wrote: post #343
sokoloff wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To keep Americans happy about the over 3/4 Trillion dollars we spend on defense every year? “You spend a lot, but you get the best!” sounds a lot better than “You spend a lot, but we still suck!”

> “You spend a lot, but you get the best!” sounds a lot better than “You spend a lot, but we still suck!” This argument doesn't make any sense. The US military is better than the next top three militaries combined. The Ukraine war is showing the superiority of decades old Western tech.

> The US military is better than the next top three militaries combined.

Partially due to institutional experience and economies of scale (for certain capabilities). We probably still exceed what the next top 3 powers (China, Russia, India, BTW) are spending in PPP terms, so it shouldn't be that surprising.

> The Ukraine war is showing the superiority of decades old Western tech.

For every video of HIMARS blowing up a Russian ammo depot, there's a video of Ka-52 helicopters popping M2 Bradleys from 5+ km away.[1] M777s were lauded for their accuracy....until they broke. [2] Ukrainian brigades have been lavishly equipped with Western armored vehicles and they've bounced off a brick wall of positively-ancient minefields and artillery, very similar to the defense-in-depth that the Soviets used to defeat the Germans at Kursk ...in 1943.[3]

This conflict is so complex in terms of difficult-to-measure soft factors that are influencing the battlefield (training, maintenance, corruption, NATO ISR support, information operations/propaganda, etc.), that drawing conclusions about the merits of individual technical systems or especially the overall tech base of the two main powers (Russia vs "the West") as a whole is....unwise.

[1]https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraines-armor-appears...

[2]https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/25/us/ukraine-artillery-brea...

[3]https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/26/world/europe/ukraine-coun...

Re: US Congress doubles down on claims of illegal UFO retrieval programs

#390

Post by mcpackieh »

akiselev wrote: post #381
mcpackieh wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's like saying a Apple M2 Max is mundane because you've got a CPU from the 80s. Yes, exactly. Give a modern Apple CPU to some chip experts in the 80s and they'd no doubt be amazed and have many questions about the details, but they would have a theoretical basis for understanding the premise of the thing. Give the same chip to Isaac Newton or Archimedes and it would be a completely different story. To them, a C…

We've got a theoretical basis for warp drives [1]! Casimir effect-based propelentless propulsion! Nuclear engines in spaaaaace! How much more theoretical basis does your contrarianism demand? We've got a theoretical basis for almost any alien technology that comes short of violating the conservation of momentum or breaking the speed of light. Doesn't mean we're any closer to making an SSTO space ship. [1] https://en.…

> Alcubierre drive

Relies on "exotic matter" that violates known laws of physics.

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