Ice crystals? Debris? A visual rebuttal

frankly i don't even care about those NASA videos anymore, they have become so common now that them and space x livestream everthing that they have basically no value

a reply to: bluemooone2

what was it?!

originally posted by: The Shrike
Photo 6
Ice crystals come to a stop one at a time and form an incomplete circle. Ice crystals/debris with brakes? You decide.

No need for breaks, as they do not stop.
And no, I don't see any reason for those not being ice crystals.

That video is from STS-80, you can see that image near 5:37.

Photo 9
Shuttle wide angle showing the earth and white objects near the bottom edge of earth. Ice crystals/debris? You decide.

I think they are all ice crystals, except one. It's easy to see if you play the video faster that one has a completely different behaviour, and it's movement appears to follow the curvature of the atmosphere.

Tom Jones, who was on STS-80, has invited people interested in this video to discuss it on hos blog where he explains why it was ice flakes. One person showed up in two years to call him a liar and then run away.

originally posted by: shawmanfromny
a reply to: The Shrike

SNF...nice effort! I posted on another thread, back in June, that the objects swarming around the broken tether from STS-75, were nothing more than an optical illusion. Please note, I'm not implying that all strange objects, seen on NASA footage, or by astronauts, are just ice crystals, or space junk. However, I do believe that the following video clip explains that the "tether footage" shows nothing more than zoomed out-of-focus spherical shaped blurs or distortions, mimicking the camera lens parabolic mirror. What's your opinion on this?

I jokingly said to Jim that astronauts should do spacewalks and videotape the shuttle from a short distance but far enough to show the complete shuttle with some space around it to see evidence of these ice crystals/debris that an astronaut said on the tether video travels with the shuttle. Of course I was being facetious 'cause I know shuttles stopped being used in 2011. I was baiting Jim.

So I viewed a few videos at YouTube of shuttle (and ISIS) spacewalks and lo and behold, nary a single ice crystal nor debris. Every video showed a clean area surrounding the shuttle and as far as one could see. So that astronaut that is heard on the tether video saying "...ice crystals and debris that fly with the shuttle" is plain lying and he doesn't know what he was talking about. So if there are no ice crystals/debris traveling with the shuttle the shuttle cameras did not film through a mass of them. The tether is claimed to have been 80 miles away. How could a lens focused 80 miles away film through a mass of ice crystals/debris that doesn't exist 'cause NASA's own videos don't show them?

originally posted by: The Shrike
So I viewed a few videos at YouTube of shuttle (and ISIS) spacewalks and lo and behold, nary a single ice crystal nor debris.

I suppose you mean ISS.

Every video showed a clean area surrounding the shuttle and as far as one could see. So that astronaut that is heard on the tether video saying "...ice crystals and debris that fly with the shuttle" is plain lying and he doesn't know what he was talking about.

The fact that you haven't seen ice crystals on other videos doesn't mean the astronaut was lying.
One question: were the videos made with the same type of camera?

So if there are no ice crystals/debris traveling with the shuttle the shuttle cameras did not film through a mass of them.

If there weren't any ice crystals visible on the other videos you saw does that mean that ice crystals could not travel along with the shuttle? No, it only means you didn't see them on the other videos.

The tether is claimed to have been 80 miles away. How could a lens focused 80 miles away film through a mass of ice crystals/debris that doesn't exist 'cause NASA's own videos don't show them?

You cannot honestly say that ice crystals/debris do not exist just because you didn't see them in some videos, in the same way I cannot say that what we see on the tether video cannot be extraterrestrial craft.

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People

Thats it! Thank you

Story Musgrave's view: www.jamesoberg.com...

Tom Jones discusses this video on his blog and invites anybody seriously interested in discussing it to join in. Chicken# name-callers never show up.
skywalking1.wordpress.com...

originally posted by: The Shrike
…. A flash is seen and the zig-zagger angles away and as it does a trail is seen seemingly aimed towards the zig-zagger. You say the flash was caused by an attitude thruster firing and the force of the expended energy pushed the ice crystal away.

My problem with that explanation. The zagger was not the first or the only one on the scene, there are more. Some static ones and some appearing and slowly drifting in different directions. The thruster explanation may be valid but I always expect a reaction to an action and I don't see the shuttle budge. Additionally, how selective is the thruster that it affects only one ice crystal and none of the others are affected and keep on drifting while new ones appear. And what about that trail that seems to generate from earth and is headed to where the zagger was before it zagged? ...

How can a flash be seen in a vacuum? Obviously with no gas to be illuminated it can't be -- unless it is itself gas, a plume from a thruster which the autopilot triggered at exactly that moment as the shuttle drifted up against an attitude limit. Th0se precise times, angles, and angle rates are on telemetry records, and these records are included in my report.

The effect on one dot but not others is a feature of outer space -- it's three dimensional, it has depth and distance, and nearby the shuttle there are sheltered areas where the plume from a jet is blocked [like over the payload bay, for example]. So the true fact that some dots react to the plume and others don't merely shows they are at different relative positions to the thruster. This is definitely unusual in terms of earthside experience, but we're operating in a fundamentally different environment.

The fact that new ones appear is also proof they are close to the shuttle, since at first a number of them appear, at the instant of orbital sunrise when sunlight begins streaming past the shuttle. As other particles from the shuttle continue slowly drifting away from it, they emerge from the shuttle's own shadow and appear. The observation that none of them 'disappear' [go back into the shadow] shows that their motion is slowly AWAY from the shuttle.

As for " And what about that trail that seems to generate from earth", SEEMS is the correct term, since it's sunlit which indicates it's high enough in space to be near the shuttle, whereas if it were coming up from Earth it would still be dark -- and not visible.

originally posted by: The Shrike….

I've been visiting Jim's website since the beginning of time. I learn a lot, I disagree with some, and most of it is over my head.

Outer space is over your head, too, and I'd like to help you understand how badly you misunderstand it.


The STS-48 video shows a flash from vernier thruster L5D as recorded on telemetry, automatically triggered by the autopilot to maintain pointing accuracy, and several of the nearby sunlit dots change course during and only during the interval of the thruster firing. That's seems perfectly understandable to me, that there is a cause and effect between those two events. What's baffling you?

There seems to be a general idea being proliferated about the behavior of ice crystals in space.

That idea is this:
"Ice crystals can not move in an erratic manner, through space. Thus, these are not ice crystals."

In reality, this idea is inherently flawed. Ice crystals CAN move in erratic manner.

Allow me to verbally illustrate my statement.

Imagine you have a piece of paper in space, completely free floating.

Now, shine a light on that paper.

It will move, due to the energy distributed to that paper, from the light.

Ice crystals have varying degrees of physical composition and structure.

Translucent ice will refract, reflect, and interact with light.

Given that most ice is not perfectly spherical shapes, the distribution of this energy will not be uniform.

The ice crystals will have movement, characteristic of this uneven energy distribution.

Multiple ice crystals will reflect at and/or deflect neighboring ice crystals.

Perfect prediction for this movement, may be impossible without accounting for all energy distribution sources, as well as the physical shape and compositional structure of these particles.

There are stray cosmic rays all over the place, in space, where there isn't anything to stop radiative energy as it proliferates.

This CAN create acceleration, deceleration, and vector changes of ANY angle.

This thread has some interesting points to consider, but lacks the ability to properly account for these forces in any meaningful manner.

I defer all questions of my post, to common sense.

Erratic ice crystal movement is not "proof of intelligent propulsion"

I haven't even mentioned the fact that there is a potential for magnetically active particles, frozen in those ice crystals. Thus, allowing for even more vector and accelerative uncertainty.

a reply to: The Shrike

Since I created the thread I have additional different thoughts based around the need for better evidence to support my opinions. So I viewed a few videos at YouTube of spacewalks in order to see the areas around the shuttle and hope to see the ice crystals and/or debris that the astronaut on the STS-175 (tether) is heard saying: "...a little bit of debris that kind of flies along with us..." I didn't see a single ice crystal or any debris. The areas around shuttles were impeccable and when astronaut Musgrave Story did the repair on the Hubble telescopes nothing out of the ordinary was seen in the foreground and background.

I also did a search at Google Images for photos of shuttle ice crystals and debris and not one single photo appeared.

The evidence proves that claims of ice crystals or debris on the various videos cannot be accepted. It's especially disturbing when earthbound humans who are exposed to the same videos still buy and propagate an optical delusion.

Anyone here that buys the ice crystals/debris explanation please provide links to videos showing such.

Put up or shut up.

originally posted by: The Shrike
The evidence proves that claims of ice crystals or debris on the various videos cannot be accepted. It's especially disturbing when earthbound humans who are exposed to the same videos still buy and propagate an optical delusion.

That's not evidence, evidence would be if you had found something that proved that those cannot be ice crystals. Not finding videos that proved to you that ice crystals can exist in space is not evidence that they cannot.

Anyone here that buys the ice crystals/debris explanation please provide links to videos showing such.

I will if I find any, but I'm not spending more than 15 minutes looking for them, I have more important things to do.

a reply to: The Shrike

You're right The Shrike.

The next time I am in space and have some ice crystals on me, I promise you that the first thing I will do is take a video and see if I can reproduce the phenomena.

Until such time, I consider this argument in a state of unresolved conflict, with neither side being correct.

Thank you for your effort.

I promise to put in an equal amount, the next time I get the chance.

Ice flakes on spacewalk.
www.youtube.com...

originally posted by: The Shrike
a reply to: The Shrike

I also did a search at Google Images for photos of shuttle ice crystals and debris and not one single photo appeared...
...
...Anyone here that buys the ice crystals/debris explanation please provide links to videos showing such.

Put up or shut up.

This isn't an ISS or shuttle video like Jim Oberg's above me, but here's a video of the Tesla Roadster/Starman. Ice crystals (and maybe other debris?) visible starting at the :55 mark:

Shrike, how can I get through to you that you're nowhere near as knowledgeable as you've convinced yourself you are.

Trying to force-fit spaceflight relative motion into earth-surface norms is foolish and frustrating. Departing in different directions will result in vastly different flight paths; any difference in altitude, even a few meters, will make itself apparent in minutes as smaller objects veer off; anything near a shuttle was subject to random pushes from thruster plumes fore and aft, as well as drag from the thin but hyper-velocity atmosphere at those altitudes. I wrote the book on these effects for NASA and for the US Space Command, do you want links to the relevant sections? Or do you want to maintain the pretense you're already well-enough informed on spaceflight to have opinions worth listening to?

To put it another way:

Motion of small objects in space are very ‘unearthly’, you can’t figure it out simply by using your imagination and earthside insights. Vehicle direct action [like thrusters] happened more on shuttles, sometimes spectacularly so, but less often now since they used thrusters for orientation, while ISS uses momentum wheels [shuttle also had an evaporator for auxiliary cooling, the same device that made the famous fireflies on Glenn's flight]. Any gaseous effluent would do, such as airlock or fluid dump valves OR spacesuits [Russian suits are cooled by a water sublimator in the backpack that, if the crewman held a steady working position way out from the center of mass they could put enough angular deflection on the station to require active correction]. Repair work on fluid-carrying valves [coolant loops, mainly] also create bursts of snowflakes. Even at 400 km there's enough dynamic pressure from Mach 25 near vacuum 'wind' to gently push light fluffy stuff away from the velocity vector, and there's enough solar heating to sublimate molecules off preferentially from the sunny side of ice chips, which can produce a gentle down-sun force. Objects moving higher or lower get into faster/slower orbits relative to the station's CG, something 50 meters above the CG will slip behind by several meters per minute, an angular rate visible on TV. Fluids when leaked often form thin ice plates in the nozzle which when they come off, peel off into a tumble, and as they evaporate they can break into separate pieces that spin off in abruptly different directions. It's an awesome new universe out there, we ain't in Kansas any more.

Shrike, you've also got to take into account the function of the external TV camera's 'AGC' -- automatic gain control -- circuits that enhance sensitivity in darker fields-of-view. You can read about how it functions in the camera's operating manual linked on my home page. Small ice or dust floating near the shuttle in the camera's FOV would be as bright as background stars until a sunlit structural element appeared in the camera from pan/tilting, then sensitivity would drop way down and small stuff would fade away.

Take your time, Shrike -- after all, it IS 'rocket science'. It's good you're seriously studying the material suggested to you.