Shooting a UFO, STS mission (video)

quote: It may make you feel warm and fuzzy, but it just makes your mental processes look fuzzy.

"Nothing about your denial of government complicity in numerous conspiracies makes me feel 'warm and fuzzy' and actually leaves me quite cold. You will have ample time to discover just how my mind works if you continue to assume to be the only well informed party here.

"On a less hostile note i would be interested to know what you make of the source material i provided earlier. If you can point out unreliable statements/facts it would obviously make my life easier as you are surely better informed than most people i am likely to meet.

"I just respond in the same general tone so considering your superior age and experience the ball is very much in your court as to how this will play out."

What do you claim that source material proves? Or suggests?

I've been involved with 'conspiracy stories' far beyond the UFO subject -- ranging from the silly Soviet-sponsored notion that the CIA sent the Korean Airlines flight 007 into Soviet airspace deliberately, to provoke an atrocity and feel out radar facilities [turns out it was a stupid accident followed by trigger-happy Soviet brutality], to other aviation disaster fables to various interpretations of NASA space disasters, to the space-related claims of UFO nut Corso, and so forth.

If it surprises you, I think Oswald killed JFK, a Palestinian terrorist did kill RFK, a lone racist nut did kill MLK, and and a fuel tank vapor explosion brought down Flight 800, and -- while we're into conspiracies -- that Andropov DID order the murder of the Pope. And concealed gun laws suppress criminal activity. And more -- but way off topic here.

Why would you be interested in STS-80, if -- and fair warning here -- I'm 'practiced' with that one too. Do you want to tell me there is no prosaic explanation, or -- when I present some detailed studies -- will you run away from that one too and find yet another temporary favorite?

Dear Mr.Oberg,

You work for NASA. Your job is to "debunk" these videos in any possible way, because you get paid for it as far as I understand. You know your explanations pretend to be very serious and detailed but they are simply funny sometimes. Are you trying to say that the giant pulsating notched disks, which are present on many of the NASA videos are optical effects ? Debris ? Ice crystals ?? One doesn't have to be so clever to realize that they are not. You'd better tell what is the purpose of your drawing peoples attention away from these extreme UFO encounters by finding every silly explanation for them



[edit on 26-8-2006 by Leevi]

I'm afraid you understood wrong

Hehe, maybe I exaggerated a bit, but you get the idea I hope I have read those debates - they are very entertaining . It's just clear as daylight that Mr. Oberg's job (or whatever) is to convince people that these are not unidentified objects but crap floating around the shuttle. I hope he is joking, seriously. The thing is those objects are so far away that our eyes would never lie to us about it. In a particular footage the strange disks clearly pass behind the tether which is many miles away!. What other fact do you need to be sure they are so far from the shuttle, eh ? I guess Mr. Oberg watched David Sereda's videos and I wonder what he thinks of them. Is it really BS what David says from Mr.Oberg's point of view ? I would love to hear that.
It's a pity I'm not a native English speaker so I could elaborate on my speech a bit more
but here they are, my two penny.



[edit on 26-8-2006 by Leevi]

Hehe, maybe I exaggerated a bit, but you get the idea I hope

I have read those debates - they are very entertaining . It's just clear as daylight that Mr. Oberg's job (or whatever) is to convince people that these are not unidentified objects but crap floating around the shuttle.

Uh, no. That's not -- and has never been -- my job. Making such a claim based purely on malicious fantasizing does not make for a persuasive argument. I have volunteered over the years to take any test for veracity such accusers devise, at their expense -- including my time -- but nobody has actually 'put up' to seek hard evidence. Nor, I'm willing to bet, will you.

I hope he is joking, seriously. The thing is those objects are so far away that our eyes would never lie to us about it. In a particular footage the strange disks clearly pass behind the tether which is many miles away!. What other fact do you need to be sure they are so far from the shuttle, eh ? I guess Mr. Oberg watched David Sereda's videos and I wonder what he thinks of them. Is it really BS what David says from Mr.Oberg's point of view ? I would love to hear that.
It's a pity I'm not a native English speaker so I could elaborate on my speech a bit more but here they are, my two penny.

OK, we've now run away from discussing STS-48, and we've run away from discussing STS-80, and now we're supposed to discuss STS-75? Once that video is explained, I supposed we'll run awat to STS-xxx and STS-yyy and ... you get the picture. Reality is scary if you enjoy clinging to fantasy.

Regarding Sereda's silly claims on the STS-75 tether-sat video, it's not often that a guy actually goes out on a commercial video and essentially boasts, "I may not know anything about the topic I'm posing as an expert about, but I sure know a lot more than the saps who are going to buy my video," but this may be a case.

Well, objects of the purported size of these behind-the-tether passers-by would have been ten miles across and would have had the angular size of the moon as viewed by millions of people on Earth, below the objects. So how come nobody noticed them -- if they existed?

The technical reason behind the illusion is the overbright protect logic of the camera, that pixels that reach maximum-scale bright white then 'gray out' to avoid burning out. You see that effect in shuttle night-time views when viewing a lightning-lit thundercloud or a bright city at night -- the center of the bright-white mass appears gray, not pure white. There should be dozens of examples of that effect on the videos if you watch for it. Even stars sometimes (depending on focus and other settings) tend to look like cheerios, smeared circles or ovals with the centers punched out.

So when the pixels that are triggered by the tether itself (and these pixels are smeared out over a much wider angle than the actual telephone-cord-thick tether), when these pixels are at maximum brightness, they will -- like they are designed to - 'gray out'. So then, when a bright white moving light crosses the tether image zone, it just adds its brightness to the already overbright-protected pixels, which stay gray like they are supposed to. Yes, it does LOOK like the white blip is passing behind the gray line, but you have to realize that the gray line itself is an artifact of the pixel logic.

Notice also the notches along the rims of the moving disks. These are artifacts of the camera lens assembly and you can verify that by noting that as each disk moves the notch configuration changes, but for any of the disks, when it moves through a certain position in the field-of-view, the notch configuration is the same as any other disk that had previously been in that position. This is evidence that the notch configuration is a function of the camera apparatus, not of the objects being viewed.

Now, go back and view a lot more of the imagery and see if these effects are visible.

You may have seen this but if you haven't it's interesting!



www.youtube.com...

Мr. Oberg, many thanks for your kind explanation. I've got 3 more questions for you if you don't mind, just in case I don't forget about them and of course because it's a great chance and honour to talk to you here on ATS:

1. Why after some peculiar events near the shuttle in 90's NASA stopped live broadcast
to Earth and now we see what..edited video ? I know it's not live. So why is that, what do you think about it ? Just don't say it's useless thing to talk about

2. Why in case if an operator from Houston (or from the shuttle) detects anything strange going on in space, he immediately turns away the camera ? Is he afraid of optical effects of the camera? Or what ? I can provide 2 footages if needed

3. Mr. Oberg, considering your vast experience and knowledge would you please tell us if there were really any strange events in space with the astronauts (or on Earth) that you can't explain and what you would think were UFO's ? If any ? What do you think of Phoenix Lights in 1997 ?

Thanks a lot in advance


[edit on 26-8-2006 by Leevi]

by james Oberg:

Why I do NOT believe in UFOs

Opinion polls now indicate that most Americans believe "something strange is going on" regarding UFO reports. Oberg explains why he is not convinced of this, but attributes the social phenomenon to cultural patterns, eyewitness limitations, some clever hoaxes, and a news media degenerating into entertainment rather than information and insight. Oberg reviews the history of "flying saucers" and how it fit into Western culture. He discusses how known prosaic stimuli can produce the entire range of classic UFO perceptions. Then he talks about the misuse of hypnosis in extracting false memories from subjects. The question of "secret government interest" is addressed by pointing out that many activities of genuine interest to government agencies are often misperceived and reported as "UFOs". He goes into detail on his successful investigations of famous UFO cases involving many astronauts, as well as incidents seen by hundreds of thousands of witnesses in Argentina, China, Russia, France, the Persian Gulf, and elsewhere. Oberg is a founding fellow of the "Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal", and was the leading "UFO commentator" of OMNI magazine.


Now updated and commercially available from James Oberg

So it's clear he doesn't believe in UFO's, that's Ok, I don't know if i would have spent nearly 30+ years going to war againsts UFO believers but that's just me.

Trying to find ways to use his acquired scientific knowledge againsts IMO science that is much more complex than his scientific knowledge is IMO acceptable and respected.

Out of respect for the late Mr.Corso though, i would not call him a nut seeing as he had a completely different background of experience in this subject as opposed to his views and James Oberg should not venture in territory that is not his best subject, National Security.

here is an interesting read on rebuttals to James Oberg.

www.cohenufo.org...

One comment on the STS-48 zig-zagger:

One compelling reason to believe it and the other dots are small nearby objects can be found in viewing the longer version of the video sequence.

The ground lights go by with the horizon in the distance. Sunrise occurs -- a small smudge of light on the shuttle begins to glow, and a host of moving dots appear all at the same moment that orbital calculations show the Sun pops above the horizon.

Some of them drift out of the field of view, but one of them is still in sight a minute later when the 'flicker' occurs (precisely at the time an attitude adjustment thruster fires) -- and it (along with some other dots) changes course during and ONLY during the 1-second thruster firing.

The implication of this sequence is that stuff is nearby the shuttle (so close that sunrise occurred simo for all objects), then got pushed by the thruster plume.

The implication is so strong that most UFO websites do NOT show the entire sequence -- or they don't because they don't recognize the implications of the entire sequence.

Out of respect for the late Mr.Corso though, i would not call him a nut seeing as he had a completely different background of experience in this subject as opposed to his views and James Oberg should not venture in territory that is not his best subject, National Security.

Well, if we're dodging away from STS-zzz 'UFO videos' and want to talk about Corso's ravings about space-UFO history, that's fine with me -- but unfortunately, I've studied those claims pretty thoroughly so that will probably be another excuse to run away from those themes, too.

Corso claims that there are American manned space battle stations out there near the Moon currently engaged in combat with incoming UFOs. Anybody who finds this allegation even the slightest plausible, please signify by signaling 'aye'.

"here is an interesting read on rebuttals to James Oberg. "

I link to it from my home page, too -- seems to me it's a marvelous example of a pseudo-refutation that doesn't really address a SINGLE question of fact regarding the STS-48 video, but instead insists the video must be real by correspondence with OTHER videos and stories.

Can anybody find and cite any technical dispute regarding the STS-48 event that Cohen actually disputes with evidence -- as opposed to simply arguing that my analysis just can't, can't CAN'T ever ever ever be true.

Evidence? An example? Please, take your time -- it's been ten years and nobody has yet, but patience is a virtue...

Here's why I and all serious space historians have concluded that Corso's claims are bunk:

A few weeks ago I referred to the glaring errors in Corso's accounts of space
technology and history, as one reason that people familiar with the subject
dismissed his whole book as wild ravings for the ignorant. Somebody asked me
for examples, and last week I had a chance to look the book over again. I'll
post a long discussion here, if people are still interested. Here's the
highlights:

The mistakes range from a first-person account of how he co-opted a NASA
satellite program named 'Discoverer' to secretly emplace a CIA spy camera on
board, to his discussions of ET hostile interference in US manned space
missions, to discussions of the experiences of WW2 Nazi missile scientists,
etc. etc.

The 'Discoverer' episode is pure fantasy, since the project was from the
start a USAF effort to carry the space spy camera (he claims it was a NASA project which he personally took over – a claim totally inconsistent with every other document, memoir, and historical analysis on that project in the last forty years) . The spy camera wasn't an afterthought, and Corso's boasts notwithstanding, nothing he states about the technology is remotely true. As to ET interference, that's 'National Enquirer' type stuff,
no event -- not one -- has ever been established, and even men such as Edgar
Mitchell and Gordon Cooper testify that no such events ever occurred.

Particularly offensive was Corso's assertion that Willy Ley was one of the
Nazi V-2 war criminals who was exploited by US intelligence after the war.
Ley was in fact a German Jew who fled Hitler's Germany in the 1930s and spent
the war in exile in the US while his friends and relatives were being
slaughtered by the Nazis. For Corso to accuse him of being an accomplice of
the Nazis is not just a careless stupid error, it's what some people call a
'blood libel', but is typical of the integrity and reliability of Corso's
material -- zilch.

Anybody surprised or disappointed -- or not in agreement?


====

124-125: "From the very beginning of our endeavors to put satellites into orbit, the extraterrestrials have been surveilling and then actively interfering with our launch vehicles and in some cases the manned and unmanned payloads themselves by buzzing them, jamming radio transmissions, causing electrical problems with the spacecrafts' systems, or causing mechanical malfunctions. American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts have separately reported sightings of UFOs so routinely that it's become commonplace. The audio/video transmission downlink between space capsules and NASA, however, is secure scrambled signal so that commentary about UFOs shadowing the spacecraft can't be picked up by private listeners. Even then, the astronauts are specifically instructed not to report UFO sightings until they are debriefed once they've landed."

JimO: Edgar Mitchell and Gordon Cooper deny this, as does every other astronaut, flight controller, and scientist involved with these missions.


126: "They didn't just shadow or surveil our spacecraft in orbit; they buzzed us and tried to create such havoc with our communications systems that NASA more than once had to rethink astronaut safety in the Mercury and Gemini programs."

JimO: Nobody at NASA seems to know anything about this.


129: " NASA [was] keeping [the Hillenkoetter working group] updated on every single alien spacecraft appearance the astronauts reported, especially during the early series of Apollo flights when the EBE craft began buzzing the lunar modules on successive missions after they thrusted out of earth orbit. . . . And the army and air force managed to find at least 122 photos taken by astronauts on the moon that showed some evidence of an alien presence."

Any examples?

more on Corso's baloney:

pp. 264-265: "SAINT was an orbital UFO inspector satellite, a version of a standard Agenda B satellite that the CIA had been using. . . . Its job was surveillance. Find a potential enemy satellite or UFO lurking in orbit and lock on to it with a TV camera and with radar. Once the lock was in place, Blue Gemini, the 'killer' satellite, would move in [Blue Gemini was the military version of NASA's manned Gemini capsule]. . . . Both of these weapons, under the cover of other missions, of course, were eventually deployed, and today they form one of the lines of defense in an antimissile and anti-UFO surveillance system. Saint and Blue Gemini were important first steps in our war against the UFOs."

JimO: There’s not a shred of historical evidence, memoir, or testimony that either of these projects reached the flight stage – all historical evidence is that they were ‘paper studies’ that were cancelled.


On page 268, he discusses "our space-based high-energy lasers", which he claims were launched and tested. "When we deployed our advanced particle-beam weapon and tested it in orbit for all to see, the EBEs knew and we knew they knew that we had our defense of the planet in place."

JimO: The claim that there is some sort of invisible chain of manned space forts now in orbit to defend against UFOs has no factual basis and is inconsistent with everything that is documented about the space shuttle and other space programs.


Brad Sparks on false claim of Corso convincing Kennedy to begin Project Apollo:

"Corso again fraudulently inserts himself into history by alleging that as the Army Foreign Technology czar in charge of Roswell he helped President Kennedy decide to send a man to the moon. Corso alleges that he worked on a moon base plan called Project Horizon to help keep the ET's at bay, which plan he urged on Attorney General Robert Kennedy in a personal meeting in May 1962 (compare pp. 2, 37, 156, 191, 206, 255). Lo and behold says Corso, it was a short time later that the AG's brother, the President, announced the Apollo program objective of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Corso takes pride in his supposed contribution to Kennedy's decision on the moon race (p. 156).

Only problem is that JFK made the famous moon-project announcement on May 25th of 1961 -- A YEAR BEFORE the alleged Corso promotion of Project Horizon to Bobby Kennedy in May 1962. Corso can't seriously claim he simply made a typo or error of one year and meant to say it was in May 1961 because that would mean he had secured a personal meeting with the brother of the President only days after he arrived at the Pentagon and before he had even finished his first alleged Roswell exploitation plan which included the Horizon moon-base (pp. 102, 105, 115, 157)! Corso indicates it took more than a month to complete his first report and plan for General Trudeau and it was already "summer" then so it had to be at least June or July 1961 (cp. pp. 49, 51, 53, 91).

He also states explicitly it was "After his first year in office" (after Jan. 1962) that "President Kennedy saw the value in Project Horizon" (p. 155) through Corso's pitch to brother Bobby in the May 1962 meeting and it had been "six months" from that meeting to the Cuban Missile Crisis of the Fall of 1962 (p. 255) so that doubly fixes the alleged meeting in the Spring of 1962, not 1961. He is tightly locked into his 1962 date for his fictitious involvement in inspiring JFK's 1961 Apollo lunar landing plan and there is no way out -- except to admit it's all a fantasy. Corso's delusion is one year too late.

Why doesn't Corso present written records proving the subject matter, date and existence of the Kennedy meeting? This would be far more important evidence to support his claims than padding his book with several dozen pages of irrelevant Project Horizon technical documentation, none of which mentions ET s or UFO s or Roswell (pp. 275-332)."

Here are some more links about the alleged STS-75 and STS-80 UFO videos. Anybody interested in finding out where the stories came from -- rather than mindlessly falling for any internet rumor -- will want to check them out.


STS-75 Tether (Sereda claims of giant UFOs ‘behind’ tether)
CSICOP first report (Skeptical Inquirer Electronic Digest, Feb. 22, 2000 ):
www.csicop.org...

My assessment: www.rense.com...

response from proponent (Callaghan): www.rense.com...

Note from Chuck Shaw (Lead Flight Director, MCC):
www.virtuallystrange.net...

More STS-75 back-and-forth
www.ufos-aliens.co.uk...

STS-80
debunked by me:
www.virtuallystrange.net...

Puzzles of Strange Shuttle Videos
www.100megsfree4.com...

James, would you be so kind to comment on my questions from the previous page. I know they are not directly related to the subject but still I find your thoughts about them essential, since you are a true professional in this area.

Thank you.

[edit on 27-8-2006 by Leevi]

1. Why after some peculiar events near the shuttle in 90's NASA stopped live broadcast
to Earth and now we see what..edited video ? I know it's not live. So why is that, what do you think about it ? Just don't say it's useless thing to talk about

As Will Rogers says, it's never what you don't know that makes you look like a fool, it's what you do know that ain't so. Shuttle (and station) video is still usually played live, except when they are dumping tapes from other cameras. You can verify that by noting timable events such as dockings, sunrise/sunset, etc., and comparing the 'observed' time to the 'real' time and seeing there's essentially no difference. Or during spacewalks, when the suits are transmitting on UHF that hams can monitor, the voice comes down at the same time as the voice on 'NASA TV'. Try it, you'll find it's true -- if you don't want to find it's true, of course, don't risk trying to find out.

2. Why in case if an operator from Houston (or from the shuttle) detects anything strange going on in space, he immediately turns away the camera ? Is he afraid of optical effects of the camera? Or what ? I can provide 2 footages if needed

Please provide these scenes with the exact time/date of the event, not merely the URL of soke looney-tune UFO website, so I can check the situation, the surrounding visual context, and who was on console so I can ask them. In every case that I've been able to track down before, the response has been mocking laughter from the mission control operators that anybody could so wildly misunderstand what was going on.

3. Mr. Oberg, considering your vast experience and knowledge would you please tell us if there were really any strange events in space with the astronauts (or on Earth) that you can't explain and what you would think were UFO's ? If any ? What do you think of Phoenix Lights in 1997 ?

I agree with Ed Mitchell and Gordon Cooper and every other crewmember and flight controller who's ever commented on this question -- there's never been anything suggestive of non-prosaic stimuli. But there's been plenty of stuff that wasn't initially identifiable, and they are discussed openly and vigorously based on the potential that they reflect some unknown function or malfunction of the NASA spacecraft. A prime example -- when Columbia was mortally wounded in January 2003, the broken piece of its forward wing heat shielding came loose on the second day of the flight and drifted away, unseen by the crew -- but detected on military search radar. Had the crew spotted the book-sized fragment, or had the DoD radar trackers been asked by NASA to alert them to such anomalies, NASA would have had enough warning to probably detect the damage and prepare countermeasures. So strange sightings outside spacecraft are VERY much of interest to space workers BECAUSE they are not alien, but homegrown, and might be clues to dangers -- and as such they are reported in real time and discussed openly.

You work for NASA. Your job is to "debunk" these videos in any possible way, because you get paid for it as far as I understand.

Now that I've politely answered your questions, will you politely retract your false accusations about me and my motives and my employment? And apologize for the insinuations of for-pay dishonesty that your messages implied?

everyones saying "hey how can that be a plasma beam a laser doesnt start and stop like that!" well couldnt it be a missile?

Originally posted by JimO
Here's why I and all serious space historians have concluded that Corso's claims are bunk:

A few weeks ago I referred to the glaring errors in Corso's accounts of space
technology and history, as one reason that people familiar with the subject
dismissed his whole book as wild ravings for the ignorant. Somebody asked me
for examples, and last week I had a chance to look the book over again. I'll
post a long discussion here, if people are still interested. Here's the
highlights:

The mistakes range from a first-person account of how he co-opted a NASA
satellite program named 'Discoverer' to secretly emplace a CIA spy camera on
board, to his discussions of ET hostile interference in US manned space
missions, to discussions of the experiences of WW2 Nazi missile scientists,
etc. etc.

The 'Discoverer' episode is pure fantasy, since the project was from the
start a USAF effort to carry the space spy camera (he claims it was a NASA project which he personally took over – a claim totally inconsistent with every other document, memoir, and historical analysis on that project in the last forty years) . The spy camera wasn't an afterthought, and Corso's boasts notwithstanding, nothing he states about the technology is remotely true. As to ET interference, that's 'National Enquirer' type stuff,
no event -- not one -- has ever been established, and even men such as Edgar
Mitchell and Gordon Cooper testify that no such events ever occurred.

Particularly offensive was Corso's assertion that Willy Ley was one of the
Nazi V-2 war criminals who was exploited by US intelligence after the war.
Ley was in fact a German Jew who fled Hitler's Germany in the 1930s and spent
the war in exile in the US while his friends and relatives were being
slaughtered by the Nazis. For Corso to accuse him of being an accomplice of
the Nazis is not just a careless stupid error, it's what some people call a
'blood libel', but is typical of the integrity and reliability of Corso's
material -- zilch.

Anybody surprised or disappointed -- or not in agreement?

Now,now, Mr.Oberg, First of all the words "Nazi V-2 war criminal" is from you're mouth not his.judging by the vindictive nature of you're reply it's become obvious to me that you're trying to add negative 'juice' to your arguments, and please don't say "that's what he is implying" because that's not true at all.

And i quote p.71 "Both the russian and american missile programs were based almost entirely upon the german weapons research spoils.....I was a first-hand participant in this, secreting out german weapons scientists........as part of secret code named" paperclip"that began in 1944. With V-2 designers Wernher Von Braun, Willy Ley, and others running experiments on the german missiles we brought back to the United States..."

And then he mentioned him again and i quote p.79 "At the very least, Twining had suggested.......German horten wings.......that he had to suspect the Germans had bumped into something we didn't know about.And his conversations with Wernher von Braun and Willy Ley at Alamagordo in the days after the crash confirmed this.they didn't want to be thought of as 'verruckt' but intimated that there was deeper story about what the Germans had engineered......"

So how you can say word's that have not been quoted directly from the source is an old 'trick' used to discredit someone's personality, it doesn't work.

IMO I think you should accept that you were on a "need to know" basis (also as it relates to corona and discoverer) and maybe turn you're fight internally seeing as how Nasa personnel is whistleblowing and so is JPL, so good luck with that.