NASA STS-114 UFO Footage - Can it be debunked?

We can debate "dots" on a screen until the cows come home ... Let's see who is posting erroneous info:


RFBurns:

- some dots are terrestrial lights

- Space shuttle can reach geo-sync orbit

- thrusters use oxygen



Jim Oberg

- none


I let the facts speak for themselves

[edit on 4-3-2009 by Nichiren]

Originally posted by franspeakfree
My questions to you is, why is it so important, for you personally, to explain this anomaly with science?

I always try to explain every event with the knowledge to which I have access (either my own or from other people), only when I can not find an explanation that I think can really explain that event I consider it an anomaly, and I "store" it in my mental list of unexplained events (I should make a real list, instead of relying on my memory).

For example, and sorry for the off-topic, in the tether video, the first thing I noticed was that the objects looked like out of focus points of light, and as I have never found anything that can really contradict that possibility I keep that at the top of the list. In the case of this video I can not find any explanation because I can not find anything I can use as a reference to apply my knowledge.

and do you deam it at all possible that the light in question that decelerates and changes direction could very well be intelligently controlled.

Yes, I even said that in my first post on this thread, but as I do not see any real sign of intelligent behaviour (just a change in direction is not enough, in my opinion) I keep the possibilities that involve intelligent life forms in the list of possibilities but not at the top.

Originally posted by franspeakfree
As an experiment today at work I am going to ask people to look at the video. I am not going to tell them anything about it. I will let them watch it and then ask them what they think afterwards.

I will specifically choose people at random without any preconceptions that way we can get an all round non bias view. I will then report their reactions accordingly.

Be sure to ask them if they think the scene is a nighttime or daytime scene. Please.

By showing them this scene alone and not a set of other typical space scenes of moving dots, you are exploiting their inexperience with this new realm of perception, in order to 'stack the deck' towards the same error you yourself have fallen into. As a fair experiment, it is a joke -- just like your own misinterpretation.

[edit on 4-3-2009 by JimOberg]

Originally posted by Nichiren
We can debate "dots" on a screen until the cows come home ... Let's see who is posting erroneous info:


RFBurns:

- some dots are terrestrial lights

- Space shuttle can reach geo-sync orbit

- thrusters use oxygen



Jim Oberg

- none


I let the facts speak for themselves

[edit on 4-3-2009 by Nichiren]

Nichiren,

What on earth is that post supposed to provide to this thread? thats a wee bit bias don't you think? out of the entire thread you have managed to overlook quite a few facts.

This is supposed to be a sensible discussion on the STS 114 camera footage not a wall pissing contest.

You have posted no facts whatsoever therefore how can you possibly make this distinction?

I suggest you go back to page 1 and re read the thread and we will go from there.

On a side note the experiment is going fine I have asked a few people and they have written down their ideas as to what it could be. I will post the results later after I ask a few more.


[edit on 4-3-2009 by franspeakfree]

There have been some questions about why I'm interested in this subject. Some suspicions have been raised that such unusually high interest is evidence of somebody's desire to deceive.

Those suspicions are from the same people who, I suspect, would deem the ABSENCE of interest in explaining these events as indications that they have no prosaic explanation.

I call that the 'flipside check'. If somebody can twist both one situation, and its exact opposite, BOTH into 'evidence' in support of their own interpretations, then NEITHER argument is credible.

My interests go back many years and I've been publishing explanations of these kinds of stories since the mid-1970s. First it was about myths of legions of lost Soviet cosmonauts killed on secret missions -- such stories filled the media since the dawn of the space race, but my research showed they were spurious, and hindsight has confirmed it. In similar fashion, stories of unexplainable visitations during American space missions became very common by the mid-1960s (usually in exactly the same news media niches), but as I learned more about spaceflight, and began personally participating in ground support by 1975, and began directly working with flight crews, photo techs, and space scientists, I dug into the background facts, and as a result reached the conclusion that these stories, too, were myths.

There were few such stories associated with early shuttle missions, but in 1989-1990, as the TDRS communications satellite constellation became deployed and round-the-clock downlink TV became available, observation programs such as the MLE (by 'Skeet' Vaughan and his team in Huntsville) began producing many tens of hours of low-light scenes where dots were seen. This became 'Stage-II' of the astronaut UFO sighting story.

Since I worked in Mission Control at the time (particularly with the INCO engineers who actually ran the cameras remotely), and helped train many of the astronaut crews involved in missions on which these apparitions occurred, I was in a unique position to track down the context of these events, starting with the spectacular STS-48 zig-zagger scene in 1991 (which I didn't really get interested in for several years after it happened, when it hit national TV and then the Internet).

So here I am.

Aside from technical curiosity, my interest is also in accurately portraying the activities of my colleagues, who are often explicitly accused -- by people who don't know them -- of flagrant dishonesty and deception. It's easy to spread delusional denunciations of strangers (we see examples even on this thread), but when it's self-serving and grossly unfair and untrue, it annoys me, as it should any decent human being.

There's a more serious justification for explaining all the sightings that can be explained -- you might wind up with a few leftovers of GENUINE interest that could be critically important. It's why Mission Control takes an interest in curious-looking outside 'stuff' and sometimes turns cameras on it -- they could be pieces of your own spacecraft breaking loose. A few years ago it was a hinge-looking thingie back by the tail. Before that, NASA missed the chance of warning the doomed Columbia crew when the broken piece of wing insulation drifted free, soon after reaching orbit, but was not seen by eyeball or TV at the time. It's a safety issue to properly recognize truly anomalous sightings -- and this is the goal of crew and ground operators.

Such justified and prudent interest is another situation that is misperceived and misreported by those of the UFO persuasion, with more insults towards anyone, in NASA or out, who refuses to go along with their own ignorance-based misinterpretations.





[edit on 4-3-2009 by JimOberg]

Originally posted by JimOberg
you are exploiting their inexperience with this new realm of perception, in order to 'stack the deck' towards the same error you yourself have fallen into. As a fair experiment, it is a joke -- just like your own misinterpretation.

[edit on 4-3-2009 by JimOberg]

Jim, come on we are all friends here no need for the under the belt remarks and sly comments. We are just trying to see things from the far side of the room you are on. Its not easy looking through rose tinted glasses granted but nevertheless some of us are trying.

[edit on 4-3-2009 by franspeakfree]

Originally posted by franspeakfree
On a side note the experiment is going fine I have asked a few people and they have written down their ideas as to what it could be. I will post the results later after I ask a few more.

Please be sure to test whether they can get even the simplest context correctly by asking them if the scene is daytime or nighttime.

Originally posted by franspeakfree
Jim, come on we are all friends here no need for the under the belt remarks and sly comments.

We are just trying to see things from the otherside of the room.

Hardly 'below the belt', but admittedly, 'in your face'.

Originally posted by Nichiren
[franspeakfree,

that's exactly the problem. "Normal" people will get it all wrong, because what we see on the video is "alien" and totally strange. Our senses (eyes) are calibrated to what's happening on earth under normal gravity and visibility. Our brains have a hard time dealing with something that "seems" to work against common logic. Again, our evolutionary point of reference is earth, not space.

Ok thats better,

I understand and accept what you are saying and in the experiment, I am conducting, I have specifically kept quiet and not said a word also I have capped the video screen therefore, no comments are seen.

Once the person watches ALL the video I have asked them to write down in no more than 10 words what they think it is and what they are thinking. (Aswell as now asking if they think its day or night).

Will revert later

Originally posted by franspeakfree

Originally posted by Nichiren
We can debate "dots" on a screen until the cows come home ... Let's see who is posting erroneous info:


RFBurns:

- some dots are terrestrial lights

- Space shuttle can reach geo-sync orbit

- thrusters use oxygen



Jim Oberg

- none


I let the facts speak for themselves

[edit on 4-3-2009 by Nichiren]

Nichiren,

What on earth is that post supposed to provide to this thread? thats a wee bit bias don't you think? out of the entire thread you have managed to overlook quite a few facts.

This is supposed to be a sensible discussion on the STS 114 camera footage not a wall pissing contest.

You have posted no facts whatsoever therefore how can you possibly make this distinction?

I suggest you go back to page 1 and re read the thread and we will go from there.

On a side note the experiment is going fine I have asked a few people and they have written down their ideas as to what it could be. I will post the results later after I ask a few more.


[edit on 4-3-2009 by franspeakfree]

Funny, you're not so quick to scold your friend RFBurns when it comes to off-topic debate

There was no bias! I'm just keeping score and did post facts. Maybe you don't like them, but that's not my problem

Re original post: I did say that we're debating "dots" on a screen. Maybe you're not aware of this ...

Originally posted by Nichiren
Re original post: I did say that we're debating "dots" on a screen. Maybe you're not aware of this ...

I am perfectly aware, its the context in which you write.

We are debating a NASA video that clearly shows a UFO (not necessarily alien) in a vaccum of space that accelerates in to view of the camera and then decelerates to what appears as to come to a halt then change direction and accelerate again.

I believe this is a little more that a few dots on a screen. Thats like saying to a muslim I have read the Qur'an and all I can see is some paper with some words on it, whats the fuss? does that constitute ignorance or arrogance?

Let's remember, Fran, that you are using as a test case a video that was selected out of HUNDREDS of hours of videos for the reason that it WAS weird-looking, not even typical of space videos.

Everything in the experience base of the people you are showing it to, everything that turns in flight, such as airplanes, birds, paper airplanes, Hollywood 'space battles', the entire file of 'turning flying objects', share characteristics which half a billion years of visual perception evolution will induce similar conclusions -- something is flying deliberately.

By leaving out the alienness and unearthliness of motion in space, as shown in other videos that you could show, but don't, I think you're really running a 'fixed' and flawed test. And I think you know the results you're going to get by the design of the experiment.

That's why I asked about the day-night, because it's a question that, as with the curving motion, people will interpret using earthside experience, and they'll tell you it's a nighttime shot. And it isn't. It's a daytime shot -- the shuttle is bathed in sunlight, as are objects near it [do you agree?].

If so, your experiment will only show that without experience in a new perceptual environment, people will use irrelevant and misleading analogies from past experience, and will misinterpret what they are seeing. Which, I argue, is exactly what has led to this mania for 'space shuttle UFO' videos.


We've built an advanced culture by overcoming primitive animal instincts in many fields of activity, and substituting -- tentatively and partially and all too sporadically -- intellect for thoughtless instinct. Can't we use that approach here, too?

Originally posted by franspeakfree

Originally posted by Nichiren
Re original post: I did say that we're debating "dots" on a screen. Maybe you're not aware of this ...

I am perfectly aware, its the context in which you write.

We are debating a NASA video that clearly shows a UFO (not necessarily alien) in a vaccum of space that accelerates in to view of the camera and then decelerates to what appears as to come to a halt then change direction and accelerate again.

I believe this is a little more that a few dots on a screen. Thats like saying to a muslim I have read the Qur'an and all I can see is some paper with some words on it, whats the fuss? does that constitute ignorance or arrogance?

It's interesting that you're quoting a religious text ...

Anyway, you're supporting my point exactly: context is everything. Unfortunately the "believers" chose to ignore that. Hence we're discussing dots on a screen.

Originally posted by Nichiren

Originally posted by franspeakfree

Originally posted by Nichiren
Re original post: I did say that we're debating "dots" on a screen. Maybe you're not aware of this ...

I am perfectly aware, its the context in which you write.

We are debating a NASA video that clearly shows a UFO (not necessarily alien) in a vaccum of space that accelerates in to view of the camera and then decelerates to what appears as to come to a halt then change direction and accelerate again.

I believe this is a little more that a few dots on a screen. Thats like saying to a muslim I have read the Qur'an and all I can see is some paper with some words on it, whats the fuss? does that constitute ignorance or arrogance?

It's interesting that you're quoting a religious text ...

Anyway, you're supporting my point exactly: context is everything. Unfortunately the "believers" chose to ignore that. Hence we're discussing dots on a screen.

Exactly, which is why I quote religion, the whole world is messed up by people taking everything out of context and manipulating the information they have been given. however, that quote works both ways, which includes Believers and Debunkers (is that a word)

Originally posted by JimOberg
you might wind up with a few leftovers of GENUINE interest that could be critically important. It's why Mission Control takes an interest in curious-looking outside 'stuff' and sometimes turns cameras on it -- they could be pieces of your own spacecraft breaking loose. A few years ago it was a hinge-looking thingie back by the tail.

Mr. Oberg,

Are you telling us, that in all of NASA's missions; secret or otherwise, that there has never been any form of life encountered beyond our planet Earth?.. Not even a hint of life?

reply to post by franspeakfree


I have a very specific question to your first video on page one. You believe that the "curver" is intelligently controlled. Right? What would be the scale of the vessel? If you can provide an answer, what would be your parameters for determining the size?

Thank you!

reply to post by Majorion


What do you mean by "a hint of life"? Your question is very interesting!

reply to post by JimOberg


Jim is having delusions of grandeur. How can you possibly insult the intelligence of the people in this forum into thinking that NASA has been forthright, honest, and transparent with information, without concealment? Who gave you the crusade on just how honest NASA EITHER IS OR IS NOT? They lie on such a regular basis, its not even funny. It's called ADMIT NOTHING, and DENY EVERYTHING.

[edit on 4-3-2009 by drummerroy39]

Originally posted by franspeakfree

Originally posted by Nichiren
We can debate "dots" on a screen until the cows come home ... Let's see who is posting erroneous info:


RFBurns:

- some dots are terrestrial lights

- Space shuttle can reach geo-sync orbit

- thrusters use oxygen



Jim Oberg

- none


I let the facts speak for themselves

[edit on 4-3-2009 by Nichiren]

Nichiren,

What on earth is that post supposed to provide to this thread? thats a wee bit bias don't you think? out of the entire thread you have managed to overlook quite a few facts.
[edit on 4-3-2009 by franspeakfree]

Sorry, I forgot to answer your question. I'm trying to provide credibility.

Originally posted by branty

Originally posted by branty
reply to post by RFBurns

 

Ive researched your adversary on goggle, he is a well written , well respected , well paid professional debunker, your taking on Nasa,s best RF, (I think your winning)

Jim , Please Dont Misquote Me As Part Of Your Debunking Program , This is my F U L L Quote , not slanderous , its complimenting

This is proof of Nasa decieving, he deleted part of my post to look like I was slandering him see page 31, 11 post down ,HOW HE EDITED IT