The Truth Behind NASA's "UFO" Videos- New Popular Mechanics article

The website of "Popular Mechanics" has a new article entitled 'Footage in the Sky: The Truth Behind NASA's "UFO" Videos'.

It includes a few interesting points among a generally fairly superficial, dismissive discussion that features several somewhat overly-generalised statements...

A batch of raw footage from decade-old NASA missions shows zipping lights and strange objects in the sky. This footage, recently posted on YouTube, is renewing UFO conspiracy theories that the government is hiding knowledge about their interactions with intelligent life. Here, two astronauts talk about NASA's supposed cover-up and what these clips really show.

By Erik Sofge
Published on: June 1, 2009

Lacking quality in their evidence, UFO believers are left with quantity, a rambling collection of indistinct imagery and allegations that now includes a batch of space shuttle mission video clips that were never buried or classified in the first place. Runco points out that astronauts, in general, are excited by the notion of intelligent species on other worlds. "Many of them use SETI@Home [a distributed computing application that picks through radio telescope data for incoming messages] as their screensavers, because they think it's a possibility," he says. But it's one thing to believe that alien life is a statistical likelihood, and another to interpret lights in the sky as intergalactic contact. "People see unexplained things," says Jones. "I used to believe UFOs were spaceships—when I was 14."

It includes some discussion of the following two videos, that will be familiar to many here on ATS:

Video 1:


Video 2:


All the best,

Isaac



[edit on 1-6-2009 by IsaacKoi]

Popular Mechanics is a government controlled media arm. They have "debunked" 911, FEMA Camps, and now, UFO's.

Every time something starts to get heated in the conspiracy field, or the goverment feels too many middle-aged, white, male Americans start believing the stories, Pop Mech. comes out with a debunk piece.

If you don't believe me, look up the ownership.

Hearst Communications.

[edit on 1/6/09 by MajesticJax]

So according to this 'Jones' character all 'unexplained' things we see are not really UFO's but just 'unexplained' seeing as they are not really intelligently controlled craft but could be infact Earthly classified secret aircraft as life in the universe 'could' exist but isn't really capable of reaching the Earth as far as we know but , but tehn again they're just 'unexplained' .
cool I thought I was seeing aliens .
I'm glad thats all cleared for me then.
Better get back to thinking all UFO believers are just nutters then ( althought I'm calling myself a nutter, but thats ok seeing as Jones cleared it up for me).

Stimsonite reflectors—the same materials used on road and bicycle reflectors—catch the ambient light, and at one point appear to merge into a single bright spot as the satellite turns head-on. "The lights moving by in the background are either isolated lights on the ground or stars, I think likely the latter," Runco says.

this quote form the article above is a bit confusing. Are they above this satalite looking down at earth? If so, I was unaware that we could travel that far into space to have stars between the earth and the shuttle. Unless I misunderstood the context of the quote. PM is a bunch of gomer lap dogs for the government. They would debunk the fact that Obama has two eyes if ATS had a conspiracy thread about it. To debunk something that has existed since written history began is a bit, well, a bit arrogant to say the least.

From the article:

Runco notes that anyone could have simply e-mailed or called him, to ask for his side of the story, instead of simply posting a 13-year-old video and jumping to extraterrestrial conclusions

If an astronaut is so willing to share his opinion, could Springer or one of the ATS PWTB invite him to join ATS as an official debunker or at least as an expert of these kinds of videos or phenomena.

An argument is only educational if you can hear both sides of the story, and quite frankly, I would love to hear both sides of the story.

I know that a lot of members here will flame him, saying that he has been ordered to say this or that, but I don't think that's the point. We need to hear what they have to say about each and every anomaly we have ever spoken or wondered about.

Originally posted by deltaalphanovember
If an astronaut is so willing to share his opinion, could Springer or one of the ATS PWTB invite him to join ATS as an official debunker or at least as an expert of these kinds of videos or phenomena.

Astronauts and other NASA experts have been patiently explaining strange images from public inquiries for decades. Their comments usually disappear into a ufological black hole where all contrary testimony is consigned, lest the mass of UFO buffs be confused. STS-48 is a good example -- where are the offered explanations posted in the world of UFOria?

Example: Frank Borman and his 'bogie' joke. Can anybody find any UFO site that hosts Borman's debunking of the story attributed to him? ANY links at all?

The first sentence of the 3rd paragraph

"Whether or not the government has anything to fess up about aliens, the astronaut who shot that particular piece of footage has nothing to hide."

WHETHER OR NOT? Hahahahaha, gotta love the plausible deniability.

Popular Mechanics, you are sneaky. ; )

Good article, must be frustrating and perplexing for those folks. Or maybe even funny as hell.

Like all believers though NASA can keep saying this til they are blue in the face and UFO believers will continue to stick their fingers in their ears and scream "lalalalala".

This sums it up for me as it'd be exactly the way I'd feel in their position:

"If I thought it was an intelligent craft, I'd be the first one to speak up," says Runco. "I'd want the credit: Mario Runco was the first person in history to conclusively document the existence of an extraterrestrial civilization. Why would I ever want to keep it secret?"

It'd be worth revealing this regardless of the consequences, as you'd always be remembered, and that's all anyone really wants. Those that know that they wont be, which is most people, need the blanket of religion, UFO's or next weeks big craze to make themselves feel better about that.

[edit on 1-6-2009 by John Nada]

There are, of course, astronauts that would say just the opposite. I suppose it all depends on who the magazine decides to interview.

I'm assuming that for the 9/11 debunking, they didn't interview Gage, or one of the 699 other engineers and architects that have been calling for a new investigation for years.

I'm not saying that everything anomalous in the STS videos or whatever is an intelligently controlled craft from a distance civilization. At the same time, I'm not hurrying to accept PM's explanations for those things either.

Could it be that the PTB (lol) are 'pre-empting' Steve Bassett and the current Disclosure Movement? Perhaps, since Bassett has some astronauts on board.

We'll have to wait and see. Tis June, after all.

(fat fingers edit)

[edit on 1-6-2009 by Elepheagle]

That's all very well and good Elepheagle but the truth is no astronaut has actually ever said they definately saw an alien craft. They saw something strange in space! Really? Well there's a shock! There's bound to be something strange to the human eye in space seeing as...you know...entire consciousness exists within this realm.

Every crazy idea, belief, whether it be ghosts, the easter bunny or what not has been thought up and seen within our little blue planet here.

Strange things happen, and it's actually a beautiful thing. Hell, even I've had sightings...and seen strange things not UFO related, but how someone can jump to THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of people covering up the existence that aliens are here I'll never know.

Originally posted by Elepheagle
Could it be that the PTB (lol) are 'pre-empting' Steve Bassett and the current Disclosure Movement? Perhaps, since Bassett has some astronauts on board.

Oh, really. Aside from Ed Mitchell -- who is unaware of any astronaut ever seeing a UFO in space, or of any astronaut ever being told to withhold or falsify statements about UFOs... who else?

look no further than who owns Popular Mechanics to see the true conspiracy

Way to go Popular Mechanics! now they are stars??.My god..you should ask a real astronomer what star is and what is not! My God..this should be posted has aprils fools best Joke !

I am not saying that that things are Alien, but makes your mind wonder what the hell is that ! now it comes like unexplain..so nobody in the world cant know..because its "unexplaine". I think popular mechanics lost his ground with this one, all credibility of this magaziine is lost....i would have prefer they say..it may or not maybe, satelites?..how many satellites are around earths orbit?? let say how many..200?? 300:: plus some space debris...doing whacky movements and wala we have it,.or some stars that moves??..yeah that's it..Popular mechanics is the truth!

What the hell a magazine for mechanics its talking about UFO's now??

I think this piece of reporting should be on magazines like dailynews, prada or another funny news related thing that doenst have any credibility at all!

My God...i cant stop laughing !

Originally posted by JimOberg

Originally posted by deltaalphanovember
If an astronaut is so willing to share his opinion, could Springer or one of the ATS PWTB invite him to join ATS as an official debunker or at least as an expert of these kinds of videos or phenomena.

Astronauts and other NASA experts have been patiently explaining strange images from public inquiries for decades. Their comments usually disappear into a ufological black hole where all contrary testimony is consigned, lest the mass of UFO buffs be confused. STS-48 is a good example -- where are the offered explanations posted in the world of UFOria?

Example: Frank Borman and his 'bogie' joke. Can anybody find any UFO site that hosts Borman's debunking of the story attributed to him? ANY links at all?

I can never resist a challenge here is an interview of frank borman

HARWOOD : Were there any other things from your Gemini mission that—and they specifically want you to tell, maybe things that weren’t in your book Countdown? Any stories that you’ve—?

BORMAN : No. I—the interesting thing—one of the interesting things was flying formation with the second stage that put us into orbit and using an infrared sensor to track that. We referred to it as a “bogey” all the time, which was natural, normal parlance for it. And when we got back, True magazine wrote a big story about how we’d been tracking a UFO and all that nonsense. So I’ve been plagued with that ever since. People say, “Well,”—if you run into UFO circles today, they’ll still tell you, well, we saw a UFO. Which is just foolish

Notice in the interview this was brought up by him it bugged him he was being misquoted!

Originally posted by MajesticJax
Popular Mechanics is a government controlled media arm. They have "debunked" 911, FEMA Camps, and now, UFO's.

If you don't believe me, look up the ownership.

Hearst Communications.

There are at least three logical fallacies in this post, which is quite astonishing given how short it is.

First, there is guilt-by-association; you perceive Hearst Communications to be bad therefore Popular Mechanics must be bad and not telling the truth.

Second, there is special-pleading. You believe the government to be engaged in a cover-up, therefore Popular Mechanics in publishing a debunking article must be part of this conspiracy, so of course they would publish an article like this.

Third, if Popular Mechanics had published an article you agreed with, you would not be making the ownership of the magazine an issue.

(As a side note, I wonder how you feel about UFO Hunters on the History Channel)

At no point in your post did you address anything that Popular Mechanics had to say. Instead you relied on the above logical fallacies to dismiss the article out-of-hand.

Deny Ignorance, indeed.

Originally posted by deltaalphanovember
If an astronaut is so willing to share his opinion, could Springer or one of the ATS PWTB invite him to join ATS as an official debunker or at least as an expert of these kinds of videos or phenomena.

I do not see why any astronaut would want to do anything like that. When they would have to deal with accidental and purposeful misquoting and mis-contexting and statements similar to this, when they don't say what some people want to hear:

Originally posted by MajesticJax
Popular Mechanics is a government controlled media arm. They have "debunked" 911, FEMA Camps, and now, UFO's.

Originally posted by AlexDJ
My God...i cant stop laughing !

This is sad. Somebody makes a serious attempt to clarify a significant cultural mystery, and all you can resort to is mindless mockery. Free yourself! Listen to the people around you -- maybe they have something to contribute to your own wisdom and beliefs.

Open your mind.

Originally posted by JimOberg

Originally posted by Elepheagle
Could it be that the PTB (lol) are 'pre-empting' Steve Bassett and the current Disclosure Movement? Perhaps, since Bassett has some astronauts on board.

Oh, really. Aside from Ed Mitchell -- who is unaware of any astronaut ever seeing a UFO in space, or of any astronaut ever being told to withhold or falsify statements about UFOs... who else?

It's funny that in his interviews, he says the exact opposite. But i guess, he's just gorn maaaaaaad with old age or something.

[edit on 2/6/2009 by Acidtastic]

Originally posted by dragonridr

I can never resist a challenge here is an interview of frank borman

HARWOOD : Were there any other things from your Gemini mission that—and they specifically want you to tell, maybe things that weren’t in your book Countdown? Any stories that you’ve—?

BORMAN : No. I—the interesting thing—one of the interesting things was flying formation with the second stage that put us into orbit and using an infrared sensor to track that. We referred to it as a “bogey” all the time, which was natural, normal parlance for it. And when we got back, True magazine wrote a big story about how we’d been tracking a UFO and all that nonsense. So I’ve been plagued with that ever since. People say, “Well,”—if you run into UFO circles today, they’ll still tell you, well, we saw a UFO. Which is just foolish

Notice in the interview this was brought up by him it bugged him he was being misquoted!

Good work -- can you share the URL, please?

Here's another:

Note - The following is an excerpt from an article "Flying the Gusmobile" about the Gemini missions. Published on the site of "Air and Space" magazine July 14, 1998. www.airspacemag.com:80...


(snipped)

At almost twice the length of Gemini 5, Commander Frank Borman's Gemini 7 mission may have been even more trying, but it grabbed the attention of at least one Hollywood producer.

"Right after we got into orbit we were supposed to 'station keep' or fly formation with the booster," Borman says. "We were flying formation and taking photographs and infrared measurements and I started calling it a 'bogey,' which is an old fighter pilot term. Well, a lot of the UFO freaks on the ground picked this up and said we had seen a UFO because we had referred to our booster as a bogey.

"Just this past year I got a call from a producer at 'Unsolved Mysteries' and they said, 'We read your account about your seeing a UFO on Gemini 7 and would you come on the program?' I told them: 'I'd love to come on your program because I'd love to straighten that out.'

"I explained what it was I saw, and I said, 'I don't think there were UFOs,' and the producer said, 'Well, I'm not sure we want you on the program.' "

Here's more:


The "UFO" Version: Meanwhile, curiously, the "bogey" story evolved into an independent legend all its own. This "UFO" case was endorsed by America's leading "ufologist", Northwestern University astronomy professor Dr. J. Allen Hynek, in his book "Edge of Reality" (coauthored with Jacques Vallee, Regnery, 1974), with a new twist. In a chapter ironically titled "Scientists at Work", Hynek includes a list of "astronaut UFO sightings" compiled by amateur investigator George Fawcett. Hynek later insisted he had no need to check the list himself since he just wanted to spark debate, and that readers were wrong to assume that he thought the list was authentic.

This version was repeated by authors such as Donald Keyhoe and Charles Berlitz, and is now widespread in the "UFO literature". For example, in the magazine UFO UNIVERSE (Summer 1994), Brad Steiger (in "Alien Efforts to Undermine Earth's Space Programs") wrote: "When astronauts James Lovell and Frank Bormann (JEO: sic!) were orbiting aboard GT-7 on December 4, 1965, a massive spherical object (JEO: sic!) slowly crossed in front of them. When Bormann radioed ground control that they had a 'bogey' at ten o'clock high, control technicians suggested that the astronauts might be sighting their booster rocket. 'We know where the booster is', Bormann said coolly. 'This is an actual sighting'." The addition of spurious details ("large, spherical object") and elaboration of the astronauts' words is a common feature of such folklorization.


Forgeries: Popular writer Robert Anton Wilson (in "Cosmic Trigger", And/Or Press, 1978) describes the 'Fawcett List' used by Hynek as "NASA cases [which] fall in the category of craft that look and act like spaceships from elsewhere, as Dr. Hynek, who collected them from Air Force files, has indicated." Of course, Hynek hadn't gotten them from such a source, as he himself said, but it made a much better story the way Wilson improved on it. For Wilson, his "Item #10" was as follows: "December 4, 1965 - Gemini 7: Frank Borman and Jim Lovell photographed twin oval-shaped UFOs with glowing undersides."

Now, where did THAT part of the Gemini-7 story come from? I tracked that down some twenty years ago, and published the results, but the story continues to flourish. My main study was in SEARCH magazine, Winter 1976 (issue #129), Palmer Publications, article "Astronauts & UFOs -- The Whole Story", and a shorter version appeared in "Space World" magazine in July 1977.

I wrote: ". . .Only a partisan digging for evidence, and desperate to find such evidence, would make much of this common event. But a sign of desperation is indeed found in connection with the Gemini 7 UFO case. It is not the desperation of government officials trying to cover up the truth about UFOs. Rather, it is the desperation of some outsider trying to manufacture counterfeit 'astronaut UFO' evidence, an activity which should not be necessary if the 'real' UFO evidence were as persuasive as many think."

"It involves a photograph showing two very strange glowing objects. Each is hexagonal in shape, viewed at an angle, and supported by a dazzling 'force field' below it. A cloud covered earth is seen in the background.

"This photograph has appeared in books, magazines, newspapers and pamphlets. It is part of the traveling slide show of UFO lecturers from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) and elsewhere. I have heard it described as 'showing a typical UFO force field propulsion system', and 'similar to other UFO photographs taken on Earth the same year.'

"The photograph is a forgery. It is a hoax. What the anonymous counterfeiter did was take an ordinary photograph of Earth made from the Gemini-7 spaceship on December 4, 1965. The nose of the spacecraft fills the lower part of the frame, and on the nose, catching the glare of the sun, is a pair of roll control rocket thrusters used to adjust the attitude and spin rate of the Gemini. The original photo (NASA S65-63722, which I have personally examined) was then retouched by the unscrupulous hoaxter to eliminate the edge of the nose from view, so the dark surface of the spaceship merged into the dark Earth beneath. This left the two now mysterious lights seemingly suspended in space, as it were. A normal space tourist photo was turned into convincing UFO evidence, and thousands of people were fooled."