A UFO Sighting that made me notice a problem! (no media just discussion)

I know this is probably going to be moved to skunkworks or the grey area, but I personally believe it should be discussed. I will make my point after I tell the story.

I was at my in laws house with my wife. (7-14-09) After chilling in the hot tub for a little while. We get out and off in the distance i see a bright moving white light about to the level of illumination of Jupiter moving slowly across the sky. I point and said, "look honey it's the international space station". She looks (says cool) and starts asking questions about it while we watch it. Well I tell her some stuff and all of a sudden the object stops. I then realized that it was the kind of thing we talked about here. That is when I noticed an obvious problem. I had a camera on my phone only with me, and I knew if I took the shot it would have been explained away as a star or something. After my explanation it would have been explained away as a satellite or the ISS. If I did have the availability of video I know i would have had a dozen or so CGI responses.

Then I wondered, how many sightings that we see here are legit like this one? How many good sightings to we just explain away as something else? How many things can the original viewer see with their naked eye that we cannot grasp with video? How much have we missed in our investigations of these events?

I'm sure everyone understands me here. I'm starting to loose faith in the investigative process of ufology. Are we making any kind of headway at all?

[edit on 16-7-2009 by DaMod]

Good question, interesting observation as well. I've had similar experiences where initially I was telling friends and family about the things I'd seen (3 separate occasions actually where I saw a "light in the sky" acting out of the ordinary).

As time pulled me farther away from these specific incidents, I became more and more likely to settle on a more mundane explanation. Even though at the time of the sighting I had ruled out what I knew to be conventional explanations, I would end up settling on them eventually.

1. The first sighting where a light moved across the sky, dimmed, and faded out completely (east to west) wasn't a plane at first, nor was it a satellite. Now my explanation rests between these two.

2. The second sighting where I saw a light moving across the sky from S to N at a constant speed and straight line and then started jumping around on a path that was quite erratic became a bird, though when on the evening I saw it I dropped the glass I was holding and the cigarette I was smoking fell from my lips.

3. The third sighting, which both my fiance and I witnessed where two lights seemingly far up in the sky seemed to be chasing each other, and when the rear light executed such a move in an instant that made it seem like there was a huge light arc in the sky about an inch long (from perspective) and ended up in the front of the chase, weeks later I ended up settling on the explanation that this was my eyes playing tricks on me, even though at the time of the incident of the "arc" I said "whoa" out loud.

I've spend too much time on ATS, for better or worse. Lots and lots of doubt is injected into these arguments, which I think is healthy to a certain extent.

Unfortunately, there won't be much headway in the studies until these supposed ETs reveal themselves. Until then, we'll see some anomalies, there will be speculation, but we won't have a unified agreement or a vast breakthrough of knowledge.