Post by auntym on Oct 10, 2012 12:11:29 GMT -6
devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/13318/time-for-the-debate/
De Void
Time for the debate
Monday, October 8, 2012
by Billy Cox
In Walter Cronkite’s 1966 suck-up documentary for the Air Force — “UFO: Friend, Foe or Fantasy?”— CBS took viewers to the annaD nerve center in Colorado, where a reporter asked Capt. Gary Reese if UFOs can avoid radar detection. “So far as we know,” replied the robotic Air Force officer, “all flying objects are composed of materials which are aerodynamic and which do have a reflective surface upon which radar waves can be bounced. It’s possible there are other types of material; however, I doubt it.”
Pressed for more details about eyewitness reports, Reese fibbed, “These sightings have never been substantiated and could not be translated into hard radar return figures.”
That was half a century ago, when stealth technology was a fantasy. And nevermind that radar records corroborating eyewitness UFO accounts began rolling in as early as 1947 and are too numerous to itemize here. Last week, during NPR’s discussion of James Bond’s hi-tech gizmos on “Morning Edition,” De Void got to thinking about how much farther we might have extended the boundaries of science today had The Great Taboo been subjected to truly professional evaluation.
In that particular exchange, Hayden Planetarium director (and UFO “skeptic” ) Neil deGrasse Tyson is discussing the invisibility of Bond’s cinematic Aston Martin. “There are invisible things in the world, and they’re called transparent. OK?” Tyson goes on to say “Glass is essentially invisible to the light that we see with our eyes. It’s not invisible to other forms of light, like ultraviolet or infrared. The cameras on the other side of the car have to look at every possible angle that you would be viewing the car, from your side. And we haven’t figured out really how to do that yet.”
The chatter evoked some interviews De Void conducted in 2002 with a couple of USAF veterans belonging to the 9th Fighter Squadron’s 49th Fighter-Bomber Wing in Misawa, Japan. Their window into the bizarre opened during a major technology push during 1949-50, when P-51 prop jobs were being replaced with F-80 jet fighters. And what test pilots Bud Evans and Clyde Good reported was so audacious, you almost have to laugh.
Evans, who would later train as a civilian astronaut on the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, told of how two pilots converging on what they thought was a gunnery target — a 30-foot long, 8-foot tall banner with bulls-eye markings, towed by a P-51 trailing an 800-foot cable — were baffled to find only a rectangle drifting in mid-air. They flanked the object, which they estimated to be three times the size of a conventional target, and could see each other’s plane silhouettes through what appeared to be translucent glass. Ground radar also tracked the blip, which then bolted forward and vertical and out of sight.
Evans was later scrambled when base radar spotted another bogey, which Evans’ wingman described as a thin, broad, flying rectangle that vanished as soon as he got close enough for a good look.
CONTINUE READING: devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/13318/time-for-the-debate/
De Void
Time for the debate
Monday, October 8, 2012
by Billy Cox
In Walter Cronkite’s 1966 suck-up documentary for the Air Force — “UFO: Friend, Foe or Fantasy?”— CBS took viewers to the annaD nerve center in Colorado, where a reporter asked Capt. Gary Reese if UFOs can avoid radar detection. “So far as we know,” replied the robotic Air Force officer, “all flying objects are composed of materials which are aerodynamic and which do have a reflective surface upon which radar waves can be bounced. It’s possible there are other types of material; however, I doubt it.”
Pressed for more details about eyewitness reports, Reese fibbed, “These sightings have never been substantiated and could not be translated into hard radar return figures.”
That was half a century ago, when stealth technology was a fantasy. And nevermind that radar records corroborating eyewitness UFO accounts began rolling in as early as 1947 and are too numerous to itemize here. Last week, during NPR’s discussion of James Bond’s hi-tech gizmos on “Morning Edition,” De Void got to thinking about how much farther we might have extended the boundaries of science today had The Great Taboo been subjected to truly professional evaluation.
In that particular exchange, Hayden Planetarium director (and UFO “skeptic” ) Neil deGrasse Tyson is discussing the invisibility of Bond’s cinematic Aston Martin. “There are invisible things in the world, and they’re called transparent. OK?” Tyson goes on to say “Glass is essentially invisible to the light that we see with our eyes. It’s not invisible to other forms of light, like ultraviolet or infrared. The cameras on the other side of the car have to look at every possible angle that you would be viewing the car, from your side. And we haven’t figured out really how to do that yet.”
The chatter evoked some interviews De Void conducted in 2002 with a couple of USAF veterans belonging to the 9th Fighter Squadron’s 49th Fighter-Bomber Wing in Misawa, Japan. Their window into the bizarre opened during a major technology push during 1949-50, when P-51 prop jobs were being replaced with F-80 jet fighters. And what test pilots Bud Evans and Clyde Good reported was so audacious, you almost have to laugh.
Evans, who would later train as a civilian astronaut on the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, told of how two pilots converging on what they thought was a gunnery target — a 30-foot long, 8-foot tall banner with bulls-eye markings, towed by a P-51 trailing an 800-foot cable — were baffled to find only a rectangle drifting in mid-air. They flanked the object, which they estimated to be three times the size of a conventional target, and could see each other’s plane silhouettes through what appeared to be translucent glass. Ground radar also tracked the blip, which then bolted forward and vertical and out of sight.
Evans was later scrambled when base radar spotted another bogey, which Evans’ wingman described as a thin, broad, flying rectangle that vanished as soon as he got close enough for a good look.
CONTINUE READING: devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/13318/time-for-the-debate/