Re: The Astronomy Thread : Mon Jan 25, 2016 4:17 pm  

Seriously, I don't understand some of you people. It's like you are fundamentally incapable of arriving at any conclusion without explicit authority to do so.

When industry insiders, whistleblowers, professional observes (i.e. fighter pilots and scientists performing seismic surveys on the US Western seaboard), directors of major defence contractors are ALL saying "I have seen craft or evidence of craft whose performance envelope is staggering" and those testimonies are found not to be contradictory there's more than a chance that they are telling the truth. A craft shaped like a "big black triangle" with lights at each vertex. A craft which can change direction around a coin at multiples of mach speed. A craft which makes almost no sound at all. A craft which can cloak itself within ambient colours. Time and time again we've seen highly credible observers make such statements. But you'd rather believe NASA, an overtly military operation largely created by former Nazi war criminals who should have been hung at Nuremberg which has repeatedly lied and falsified evidence since its inception than people who really have no vested interest in reporting their observations and have even had their careers harmed by doing so.

I find this possibility far more credible than the LUDICROUS notion that a nation spending TRILLIONS on defence is prepared to cede supremacy of space to expanding nation states such as China and beg Roscomos or Ariane for a lift into orbit following the retirement of the shuttle. Likewise, the idea that there has been almost no significant progress (other than the rarely deployed ion drive) in the field of space propulsion systems since prior to WWII.

Re: The Astronomy Thread : Mon Jan 25, 2016 4:42 pm  

I'll list just a handful of the comments made by Ben Rich before his death:

"We did the F104, C130, U2, SR71, F117 and many other programs that I can't talk about. We are still working very hard, I just can't tell you what we are doing" (September 1992)

"The Air Force has just given us a contract to take ET back home" (September 22, 1992)"

"We already have the means to travel among the stars, but these technologies are locked up in black projects and it would take an Act of God to ever get them out to benefit humanity" (UCLA 3/23/93)

"There is an error in the equations, and we have figured it out, and now know how to travel to the stars, and it won't take a lifetime to do it" (UCLA Alumni Speech 3/23/93)"

"Jim, we have things in the Nevada desert that are fifty years beyond what you can comprehend. If you've seen it on Star Wars or Star Trek, we have been there, done that, or decided it wasn't worth the effort" -- confirmed conversation with Jim Goodhall (a close friend of Rich) weeks prior to his passing in 1995.

Now, you tell me what you think the above means?

[Bullseye]

Re: The Astronomy Thread : Mon Jan 25, 2016 5:01 pm  

TheButcher wrote:

*Sigh*

X2

Re: NASA and Space general conspiracy discussions : Mon Jan 25, 2016 5:01 pm  

Ferocious Aardvark wrote:

I am a very experienced Photoshop user and the above is in my considered view conspiracist nonsense.

Mugwump wrote:

Nope, that's a loaded statement meant to browbeat independent thinking into quiescence.

Nope, it was a neutral and accurate statement meant to indictae that I consider myself able to comment on "Photoshopping" questions with as much validity as you did when you made the following loaded statement presumably meant to browbeat independent thinking into quiescence:

Mugwump wrote:

I also think that by red-shifting the atmosphere they also make it easier for those editing Mars images to clone out inconvenient artifacts without leaving the telltale traces that experienced Photoshop users can spot a mile off. I have attempted to clone the same portion of duplicate images and it is definitely harder to detect changes at a pixel level in the photograph which has been colour shifted into the red.

Mugwump wrote:

You should know by now that I attach a much higher degree of significance to my own opinions than yours (for a whole host of reasons) so I really don't know why you bothered typing it.

I neither know nor care what you think of my opinions. Take em or leave em. I typed it in answer to your claim, that much is surely obvious.

Mugwump wrote:

This is a gross misrepresentation and you know it. I don't know ANYONE, ANYWHERE who believes every single event taking place on this planet and others forms part of a "grand conspiracy". Likewise, I don't know ANYONE, ANYWHERE who believes conspiracy doesn't exist - full-stop. We ALL inhabit a region in-between both extremes.

Exaggeration for emphasis is a normal literary device and your comment therefore has no valid basis.

Mugwump wrote:

I mean, weren't YOU the guy who claimed the SL Challenge Cup draw is "rigged"?

Er - no, I debunked the "dodgy ball theory. (Using Photoshop). The precise opposite to what you oddly claim.

Mugwump wrote:

You do realise that a monolith is, BY DEFINITION, a "geological feature consisting of a single massive stone or rock". So you're discounting someone for pointing out "monoliths" on Mars when he is accurately describing the VERY THING YOU CLAIM HE ISN'T? This is what happens when people get their knowledge from movies ...

You can be irritatingly deisingenuous. You know full well that in context the suggestion by your mate and his school of thought is that the "Monolith on Mars" must be artificail not natural, so evidence of aliens or whatever, and he then implies that there's loads of 'em. There aren't. There is known to be just that one. And he is comparing long shadows from plainly natural rock objects, to the "Monolith", trying to make people think it is not the only artificial monolith "built" on Mars. As you well know.

Mugwump wrote:

Well, what do you propose? Stop all further missions? Bit suspicious, that - not to mention hard to justify. And as you know perfectly well, the system of government graft in the US is fundamentally wrapped up with the maxim "Use it or lose it".

Ah, so you DO think there is known life on Mars, and they've found it, but they have to keep spending untold billions continuing to send missions to "look for it" just so they don't "give the game away" by stopping missions because taht woudl "look suspicious". Okaaaaaay. Hmmm. Now my trolling detector is reaching amber levels.

Mugwump wrote:

...NASA is run by human beings just like the rest of us. They have the same hangups, are prone to making the same mistakes and are periodically bothered by the same naggings of conscience. You think a guy paid to sit in front of a PC all day editing images is any more honest and diligent just because he works for NASA?

No, most human beings working for NASA or elsewhere do not participate in the crazier conspiracy theories about alien life, aliens on Earth, fake Moon landings, no satellites exist, flat earth, and the rest. There MAY be the odd conspiracy loon within NASA and I suppose being such a big organisation statistically there is some likelihood but no, I believe that the overwhelming majority of them are likely to be like the overwhelming majority of other people - just doing their job, and not part of some ludicrous endless and infinitely expensive conspiracy involving hundreds of thousands of employees all over the globe 99.9% of which would I think roll their eyes and sigh at the sort of conspiracist shoite I am talking about.

Mugwump wrote:

On the contrary - colour reproduction is a VERY precise science. You are conflating colour PERCEPTION which is not the same thing.

No I am not at all. Colour can only be accurately reproduced if you are able to use a light source of precisely standard "white" and of a precisely calibrated brightness and at a precisely measured distance, and starting in total darkness. Anything else and you will get a variation from doing the exact same thing in different places. Whether you call it an error of perception or an error of reproduction will depend. It could be a bit of both.

Mugwump wrote:

No one is talking here about colour perception.

Wrong. All we CAN talk about is colour perception. Unless a human eye is seeing the image / object / and forming a judgment on it, which is perception, there is nothing to talk about, is there?

Mugwump wrote:

When I say it's IMPOSSIBLE for NASA to change their own colour calibration markers from blue to vivid red using only a colour cast transfer and still record an accurate colour rendition (under earth conditions) it's because it really is impossible...

Is there an actual point in there that you want to get out, that realtes to something specific?

Mugwump wrote:

We're talking about NASA's excuse for completely ignoring their own colour calibration procedure, imposing a seemingly arbitrary value and then offering an excuse which introduces a variable which we can't test and yet they knew of it before the mission was even launched. Did the scientists who designed the optical package and the calibration tests just FORGET about this dust?

What, specifically, are you referring to? Do you have a link to NASA's said "excuse"?

Mugwump wrote:

But there's a big difference between attempting to render non-visible radiation in false colour and FAKING images. I'm sure you can grasp the distinction.

Indeed I can, sadly many conspiracists on the planet absolutely can't. Which sad state of affairs has been going on ever since the first Moon landing "hoax" claims with their pseudo-scientific absolute bunkum about not being able to see the stars, diverging shadows, why is the dark side of teh lander illuminated and other such puerile objections, which are so asinine that to say they were "debunked" is to afford them 99% more credibility than they ever had - yet despite this, their legacy is that many people to this day ludicrously believe man never landed on the Moon.

Mugwump wrote:

Erm ... in case you didn't know science is and has never been about arguments from authority. If it were the church would still be running the whole show. The linked video provides EVIDENCE ...

As I said the trouble with the linked video is that the presenter reveals his conspiracist credentials as well as presenting grossly unscientific and misleading material. So I can't take anything he says seriously. I'm surprised you can.

Re: The Astronomy Thread : Mon Jan 25, 2016 5:07 pm  

Mugwump wrote:

I'll list just a handful of the comments made by Ben Rich before his death:

"We did the F104, C130, U2, SR71, F117 and many other programs that I can't talk about. We are still working very hard, I just can't tell you what we are doing" (September 1992)

"The Air Force has just given us a contract to take ET back home" (September 22, 1992)"

"We already have the means to travel among the stars, but these technologies are locked up in black projects and it would take an Act of God to ever get them out to benefit humanity" (UCLA 3/23/93)

"There is an error in the equations, and we have figured it out, and now know how to travel to the stars, and it won't take a lifetime to do it" (UCLA Alumni Speech 3/23/93)"

"Jim, we have things in the Nevada desert that are fifty years beyond what you can comprehend. If you've seen it on Star Wars or Star Trek, we have been there, done that, or decided it wasn't worth the effort" -- confirmed conversation with Jim Goodhall (a close friend of Rich) weeks prior to his passing in 1995.

Now, you tell me what you think the above means?

If you asked me whether I believe that the Americans (or the Russians, Chinese or any other power capable of throwing sufficient resources at it) have in the past been and are currently spending a lot of money on top secret research into stuff like propulsion systems, advanced air/space craft etc., I would say well of bloody course they are, it would be ludicrous to think they weren't!

I would qualify my opinion with the strict caveat that we are not now nor ever have been in possession of technology from /contacted or visited by / aliens from other worlds and I consider anyone who claims to have been abducted, or seen aliens to be in need of help.

Re: The Astronomy Thread : Mon Jan 25, 2016 5:17 pm  

Mugwump wrote:

Seriously, I don't understand some of you people. It's like you are fundamentally incapable of arriving at any conclusion without explicit authority to do so.

When industry insiders, whistleblowers, professional observes (i.e. fighter pilots and scientists performing seismic surveys on the US Western seaboard), directors of major defence contractors are ALL saying "I have seen craft or evidence of craft whose performance envelope is staggering" and those testimonies are found not to be contradictory there's more than a chance that they are telling the truth.

I wouldn't discount that. As i said in my earlier reply, all advanced nations try to design better/stealthier/faster etc craft to gain an advantage, and so many of the sightings of "UFOs" that are genuine are indeed very likely to be advanced secret craft. I don't even see anything debatable on this point.

Have the Americans, and the Russians, got top secret advanced craft / weapons etc that I have never seen? Of bloody course they have. What WOULD be odd is if they had made all their latest assets public.

Mugwump wrote:

I find this possibility far more credible than the LUDICROUS notion that a nation spending TRILLIONS on defence is prepared to cede supremacy of space to expanding nation states such as China and beg Roscomos or Ariane for a lift into orbit following the retirement of the shuttle. Likewise, the idea that there has been almost no significant progress (other than the rarely deployed ion drive) in the field of space propulsion systems since prior to WWII.

Two points in one. I should imagine NASA has some contingency plan if it came down to it, maybe to unmothball a Space Shuttle or whatever, but no, I do NOT believe they have a secret space transit craft.

There has been a mammoth leap in space propulsion systems since WWII as any student of space an astronomy would know, and once out of Earth orbit, for example, we have ion drive, solar sails and the rest. But, to escape Earth's orbit, we have not yet perfected any means other than brute force.

Do i think we will ever create an "anti-gravity" device? Why not? Once we understand what gravity actually is, and how it works, then I don't see any reason in principle why we wouldn't find some smart way to alter its effects. And a warp drive seems eminently doable in theory, even if not, I think, in current practice.

I would be very surprised if the anti-gravity propulsion system had yet been invented but as I am sure that one day it will be, then the only question is whether that day has yet come. My guess would be within 50 years.

Re: NASA and Space general conspiracy discussions : Mon Jan 25, 2016 6:49 pm  

Edgar Fouche's 1998 presentation on the TR-3B

Edgar Fouche's 1998 presentation on the TR-3B

Re: NASA and Space general conspiracy discussions : Mon Jan 25, 2016 8:44 pm  

Ferocious Aardvark wrote:

Is there an actual point in there that you want to get out, that realtes to something specific?
What, specifically, are you referring to? Do you have a link to NASA's said "excuse"?

Jesus H. Christ! Watch the bloody video. I'm sure as hell not going to spoon-feed it for you.

And what THE **** are you doing splitting off a conversation which is explicitly concerned with explaining OBSERVABLE ASTRONOMICAL PHENOMENA and then setting up a completely new thread with a blatantly loaded addendum?

Do you seriously think that's acceptable behavior from a moderator? In this short debate who of the two of us launched the first personal attack? When other members entered the debate with single-statement personal attacks which of the two of us took action? Who the **** do you think you are?

I really don't know what you are attempting to discuss in the existing thread ("the NASA appreciation society", "there is no truth but explicitly authorized state-sanctioned truth" maybe) but it certainly isn't doing what it says on the tin. Maybe you should remind people at the start of the thread not to mention Vladimir Putin or the Russian Space Industry given that Putin has openly questioned whether the US ever went to the moon. And I guess you'd better throw in the names of just about every astronaut in the US space program (including Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Edgar Mitchell etc. etc.) who have openly talked about unidentified flying objects. I guess they are "conspiracy loons", too. Oh, and don't forget Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. Good lord - what an incredibly MONOTONOUS thread it must now be.

And you do realise that people such as Galileo, Copernicus & Isaac Newton would undoubtedly take umbrage with what YOU consider (and now define as) "astronomy". Although, maybe not. I can't say that I've ever considered you intellectually noteworthy so I guess you aren't capable of this level of thinking.

Mental Note: Don't waste your time on morons.

[Wheels]

Re: NASA and Space general conspiracy discussions : Mon Jan 25, 2016 8:56 pm  

Well, this escalated quickly.

Re: NASA and Space general conspiracy discussions : Mon Jan 25, 2016 9:28 pm  

The Night Sky thread is nothing to do with conspiracy theories. He Sin Bin is almost dead but almost all of it is occupied with discussions about conspiracies. Those who want to discuss conspiracies should allow other threads to exist without dumping more of the same in them. It is 100% correct to split the new conspiracy stuff off a sit is NOTHING to do with the night sky thread. But tell you what, if you don't like it then merge the fscking thing back and I'll close the door on my way out. That will leave you as basically the lone poster in the entire Sin Bin which seems to be what you're aiming for.