JerryB said:
And, to add to the discussion vis a vis gravity, etc. - there is one case where the UFO occupants told a witness that we humans get things wrong. We try to go up against the force of gravity, whereas the UFO occupants claimed that their craft went 'sideways' to it
..... Mmmmmm, I see the plot thickens.
Sideways eh? Now that's the sort of idea that I can like.... : )
Jerry, please do believe me when I say I do know what you mean, and in really all the most important ways I do actually agree, quite despite ehatever degree of wither I may onoccasion be prone to express about certain aspects of the business.
You're right, the subject of plausibility does indeed rest upon the individual to judge, on that from me you'll get little arguement. I myself am a person not at all wholly taken with the idea's associated with UFO's at the best of times. I'm alright in terms of general principals, but as soon as talk gets down to the minutest deatails of the very specific's..... Usually all my head wants to do is bail.
For myself, and I means this in the very broadest possible sense, there's a whole case of
othersness I associate as going along with the subject which, personally, I'm not at all terribly impressed with. That's a very awkward way of putting things, so perhaps I should possibly try to explain.
It all really comes back to that very old and very often foisted pro-UFO agrument those who profess to keep an open mind about these very and exact things can often be found to lay recourse to whenever the going usually begins to get tough:
"100 years or so ago, man powered flight was considered by the establishment of the day to be little more than a mere flight of fancy: Well, they were
wrong!"
And indeed, as far as it goes, the statement as it stands remains perfectly true. But in the interests of preserveing the actual true of these such sentiments, if that truth must be told, the fact that man powered flight was indeed possible
wasn't proven by those first responsible for that success by them demonstrating that fact by
first constructing an areoplane with the range and fundermental flight capacities as expressed by an example of latter day design and avionics technology like the Concord, or the Boeing 747, or the B2 Spirit.
It was in fact first demonstarted by an exteamly limited, rickity little affair hardly one step removed from the actual Box-Kite it really was with a prop driven boat propellar stuck on the end of it powered by what was actually a lawn mower engine.
Nevertheless, the principal which under lie
all all such subsequent winged, engined aircraft remain exactly those that were first both demonstrated and
proven by this exactly such poultry, splendidly homemade rickity little affair.
But there is more to that story, and those who follow the pursuit of studying UFO's ignore it both at their own peril and often. And it is this:
In that very race to first prove that man powered flight was possible, the course was run by many, many contenders. All of whom thouroughly and consistantly mucked it up. And though we today can look back at what film footage still remains of those early attempts at what we today tend to take for granted, and find huge ammusment in watching these ludicrously put together contrivances judder and flap and blow themselves apart whilst still firmly attatched to the ground, we presume that we are watching little more than the work of fools.
But actually, we are
not.
Exactly as those whom today proclaim the virtue of themselves being possessive of an open mind with reguard to the possible alternatives which may exist in opposition to what the voice of the establishment deems to be what is either possible or what in fact is not,
these exact same people in their day were people of no less so true and honest intent. Exactly as their modern day counterparts, they were all intelligent, well read, aware and fully understanding of both the science of the times they lived in and the virtues and future possibilities of the technology of the day.
They were not fools, they were not idiots,
most of them weren't actually insane or in anway deluded in the slightest.
And yet, when push came to shove they all, unliaterally proved catagorically to the world once and forever that they were wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong,
wrong. Except for just two.
They
weren't wrong at all about what it was they were trying to achieve and prove, but they were wrong, very, about the correct method's and ways that one can successfully actually go about proving those ends are possible.
Except for just two.
And their success wasn't down to the fact that the Wright brothers were in any way smarter, better read, or in any way different from any of the other runners in the race. The reason why
they were succesful is because they themselves, unlike virtually all of their contemporaries,
didn't set out to prove that man powered flight was in fact possible by being in anway terribly, terribly
cleaver about it or in anyway overly complex.
They looked at the problem in the simpliest possible terms. How can I get into the air? A box-kite works, so that's the way
we'll do that. Because of the size and weight it'll have to be, we'll stick an engine on it to give it a bit of a push and help keep it up there.....
And that's in fact absolutely
all the Wright brothers ever did. And that is all anyone actually
needed to do. Because the pricipals at work in that construstion were all perfectly well know and perfectly well understood at the time at which they applied them. And they worked, they could
see them at work and putting these two things together and applying them to that specific problem in that particular order for those particular purposes was all that was necessary to demonstrate that man powered flight was indeed a perfectly achievable goal in the end.
In order to understand and be in any way able to explain how a thing like a UFO can actually be an genuine vehicle of some description and be in any way actually capable of behaving in any thing like the manner the witnesses of such things have consistantly described them as being apparently capable of, what we need to understand
first is the nature of the
underlying Physical Principals which can allow such a sighting to be in anyway possible in the first place.
The technology of that remains wholley secondary, and can frankly take perfectly good care of itself at a later date.
To do anything in anyway different is to be the equivalent of setting out to prove man powered flight is actually possible for the first time, but insisting that the capacities that solution is capable of demonstating equate exactly to the sorts of flight capacities equal to those of the Kitty Hawks subsequent descendants like the Concord, and the Boing 747, and the B2 Spirit....
It's a stageringly ludicrous expectation, wholley unreasonable to in any way actually attain. So why does Ufology persist in the belief that it is possible to in any way achieve this, when actually mainstream Science hasn't placed anything like so mind numbingly an idiotic a burdon of proof on the matter in the first place?
The most negative assesment Science has ever actually made about the subject of UFO's is that they remain inexplicable in conventional terms.
"Conventional Terms" in reguard to a matter concerning some form of craft observed to be present mainly exclusively in the air pertains to the likelyhood the of something demonstrating those exact
sorts of ariel behavioural characteristic's being in anyway explicable in terms of
artifically contructed, powered flight.
It is not an accessment which in any way rules out the possibility of UFO's existing, nor is it a statement which dictates that such things are in any way actually impossible to exist at all. Merely a straightforeward apraisal by those who actually do know a very great deal about exactly what it is they are in fact actually talking about that, whatever such things are, they aren't actually
aircraft.
One would think basic common sense alone would be merely sufficient for that to be taken as read by anyone whoes ever given the reports of such fare the very cursory of glances, let alone followed the subject as an actual pursuit in some degree of actual depth for any appreciable while, and yet what does the mainstream of Ufology find itself most readily occupied with?
The pursuit of endevouring to prove Science wrong by re-inventing the principals of flight in terms of Extraterrestrial Technology and Advanced Theoretical Physicial Principals which, even if actually right, it must surely occur to even the very dimmest of individuals, if the proof of the Theory remains on the
inside of the actual evidence which most principally supports the notion, ie: UFO's, the evidence itself has the disconcerting habit of buggering off in a somewhat disconcerting manner and off, off and away too the proof of the pudding with it.
So frankly all the speculations you really are ever likely to read, though cleaver and imaginative and terribly well informed and possibly, who knows, mabey one day, actually
right, all
remain wholly in the realm of wholey speculation and present not one jot in way of either evidence, least of all actual fact, with which to support the notion that such things as UFOs can actually be in anyway possible at all.
Unless there are to hand
first both valid and applicable physical principals on which such endlessly entertaining speculations can first based. And you only get those by first paying attention to the actual matter to hand.
Now, Aliens, Interstellar Travel, Abduction, all the plethora of stuff that gets lumped together with UFO's.... As far as such stuff goes I haven't an answer, I haven't a clue. The only way I can look at the subject is in terms of, if you're dealing with something which is a Vehicle: what are the objectives associated with going about doing a thing in that particular way, how would one go about achieving those objectives....? Questions like these, straightforeward ones, I
can get a handle on, I can reasonably come up with an answer to. If you ask me a question like by what
means would those principals be applied, this I can happily take a stab at.
But as the the all and the rest of it.....
How much of it all is actually in anyway necessary?
My....now
That's what I
call a Lecture..........! Sorry old chap. Mouth ran away with me again. Happens. Do of course feel free to pick me up about it. I ceratinly would, but then I'm possibly not a terribly pleasant person to begin with. Sorry.......
All the best,
T