UFO's And The Shuttle Part 3

File: UFO44

Since the arguments for great range to the object all fail, the conclusions based on angular motion converted to physical motion also fail.

What is the "flare" in the camera that precedes the change in motion of all the objects? I believe the flare in the lower left camera FOV is an RCS jet firing, not per Hoagland an electromagnetic pulse effect. There are several reasons: it does not look like any known electromagnetic video interference; it looks just like previously seen RCS flares; and the Hoagland counterargument about an alleged need for pointing changing is not valid.

First, while it is true that EMI can affect electrical equipment, such pulses would not lie in any localized region of a television screen but would blitz the whole image. Anybody whose TV has ever been blitzed by lightning knows that the effect does not confine itself to the corner nearest the lightning. Also, far more sensitive electronic equipment aboard the shuttle, including computers which were counting the pulses of individual cosmic rays striking their circuits, were not affected by the event (otherwise, the entire television transmission would have been knocked out). So Hoagland's explanation is magical and unrealistic.

Second, the optical appearance of RCS jet firings is well known and familiar to experienced observers, and they look just like the flash in question. These have been observed and videotaped on every shuttle mission, from the crew cabin, from payload bay and RMS cameras, and from cameras on nearby free-flying satellites, and from ground optical tracking cameras as well. Third, Hoagland's argument that the line of travel of stars down to the horizon should have been kinked by the jet firing is plain ignorant. During attitude hold coast periods, the shuttle autopilot maintains a "deadband" of several degrees, slowly drifting back and forth and, when the attitude exceeds the deadband limit, a jet is pulsed to nudge (NOT "shove") the spaceship back toward the center of the deadband. The angular rates induced by these 80-msec pulses are as follows:

ROLL .07 deg/sec

PITCH .10 deg/sec

YAW .05 deg/sec

Note that the star motion would have changed direction ONLY IF the orbiter's pointing attitude was shifted to the right or left. If shifted up or down, only a slight change in star motion rate would occur (this appears to be the way the jet plume is actually directed) but so would horizon motion, so it would have to measured as absolute screen position. If shifted in or out, no change at all would be observable. This is all based on pure geometric considerations overlooked by Hoagland.

After ten seconds, even in the worst case (pitch motion inducing pure crossways angular motion), the star track would only have diverged a single degree from the former straight line. This is visually undetectable on the images shown by Hoagland. So the fact that he sees no change in the star motion tracks does not disprove that the pulse was an RCS jet.