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Big Black Delta Mystery Solved?
jonerik writes "According to this article from Space.com, hundreds of sightings of enormous arrowhead-shaped aircraft that have been logged since the 1980s just might have been solved. According to a new report by the National Institute for Discovery Science, the craft (referred to as Big Black Deltas, or BBDs) are massive black airships on the order of 600 feet long, 300 feet wide, and 40 feet tall, weighing on the order of 100 tons and capable of carrying huge loads over long distances. Since a 2001 NIDS study correlated sightings of large triangular or delta-shaped objects with Air Force Materiel Command and Air Mobility Command bases throughout the United States, it's assumed that the BBDs are DoD transport airships. Dr. L. Scott Miller, professor of Aerospace Engineering at Wichita State University, agrees with much of the NIDS report. 'I do think that a large airship, with a heavy lift and other mission objectives, has been built,' says Dr. Miller. 'Lockheed has shown a great deal of interest in airships for many years. The real question is whether the Department of Defense has committed to buy and use such machines.'"
I was going to post this anonymously, but then decided it would just lessen my credibility.
I saw one of these in (of all places) Denton, Texas in 1992. I was going to the University of North Texas, and was hanging out at this friend of mine's house. We had stayed up all night talking politics and philosophy, and had gone out onto the balcony so I could smoke.
Her apartment was on the second floor, facing the pool, behind which was another two-storey apartment building. We hadn't been out there long when I noticed something moving just above the building opposite us. It was triangular in shape, with lights at each of the points. In appearance it was dark grey, and the lights at the points were just a tad brighter than the stars around the thing. It's orientation was almost completely vertical: imagine holding up a mostly-equilateral triangle in front of you and moving it from left to right, with the point facing right. It was moving very slowly, I would estimate at around 20 or 30 MPH.
I shouted out "Hey, what's that?" It took a short while for her to see it, but eventually she did. We watched it for a minute, chattering excitedly, before it slowly turned away from us and disappeared off to the west.
It didn't make a sound, and it was very big. It was unidentified, it was flying, and it was an object. Beyond that I make no claims. But if the DoD can build something like that, then I'm damned impressed.
No, I'm not bullshitting in some weak attempt to get karma. This really did happen to me.
Okay, some quick calculations, based on the estimated volume and mass, gives me a net payload of way less than 100 tons. (More like about 40 tons unless I messed up the math. - Figure a volume of about 36 million cu ft, the density is about 25 grams/cu ft, for a net lift of 10 gms/cu ft (air weighing about 35 gm/cu ft), or 36 metric tons.
A 747-400 has a payload of over 120 tons with a range of over 4400 nautical miles. Why not just use 747s? (Although, if this airship has the advantages of stealth and being able to "land" just about anywhere, there might be some point.)
Somehow I don't buy it.
-- Alastair
Reading this article in light of the book review at Salon.com today, about supposedly hidden anti-gravity technology the US took from the Nazis after WWII. http://www.salon.com/books/review/2002/08/05/zero_ gravity/index.html
They don't give the book a lot of credence, but the fact that it was written by an editor at Jane's Defense makes it a little more plausible. The author says that some of that technology, if it exists, is actually being used in the B-2 bombers. It would, don't chya think, make sense to put two and two together and come up with a big-ass blimp that is powered by some obscure technology to keep it afloat.
Makes sense to me.
At disclosure project there are several videos that talk about anti-gravity drives and 0-point energy systems that could take you "off the grid" permanently. Supposedly, much of the money that was funnelled into the "Star Wars" project actually found its way into the engineering and creation of these types of secret devices and weapon systems.
/.'s, but Disclosure Project has really changed my mind. The book has testimony from over a hundred government personnel from DIA, DoD, ONI, Army, Navy & Air Force, testifying that not only do UFO's exist but the technology has been used by a shadow government since the late 1940's. I have also read in other places that this structure is connected with several large complexes inhabitted by Nazis in Argentia and Antartica. Now before you accuse me of going off the deep-end, check out the well-documented account of an Admiral Byrd who lead an expedition of a dozen ships from S.A. to Antartica in 1947. Also, note the rash of cattle mutilations and UFO sightings in Argentia right now (rense.com).
g ma/enigmapa rt1.htm -- The Arctic Enigma
I know UFO's and space aliens are a stretch to the scientifically-minded
Perhaps try reading or viewing some evidence before casting it all aside like a latter-day Carl Sagan.
Just because YOU haven't seen it, personally or on the tele, doesn't mean it doesn't exist (or something like that).
further reading and subjects:
Branton's dulce book
Disclosure Project
rense.com
"foo fighters"
Project Paperclip
http://www.violations.dabsol.co.uk/eni
This kind of cargo airship would be very large, take a long time to get anywhere, and would probably fly much, much lower than a plane. Trying to keep its existence secret would be a substantial challenge to say the least.
So, given the non-secretness of the whole idea of a big cargo airship, the difficulty of keeping one secret if it existed, and the fact that the exact capabilities of a transport aircraft aren't generally the most important things to keep secret anyway, why bother?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I saw one of these as well.
It was in the late 70s, on Vandenburg AFB in California (the west coast missle base.)
It was going rather fast.
Eventually, when the Stealth Fighter was announced, I concluded that that was what I actually saw.
It was very fast, very quiet, and flying low- quite startling. It didn't get enough of a look to recognize it as an airplane (As the stealth is obviously an airplane when you see one stopped)...
but I didn't decide it was a spacecraft either.
Ahh, the days of getting up at 6 am and watching simultaneous dual-minutman launches.
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
If true, there should be some very large custom-built hangers for these things that would show up in commercially available satellite photos. Do these exist? (For that matter, the craft themselves should have been imaged multiple times, but in the flood of data, it could be hard to find them.)
On a side line - how are the 'Aurora' rumours coming along? ('Aurora' is supposedly a deep black hypersonic reconnosance airplane, replacing the SR-71.)
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
gleam,
Why do I have this feeling that Aereon is actually a front company for a Lockheed Skunk Works project?
If you remember from the late Ben Rich's book Skunk Works, the way Clarence Kelly Johnson got the parts to build the U-2 was to order the parts through a front company named C & J Engineering, complete with a postal box out in Sunland, CA, which was well-away from the Lockhead plant at Burbank, CA. It's possible that the Aereon company was a ruse to cover up Lockheed's ressearch into stealth lighter-than-air vehicles used for reconnaissance and special ops transport.