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.'"

Comments

Bullshit. I saw one.

[revscat]

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.

Re:Bullshit. I saw one.

[david.given]

It was probably a jet.

The eyes can play very funny tricks on you. I live under the flight path for Heathrow, and at night you see these huge diamond-shaped aircraft flying over. I look at one, I know it's a jet, I tell myself it's a jet, but I can clearly see the lines connecting the nose and tail with the wing tips, and the body is easily visible.

The brain's got this amazing pattern-recognition system as part of the visual processing. Unfortunately, when it doesn't know what something is, it tends to guess, and one of the algorithms it uses is to connect points with lines... and to fill in shapes... and the four beacons on the nose, wingtips and tail of a 747, seen at night, is perfect material for this.

Of course, I don't know exactly what you saw, I wasn't there. But I strongly suspect what it was was a jet, a lot further away than it looked, banking away from you (so making the tail beacon invisible). You didn't make any sound because passenger jets are pretty quiet and it was a long way away, and any noise that reached you was drowned in the traffic noise.

Sorry.

Re:Bullshit. I saw one.

[Peridriga]

Thank you for posting...

An appointment has been made for a visit by many men in dark suits and black sunglasses to visit you and 'explain' to you what you 'really saw'.

Please contact truth@mib.gov to schedule a time that is acceptable for you. We will most likely disregard you request and just shove you into a black van during the day.

Once again, thank you for your coperation on this matter.

The Management,
-- Employee #82108302

Re:Bullshit. I saw one.

[revscat]

Well, that's certainly a possibility. I agree with you on the pattern-recognition abilities of the brain. However, if it were a passenger jet:

It was flying on its side

It was flying at an altitude of less than 200 feet

It was flying slower than any passenger jet I have seen before

Again, I am probably wrong, and just got excited about my siting. But I live in a flight path for DFW airport, and I also know how passenger (and private) jets look at night. It didn't look anything like this.

Re:Bullshit. I saw one.

[Tackhead]

> It was flying on its side
> It was flying at an altitude of less than 200 feet
> It was flying slower than any passenger jet I have seen before

I can't speak to what you saw - I wasn't there. But how did you know its altitude?

Suppose an aircraft is flying at 2000 feet and normal airspeed.

Suppose an observer estimates (for whatever reason) that it's flying at 200 feet, when it's really at, say, 2000 feet.

Such an aircraft will appear to be flying extremely slowly (and quietly) if you think it's at 200 feet when it's really at 2000.

Your description of "flying on its side" indicates it may have been at an odd attitude relative to you - consistent with a previous poster's hypothesis that it was a jet banking away from you.

The mind does funny things when given insufficient information. My funniest one was when I was driving to an air show, and I swore I'd seen a Rafale or Eurofighter, which made me wonder (a) what the hell it was doing here, 'cuz there was nothing like it on the list of planes scheduled to show up, and (b) why it was so quiet at that altitude, as a nearby propeller was able to drown it out.

As it turned and overflew us, I realized it was one of those funky "build-it-yourself" kit experimental planes with an impeller ("pusher") design and a funky delta-wing configuration, and that's where the prop sound was coming from. A very slick homebuilt/kit plane, to be sure, but no EF2000. :-)

Airship

[papasui]

Great you got an airship now all you need is a guy named Cid to fly it and some dudes with swords.

This is ridiculous.

[Debillitatus]

The editors came up real short on this one. After reading the /. blurb, it sounded like an actual piece of journalism that was reporting on this. Ok, fine.

Then I went to the website that this came from. Let me give those of you who bought this a clue: Any website which has "Consciousness Studies" on the front page is not anything close to reputable when it comes to speculating about objects flying in the air.

Perhaps I'm being a bit thick-headed and missed the sarcasm, but it sure seemed like this was honestly submitted, and this is nothing but a load of crap.

Re:Electrokinetic Drive?

[Bearpaw]

"Elecrokinetic propulsion means that no propellers or jets are used."

Someone want to explain that one?

It's a form of buzzword propulsion.

Hey man, don't bogart the consciousness

[xant]

Consciousness studies are usually conducted with what I would term "consciouness aids". In the Timothy Leary sense. This could explain almost everything else this website reports on.

They're out there, waiting and invisible

[patiwat]

The airships don't come and go - they're out there constantly. They're just invisible, both to optical and radar wavelengths. The ships are actually filled with tall, thin, vicious aliens who want to exploit earth's natural resources and kidnap earth's children.

The reason they haven't landed yet is because they find earth's atmosphere poisinous. The high humidity burns their skin the way hydrochloric acid burns human skin. They haven't developed the appropriate environmental suits yet because (despite being able to traval intersteller distances) they're not that smart, and don't know, for instance, how to turn door knobs. They're also confused about where to land, since all of their original crop sign navigation markers were soon replaced by the work of Disney executives and 30 year-old nerds who don't have girlfriends.

Patiwat Panurach
patiwat@sloan.mit.edu

Oh, please

[linuxwrangler]

Big Black Ships? mysterious humming drive systems?

How did this get by the /. editors.

I know it is an "argumentum ad hominem" but just do an AltaVista search and see all the people who link to the "National Institute of Discovery Science" and you will not find a bunch of references in serious scientific journals.

You will, however, get a reasonably comprehensive list of UFO whako sites. A small sample:

www.area51researchcenter.com
www.virtuallystran ge.net
www.ufofinland.net
www.ufowisconsin.com
www.ufodisclosure.com
www.aliendave.com
www.oreg onuforeview.com
ufounderground.net
www.ufowatchd og.com
www.truthseekeratroswell.com
www.stardriv e.org
www.intrudersfoundation.org
www.ufoinfo.co m
www.ufoconspiracy.com
www.artbell.com

You be the judge

Re:Why would they classify airships?

[Wyatt Earp]

In Somalia no one "won".

The United States did pull out it's forces, but the United Nations Mission (Pakistan, Qatar, Italy) remained.

The United States Embassy remained.

By the Day of the Rangers, the United States was already starting a draw-down in the region.

The Somalia people lost, the Clans lost, the United Nations lost, the United States lost soldiers, the Canadians broke up it's Para Regiment.

There were no winners in that conflict.

Why keep a transport airship secret?

[Goonie]

As was discussed in the slashdot writeup, there have been serious proposals for transport airships for some time now. This British company is proposing 1000-tonne capacity cargo airships.

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?

Re:Does not compute.

[nathanm]

A 747-400 has a payload of over 120 tons with a range of over 4400 nautical miles. Why not just use 747s?

A standard 747 works great for carrying passengers, and freight configured 747s can haul lots of cargo in small crates, but military airlifters use standardized pallets that won't fit in (current) 747s. Also, they can't carry tanks, large vehicles, helicopters, or other aircraft. Military cargo aircraft can accomodate the pallets or other large payloads. Besides, the C-5 can carry over 145 tons (max wartime payload, standard max is 125 tons).

Several Points about This

[evilviper]

Yes, yes, crap. Thanks, let's move on.

Anyhow, when the next secret aircraft is uncovered, and tied to a number of unsolved sightings, it would be nearly as significant as proof that it was aliens.

How secure would you feel knowing that there were military aircraft overhead, that no radar station was able to confirm? How would you feel knowing that the paranoid kook that you discounted was actually right? All the reports that have been discounted will no doubt give great insight, and reveal tell-tale signs of what the government does when attempting to cover-up a legit sighting.

And I'd like to end with some advice for you kooks that often photograph blury black blotches flying in the sky. Get the following:

1. An industrial stregenth spot-light.
2. A very hi-definition video camera, with good optical zoom
3. A laser range-finder

With that, you should be able to:

1. Light-up the craft.
OR
2. Instantly determine what is causing the optical illusion.
3. Get very detailed moving photos of the craft.
4. Get a definitive distance measurement, that will help when reviewing the tape(s).
5. Get credibility

You might discover classified military craft-in which case you can rub the video in the face of all the radar operators.
Hell, even if you discover that you aren't seeing craft, you just might end up with the most detailed film of some particular natural phenomenon. That's not such a bad runner-up prize.

#5 is most important. It was crappy photos that convinced the public of the lock-ness monster. The same such photos aren't going to convince anyone with half a brain.

In the worst case, with that setup, you WILL difinitively discover the real source of those sightings, and put your own mind at ease.

Heh, Aliens that can travel much faster than the speed of light, can instantly accelerate, and can stay hidden for a century, but they can't stay 'cloaked' at night, or in areas where there is not adaqute equipment to get a good record of them.