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Local Hackerspace Loses Solar Balloon, Creating Another UFO In New Mexico
bugnuts writes: Local Albuquerque, New Mexico Hackerspace Quelab created and unintentionally launched a solar-powered tetroon over the city, prompting several calls to the FAA, Kirtland Air Force Base, and news organizations, describing it as a "floating tortilla chip." The tetroon allows sunlight to pass through the top layer, heating the inner black layers, creating a hot-air balloon as the interior gas expands. Besides the well-known "Roswell" incident, New Mexico often has many UFO sightings due to the prevalence of technology and military groups, good weather, and clear skies.
Not a UFO, already determined that even in the summary. We know what it is, thus "identified". Not "unidentified". Thus no UFO. Why is this a story? That a few people called in and didn't recognize a few lights in the sky?
With all the weird aircraft that fly into Kirtland, and the yearly Balloon Fiesta with hundreds of hot air balloons, I'm surprised it would have drawn much in the way of UFO calls in ABQ.
They regularly have weirder things in the air.
It would be much neater if the summary actually focused on the story, rather than the lame news coverage about UFO's. The fact that they figured out the right size/weight balance on a balloon to have it self sustaining from solar heating the air is pretty cool. Add to this that it created enough lift to actually allow it to pull away and be lost, carrying weight, and you get a nifty geek story about some makers and their incubator in NM. Way to go Quelab/Gonner, keep it up!
due to the prevalence of technology and military groups, good weather, and clear skies.
And the largest contributing factor? A bunch of UFO loonies calling in every gnat, housefly, thermal mirage, and assorted hallucination brought about by acid and peyote trips.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
UPI Story on CIA and UFOs says half the UFO reports in the 50s and 60s were really sightings of their U2 aircraft, which were secret because they still hadn't found what they were looking for, and which flew enough higher and faster than normal airplanes that people didn't recognize them. (Remember that propeller planes were still common, though jets were starting to be common.)
Even in the late 80s / early 90s, supersonic planes weren't common - the Concorde only went that fast over the ocean, mainly due to sonic boom concerns, and the new wide-area air traffic control system that was being developed then wasn't spec'd for them; you'd typically get one blip and then they'd be off the radar screen.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Yo quiero Earth.
I'm a member of the QueLab makerspace and I was there when the solar balloon got away from us in a sudden gust of wind. If you didn't know what it was, it did look pretty weird. A giant black triangle hanging in the sky. We *tried* to tell people it was a balloon, but some people *refused to believe us*. They told us we didnt' know what we were talking about, that we were lying, part of a cover up, etc. Fortunately we had plenty of pictures of it on the ground, as well as a smaller prototype version, and a tracking system on the balloon. Otherwise, this might have been declared a real UFO by some.
We at QueLab were a little surprised too, given the amount of hot air balloons that are flown around here. But this one did look a bit different than the typical balloon. Kirtland usually doesn't fly too many odd looking aircraft either. Mainly we see Ospreys, MH53s, etc.
aarontcowan (3990181) is obviously a member of the trilateral commission. Don't be taken in by his misinformation campaign.
From the moment the balloon got away we were afraid that people would say it was a UFO. We tried to tell people, but some folks want to believe anything weird-looking in the sky is a UFO. There is a whole sub-genre in the UFO literature specifically devoted to "triangular UFOs". I think the rationale we had for a tetrahedral design was that it was fairly simple to make, regular, and has sloped edges so it can catch light through the clear top. It makes me wonder if many of these other triangular UFOs are experimental balloons as well. Of course, ours flew during the day because...duh...it's a solar balloon. So it got a little more notice, perhaps.
Many people declared this a Dorrito or a blue corn tortilla chip. But I'm not sure how they knew what brand of chip it was. It could have been a Tostito or many other brand covered in bean dip. Next time we will have to be sure to put a green patch on it to represent the green chile salsa. Yum. yum. yum.
I was in ABQ in the 90s, and they had things like the Airborne Laser 747 come through, an Antonov AN 124 delivering a Topaz space reactor (had to close Gibson Ave when it departed for worry about the jet wash being over the barriers), etc.
A lot of the interesting things didn't look all that odd unless you knew what to look for, like extra sensor ports added to them and such (Aviation Week was sometimes a good guide to those). The trestle was already closed, so they weren't getting them for EMP testing so much. Phillips Lab still got a lot of one off planes coming through for things related to R and D.
The Balloon Fiesta mass ascensions are still one of the most amazing things I've seen. I-25 was a dangerous place to be driving when that happened. everyone was looking at the balloons and not the road.
Friend of mine got to name streets in a lot of towns around Alaska. He was working for the Alascom phone company, and they got funded to put satellite dish phone access to a couple hundred small towns in remote parts of the state. Phone company offices need to have street addresses, and many of the towns hadn't bothered to name their streets (why, if you've only got one or two?)
Years earlier, I did some training at South Central Bell in Alabama. They were still converting their databases from paper cards to computers, and a lot of their rural customers had address descriptions like "take the third dirt road after you get to where the Jones place was before it burned down", because their official Post Office addresses were either just "Rural Route 6 Box 32" (which doesn't tell you anything about how to get there), or "P.O.Box 32, Podunk, Alabama" and they picked up their mail at the post office.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks