Wheeee posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v137U-PjLxw

Sleekly posted:

of my possible deaths were:
heart attack
old age
espionage whoopsie
cancer
whacked by Radar

i know what id choose

endocriminologist posted:

imagine being undercover as a revolutionary in rural China, not knowing the aliens are desperate for revolutionary spirit and will abduct you

Petey posted:

thanks so much for mentioning this. the bit about the prologue of genesis clicked his dark materials into place for me. it's my favorite book series — i have a quarter sleeve tattoo, working on more — and i knew pullman was influenced by a gnostic phase in his 20s, but didn't have any context for how until i read a bit about this.

yeah i have been worried about this with some of my students (i think i linked a tulpa research paper earlier)

Wheeee posted:

Lue's on Coast to Coast tonight btw

Rickshaw posted:

It's likely it wasn't called the Aurora (that seems to have come from a budget line item related to B-2 development) but there is substantial evidence that there was a high-supersonic / possibly hypersonic demonstrator being flown in the 80s and 90s.

Chris Gibson was working on an oil rig in the North Sea in 1989. He's a member of the Royal Observer Corps, meaning he's the kind of aircraft nerd that has trained for years to identify aircraft by their silhouettes & etc. He saw a highly-swept delta-wing triangle configuration aircraft refueling behind a KC-135 tanker as they flew overhead, flanked by F-111s. His story has never changed and you couldn't hope for a better witness. As an incident, it's a highly believable example of opsec failure; why would anyone expect there to be a trained observer working on an oil rig right where you want to refuel your classified asset?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/oil-rig-engineer-sketches-secret-us-spy-aircraft-1563429.html

There were a series of mystery sonic booms ("skyquakes") over the southern west coast of the US in the 90s. Researchers reconstructed the flight path and speed of the booms from seismograph data (!) recorded in the region. Again, pretty solid evidence. It was neither an SR-71 or a space shuttle reentry.
https://authors.library.caltech.edu/3348/

Back in the 80s / early 90s, it was actually possible to hike up a mountain near Rachel Nevada and get a good view of area 51. If you believe this report, a few intrepid base watchers actually saw something fitting the description take off:
https://www.dreamlandresort.com/trip_reports/trip_020.html

I have documentation from a reported incident at Kadena AFB in 1994 where a plane in distress was forced to an emergency landing. Base personnel were moved inside and put on lockdown, and the plane was tracked coming in at mach 4.2.


There's more bread crumbs out there if you go digging. Lots and lots of rumors from old military dudes if you know where to hunt. DOD / DARPA research on hypersonics, drag reduction, materials science, combined cycle thrusters, single stage to orbit / two stage to orbit engine systems, projects isinglass and rheinberry, kingfish, COPPER CANYON and COPPER COAST, the NASP, the rumored "brilliant buzzard," plasma-enabled MHD drives, methane slush fuel, the SR-72 / project blackswift, pulse jets, scram jets, ram jets, aerospikes..... It's hard to tie it all together into a clear picture, but I'm 90% sure a blackbird replacement was being tested for some time.

quote:

On September 26th 1994, something happened at RAF Boscombe Down - apparently involving the United States most secret and number -one Black Project aircraft.
During that night, the Aircraft involved made its take-off run down the long runway. Just before rotation, the aircraft experienced some serious problems which led to the crew immediately letting-off the power and shutting down the engines.
Boscombe controllers immediately contacted the London Air Traffic Control Center (LATCC), that a Serious Incident had occurred at RAF Boscombe Down, and that the runway was now totally Blocked to Aircraft. ("Black" in aviation terms)

blatman posted:

flying saucers spin you knobs, they already have a surplus of revolutions

Toupee Groupie posted:

Speaking of physical effects, but one of the things that has been reported is that the cars that stop working in the presence of a craft are all gasoline powered cars. In France and Arizona, people who were in diesel powered vehicles were able to keep on driving, even though their electrical didn't work, because a diesel engine with what were then all mechanical injection and fuel pumps were not interrupted by whatever was causing the electrical interference.

Not only will an old Mercedes diesel run after the nukes fly, but they will work after the birds land and take over.

keep punching joe posted:

I love Aurora stuff, and had totally forgotten about it. Remember being fascinated by it in the 90s when I was a dorky plane nerd kid, and would always been on the lookout for articles and books on the project, or weird UFO talk radio shows. Then the stories just seemed to dry up, so I guess I just assumed that it had either been shelved, or rendered obsolete by satellite technology.

goochtit posted:

anyone think this is their way of telling us electrical technology is a dead end and it's all about Antikythera mechanisms and long term biological engineering?

Jazerus posted:

we're a sad little private server of World of Monke left to rot on the cloud after all of the admins got bored. there are exactly twelve people still playing

Slavvy posted:

Got a massive, pulverizing hit of the ol mandy the other day when I found out gene hackman is still alive. I loving remember seeing news about his death some time during the Obama years, I remember thinking of him building that house in unforgiven and talking to my missus about how crazy it was that clint eastwood outlived him in the end.

Slavvy posted:

Got a massive, pulverizing hit of the ol mandy the other day when I found out gene hackman is still alive. I loving remember seeing news about his death some time during the Obama years, I remember thinking of him building that house in unforgiven and talking to my missus about how crazy it was that clint eastwood outlived him in the end.

Riot Bimbo posted:

really just wanna commune with angels and aliens, who are the same beings, and smoke weed while contemplating divinity and smashing traitors gdi

Slavvy posted:

I parsed this as you wanting to get high, contemplate infinity and smash those traitors in the global defense initiative

neutral milf hotel posted:

imagine rubbing one out in the astral plane and a portal opens up with these folks watching you intently. what do you do?

https://twitter.com/jasong8891/status/1484138967738032128

neutral milf hotel posted:

imagine rubbing one out in the astral plane and a portal opens up with these folks watching you intently. what do you do?

https://twitter.com/jasong8891/status/1484138967738032128

Andy Pandy posted:

Bilirubin posted:

I don't trust people that always tight-lipped smile