Taking in the Afternoon UFO.
Sure. Well there would be a UFO on TV. I guess the thing I kept wondering was how they avoided calling it a flying saucer. Because hell, isn’t that every reporters dream? A UFO showing up over the skies of Colorado? And there’s someone in it. A six year old boy piloting his very own flying saucer? It’s nice to see that there are still dreamers out there. Where can I get one? Every one keeps calling this kid an irresponsible whatever and saying that he should get grounded. Put yourself in his damned shoes. Dad is inflating a UFO in the backyard and you accidentally release it? Or maybe you just get yelled and then want to go be alone? And there are helicopters being called, Air Force and National Guard being alerted to this phenomenon and having to contend with reporters from CNN harassing them about what they are doing.
And the people at CNN were expecting them to have some sort of contingency plan for this? Sure. You ever see “Executive Decision” with Kurt Russell and Steven Segal? The Air Force has a plane that can plug into Air Force One and transfer a tactical team to save the President. Spoiler Alert! Steven Segal gets sucked into the stratosphere during the docking. And you what? Expect them to be Johnny Onthespot with the heroic rescue of the six year old trapped in the flying saucer? What about Flight of the Navigator? Ever check out that picture? Because it happened earlier this afternoon.
Why the hell can’t you just call it a flying saucer? What sort of jaded, emotionally neutered world view do you have to have, as a 21st century journalist, not to simply scream at America;
JT: Sweet Jesus there’s a child trapped in that Flying Saucer!!! Why weren’t we notified this is possible!? Does the lad need oxygen?! At what altitude does hypoxia set in!? Sweet Jesus he’s in the Rockies! The air is light as it is!! Is he wearing a jacket I hope!? No wait. In World War II gunners were exposed to conditions like this all the time right?! He’ll be OK!! If you can figure out how to make your own flying saucer surely you would have the foresight to make it air and water tight?! Insulate it!? We have no reason to believe that the child is at the helm right now! Consulting with his OnStar team about how to initiate landing procedures.
“I don’t want to go home. Dad yelled at me.”
And you should not have to come down my lad. I’m only sorry that you didn’t climb inside that thing. I have a sense that you can probably buy it in the back of Popular Science for 50 bucks. Probably everyone has a flying saucer these days. You just don’t TALK about them. Otherwise it’s a keeping up with the Joneses that would get us flying cars too soon.
“Oh look, The Joneses got a new Saturn Air-Saucer. When are we getting an Air-Saucer, Jim? Or do I need to get a third job?”
I loved the wild speculation running around Wolf Blitzer’s situation room. If they ever had to content with a real situation they would be forced to make up numbers while making feverish calls to their families. At one point a man was talking about grams of Helium? I am something of a dirigible aficionado, and I can assure you that these sorts of things are decided by volume. They were calling the damned thing a hot air balloon. You see a rainbow pattern on it? You see a basket underneath being flamed by a six year old at the controls?
“IT IS A GOD DAMNED FLYING SAUCER!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!”
Is what Wolf should have been saying. Wolf and his team were just trying to see if the volume to lift ratio could even get a 60 lb kid into the air. They don’t know how much the craft even weights, so how do they expect to formulate any real data about what is feasible or not? At that point you are just watching educated men speculate about nothing. They were using the term “A haul” for the distance between Colorado Springs and Fort Collins.
“Sure, it’s a haul all right. From Fort Collins to Denver, let alone to Colorado Springs!”
“Yes. That, in and of itself is a haul.”
“Sure is.”
It’s 134 miles guys. I just found that out in about five seconds with Google. If this is the case, and we assume that the craft was in the air for an hour and a half, we can speculate that it traveled at about 100 miles an hour? Damned near. I can believe it. It outpaced the helicopter. This is great. And everyone is talking about yelling at Falcon. Well. It’s not fair.
When that thing hit the ground, what if radioactive snakes would have popped out? There was a man running at that thing as it impacted. What if it was a hydrogen balloon? That would not be beyond reason. It impacts with the ground and releases a static charge that ignites the envelope and that dude in the blue slacks we saw sprinting towards the craft would have missed his eyebrows for a few months. But THAT guy I can respect, you know? In the chaos of it all, he’s willing to hurl himself at the flying saucer to tear the child from the flaming, radioactive, gaseous wreckage and leap him to safety.
Can you imagine what Norad was doing? There were probably four star generals just praying it was the aliens. Wondering what all the blacked out portions of Blue Book contained. Arming all manner of alien seeking missiles.
“Does it give off heat!? Can we laser it!? We can’t even answer these simple questions. We’ll have to shoot the child down. If he is indeed at the controls, and this is a reverse engineered flying saucer, then we cannot allow this sort of power to go unchecked. He’s headed towards the White House. This is not the first time we’ve had to deal with this contingent. I can have an entire squad of F-16s light that thing up with about 24 or so missiles and the kid won’t feel a thing. Won’t even hear the jets. He may be dead already for all we know! Give me the order sir. The time for speculation is over. A Flying Saucer is headed your way Mr. President, and God save America!”
But seriously. If we can take nothing away from today useful, then let me at least shamelessly plug the idea of flying saucer cars. Obviously it would have to be larger. Maybe considerably larger. Or American’s will have to get smaller. But I’ve always thought a personal blimp would be the way to go. You wouldn’t be able to do much shopping in it. For that you would need ground transportation, but you could just deflate it when you arrive at work and drive the thing back. Depending on which way the wind was blowing. Shove that in your F-150. It’s like an inflatable hang glider. Transparent human gondola under a giant Mylar/Kevlar flying saucer. How about it science?
And the people at CNN were expecting them to have some sort of contingency plan for this? Sure. You ever see “Executive Decision” with Kurt Russell and Steven Segal? The Air Force has a plane that can plug into Air Force One and transfer a tactical team to save the President. Spoiler Alert! Steven Segal gets sucked into the stratosphere during the docking. And you what? Expect them to be Johnny Onthespot with the heroic rescue of the six year old trapped in the flying saucer? What about Flight of the Navigator? Ever check out that picture? Because it happened earlier this afternoon.
Why the hell can’t you just call it a flying saucer? What sort of jaded, emotionally neutered world view do you have to have, as a 21st century journalist, not to simply scream at America;
JT: Sweet Jesus there’s a child trapped in that Flying Saucer!!! Why weren’t we notified this is possible!? Does the lad need oxygen?! At what altitude does hypoxia set in!? Sweet Jesus he’s in the Rockies! The air is light as it is!! Is he wearing a jacket I hope!? No wait. In World War II gunners were exposed to conditions like this all the time right?! He’ll be OK!! If you can figure out how to make your own flying saucer surely you would have the foresight to make it air and water tight?! Insulate it!? We have no reason to believe that the child is at the helm right now! Consulting with his OnStar team about how to initiate landing procedures.
“I don’t want to go home. Dad yelled at me.”
And you should not have to come down my lad. I’m only sorry that you didn’t climb inside that thing. I have a sense that you can probably buy it in the back of Popular Science for 50 bucks. Probably everyone has a flying saucer these days. You just don’t TALK about them. Otherwise it’s a keeping up with the Joneses that would get us flying cars too soon.
“Oh look, The Joneses got a new Saturn Air-Saucer. When are we getting an Air-Saucer, Jim? Or do I need to get a third job?”
I loved the wild speculation running around Wolf Blitzer’s situation room. If they ever had to content with a real situation they would be forced to make up numbers while making feverish calls to their families. At one point a man was talking about grams of Helium? I am something of a dirigible aficionado, and I can assure you that these sorts of things are decided by volume. They were calling the damned thing a hot air balloon. You see a rainbow pattern on it? You see a basket underneath being flamed by a six year old at the controls?
“IT IS A GOD DAMNED FLYING SAUCER!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!”
Is what Wolf should have been saying. Wolf and his team were just trying to see if the volume to lift ratio could even get a 60 lb kid into the air. They don’t know how much the craft even weights, so how do they expect to formulate any real data about what is feasible or not? At that point you are just watching educated men speculate about nothing. They were using the term “A haul” for the distance between Colorado Springs and Fort Collins.
“Sure, it’s a haul all right. From Fort Collins to Denver, let alone to Colorado Springs!”
“Yes. That, in and of itself is a haul.”
“Sure is.”
It’s 134 miles guys. I just found that out in about five seconds with Google. If this is the case, and we assume that the craft was in the air for an hour and a half, we can speculate that it traveled at about 100 miles an hour? Damned near. I can believe it. It outpaced the helicopter. This is great. And everyone is talking about yelling at Falcon. Well. It’s not fair.
When that thing hit the ground, what if radioactive snakes would have popped out? There was a man running at that thing as it impacted. What if it was a hydrogen balloon? That would not be beyond reason. It impacts with the ground and releases a static charge that ignites the envelope and that dude in the blue slacks we saw sprinting towards the craft would have missed his eyebrows for a few months. But THAT guy I can respect, you know? In the chaos of it all, he’s willing to hurl himself at the flying saucer to tear the child from the flaming, radioactive, gaseous wreckage and leap him to safety.
Can you imagine what Norad was doing? There were probably four star generals just praying it was the aliens. Wondering what all the blacked out portions of Blue Book contained. Arming all manner of alien seeking missiles.
“Does it give off heat!? Can we laser it!? We can’t even answer these simple questions. We’ll have to shoot the child down. If he is indeed at the controls, and this is a reverse engineered flying saucer, then we cannot allow this sort of power to go unchecked. He’s headed towards the White House. This is not the first time we’ve had to deal with this contingent. I can have an entire squad of F-16s light that thing up with about 24 or so missiles and the kid won’t feel a thing. Won’t even hear the jets. He may be dead already for all we know! Give me the order sir. The time for speculation is over. A Flying Saucer is headed your way Mr. President, and God save America!”
But seriously. If we can take nothing away from today useful, then let me at least shamelessly plug the idea of flying saucer cars. Obviously it would have to be larger. Maybe considerably larger. Or American’s will have to get smaller. But I’ve always thought a personal blimp would be the way to go. You wouldn’t be able to do much shopping in it. For that you would need ground transportation, but you could just deflate it when you arrive at work and drive the thing back. Depending on which way the wind was blowing. Shove that in your F-150. It’s like an inflatable hang glider. Transparent human gondola under a giant Mylar/Kevlar flying saucer. How about it science?
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