NASA selects 'full force' for probe into UFOs NASA is pushing ahead to recruit a panel of experts and publish a much-awaited report on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs), all with a budget of up to $100,000. UAPs are observations of strange airborne objects and other things in the sky that cannot be immediately explained. Everyone's heard of the UFO; UAP is the term …
Librarians flunky ?
I have had a word with the librarian, he wasn't too happy with all of this palaver, and is a little bit put off really, saying he is more than capable of doing what is necessary without assistance.
actually, he said OOK, but, you get the gist :o)
"I once dealt with an “assistant follow-up manager”. I think it was Arab for cousin."
Somewhere in the lost annuls of bookmarks, I have a link to the job titles given to family members. It includes those used in different countries and by different native languages.
Maybe they just don't think it will cost much to prove that aliens are not invading our airspace?
Perhaps most of the wierd and wonderful dots on the monitors are actually easily explained: provided you do your research at nasa instead of 4chan?
100k is one clever person doing something for a year, we ought not to spend too much more.
All they need to pay for is maybe two meetings (half of whose attendees will be tele-, anyway), one person to type up the report, and maybe the other $50000 to pay "reasonable expenses" to the poor sods tapped to be on this committee.
It's not like they're being asked to do actual research.
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Yawn. You must think that every number that makes the democrats look bad is from some right wing nutwork?
This is just basic math.
The IRA bill includes $80 billion or so of new additional funding to the IRS over 10 years. They are supposed to hire 80k+ new employees, but about 50k of them will be back fills for retirements in that same period. Net 30k new employees. So the IRS is getting more than $2M per new employee.
I have no idea how the IRS can be that inefficient, but just looking at the numbers, they are.
And the whole point here is that we are spending $2M per new putative IRS employee, and just $100k on this UFO thing. While I don't think it'll turn anything up, the fact that it's $100k makes it the pinnacle of absurdity in this government.
True. And that is valid world-wide.
Still, $100K for a nine month study with 15 experts ? That's around $700 per month per expert, if all the money is going to them which it logically won't be since there will be other costs.
So these experts will be working for peanuts.
Nice of them.
I'd imagine they'll be working part time... a nine month contract isn't likely to cause many experts to leave their existing jobs.
I dare say their existing employers - I'm assuming universities, aerospace and defence contractors amongst others - are are used to seconding employees.
That might even get ""some of the world's leading scientists, data practitioners, artificial intelligence practitioners, aerospace safety experts" into Vegas for a couple nights ... but they'll be woefully short on Jack Daniels, cocaine and hookers unless someone loosens the ol' purse strings a trifle.
Sharing $100,000 works out at around $6,000 each. After nine months they push out ONE REPORT between the lot of them, collect their cash and go back to their day jobs.
"We're going full force," said the assistant-emptier-of-trash-baskets. Guys, that's the minimum budget needed to get all the experts up to speed with the Microsoft Office ribbon. The report itself will have to be copy-pasted from the Internet.
This being the real world we can reasonably assume the experts are already employed and paid or are tenured academics so the $100k will only need to cover additional expenses such as transport and occasional hotel costs and perhaps one or two part-time employees to coordinate the experts and collate any data collected.
The real world doesn't work like that.
U.S. government regulations require billing personnel time against the specific contract line item. It's illegal to pay for travel, hotels, or meals unless the person is also billing hourly against the contract line item.
$100K is one person, no support, for maybe 6 months after 15% contract overhead is scraped off.
17 experts in a meeting with average billing rate of $300/hr each (and No I'm not exaggerating) is $5K/hr.
Assume $1K travel cost per person ($17K)
A one day meeting of 8 hours at $5K/hr (($40K)
That's $57K of your available $85K. You can't even afford a two day meeting, and I left off food and lodging.
Been there, Done that, Have a closet full of T-shirts!
I wrote him a letter when I was seven, and he had the exceptional decency to reply.
I'd bought his book, "The UFO experience : a scientific inquiry" - and any book was a lot of money for seven year olds.
I told him many adults around here had seen UFOs up close, and me and my mates had seen them in the sky. I asked him to send us money to buy binoculars and we'd monitor them at night, form a group and spread the word. He didn't send me money of course, the bastard, him being a professor and me being in primary three. He was so charming and encouraging though, and his books were wonderful to read. I don't know if it was ironic but "The UFO experience : a scientific inquiry" was in a Blue Book cover.
So why?
Clearly the budget is insufficient to do anything. Is this just a speculative land grab by NASA?
Do the higher up's at NASA think that there is a real possibility that UFO's are real? If so, why the paltry budget?
But if not, why the budget at all?
This makes no logical sense. If they were spending tens of millions it would be clear. If they were spending nothing it would be equally clear. But a $100k budget is just confusing.
Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells,
"This makes no logical sense. If they were spending tens of millions it would be clear. If they were spending nothing it would be equally clear. But a $100k budget is just confusing."
It is known as 'Token Effort' or 'Kicking the can down the road --- NASA Style'. !!!
You claim the justification for the report BUT really do not want the report or care about the contents of the report.
Probably it is a item on a list that just will not go away, so you make a 'Token Effort' at completing the task.
By time it is delivered, if ever, and the report subsequently analysed, it will be forgotten about and any follow up will be much much further down the list of priorities.
[A 'Can' has been duly kicked down the road, maximum result for minimum effort/cost] !!!
> Do the higher up's at NASA think that there is a real possibility that UFO's are real?
Just to be clear, nobody disputes that UFOs are real - there are things that have not been identified. They remain UFOs until identified as another jet plane, weather balloon, unusual weather phenomenon or ET in a flying saucer. Indeed, a genuine alien space craft, conclusively indentified as such, is by definition no longer a UFO. ("OFUck!!" would then be a suitable moniker)
> This makes no logical sense. If they were spending tens of millions it would be clear.
You'd feel a bit silly if you spent millions only to find out something you could have learnt for $100,000.
That they are talking about 15 experts suggests they want input from a broad variety of viewpoints before chasing red herrings.
For all we know, there might mundane and satisfactory explanations that only require a little unearthing to discover.
It's also worth noting that if a mundane explanation is known by the US DoD, they would not be allowed to talk about it if it breached a confidentiality agreement with a supplier of, say, radar equipment.
There are 1.4 billion motor vehicles and maybe as many as 20% have dashcams which to me seems a bit high so let's be conservative and say 10% and of them only 1% are in use at any given time, that's 1.4 million video cameras filming 24/7.
And that's before we get onto security cameras, door bell cameras, amateur astronomers gazing in the sky every night with cameras on their telescopes, civilian imaging satellites pointing at the earth that can see everything flying under them. The planet has never been under the level of photographic and electronic surveillance that it is now.
If there was something to be seen, it would be on video by now.
"If there was something to be seen, it would be on video by now."
Well your puny human mind would jump to that conclusion but we, err, them aliens have cloaking devices, sensors to detect and evade recording devices and a map of every camera on your, err, the planet.
Also humans are easy to fool. 'Look over there! A elliphunt!!'
"If there was something to be seen, it would be on video by now."
And if there are videos or photos, how many are elaborate pranks?
http://www.openminds.tv/virgins-ufo-prank-frightens-police-april-fools-day-1989/26742
DJO,
"If there was something to be seen, it would be on video by now."
It is, but only available directly from Area 51 !!!
BTW, all the CCTV, dashcams etc etc are there not to provide evidence of UAP or even increase our/your security *BUT* to monitor 'us' so the video evidence can be tracked and 'retreived' and filed away in Area 51. !!!
:)
You heard it here fir ...
... Connection has been lost ........
*** Internet rollback has been scheduled ***
There's the movie trope of UFO's causing electrical devices to pack-in when they're near by, so anything short range ( dash cam, door cam ) wouldn't be able to pick up aliens landing at Knutsford Service's/your front garden and they wouldn't have any clarity at a distance.
Uhm - you did see the video, yes?
https://www.navair.navy.mil/foia/documents
https://www.navair.navy.mil/foia/sites/g/files/jejdrs566/files/2020-04/1%20-%20FLIR.mp4
https://www.navair.navy.mil/foia/sites/g/files/jejdrs566/files/2020-04/3%20-%20GOFAST.wmv
https://www.navair.navy.mil/foia/sites/g/files/jejdrs566/files/2020-04/2%20-%20GIMBAL.wmv
Or, you just wanted to emphasize an ironic point?
These US Navy videos are not "hotly disputed" - they are thoroughly debunked. For instance the "go fast" video has been shown to be entirely consistent with it being a weather balloon - using only the information on the screen itself (speed, altitude and so on) and a bit of maths. Why the US Navy couldn't do this themselves is the *real* mystery.
"If there was something to be seen, it would be on video by now."
It is. There are many, many videos of "odd" things in the sky. Unfortunately, of all those millions, nay billions of cameras out there, many of which are mobile phones capable of taking video at 1080p or better with auto focus, not a single user is capable of holding one steady or resting/leaning against something solid to get anything other than a wildly shaky and out of focus image that could be literally anything which emits light at almost any range imaginable. And they always seem to cut out just as the "object" is about to move past something that might give some perspective and a clue to it's size and speed, eg did it go behind or in front of the tree 20 feet away and was it just another blurred moth or flying insect.
They have to do it again because Trump stole the original Blue Book documents! The fact he took them to Mars on Lago is very suspicious.
The corollary of aliens stopping electronics and electrical systems is people freak out under unfamiliar stress.
I was in a mass car crash once, and the police congratulated me on my driving since I was the only one who hadn't crashed. They asked what I saw and then they told me I was wrong, every other witness disagreed. "Aye, and you're assuming the people who crashed are more reliable witnesses?" Deniers. That is a very long anecdote that I'll spare you the rest.
I drove under a UFO once and nearly stalled the car because I was slowing down on a slope to gawp at and listen to the UFO. If the car had stalled then I'd may have passed out, and then imagined all sorts. I presume a Derren Brown wannabe with a blimp drone.
I could have shot the UFO with a shotgun but a gun licence requires a reason and someone to sign off on it. "To shoot UFOs" didn't seem a plausible reason even in my neck of the woods. That is a very long anecdote that I'll spare you, and more importantly me, the rest.
The Register has some fantastic finds... I love this one... Chock full of grand metaphors ... "FULL FORCE"... why not FULL SPACE FORCE... Clearly, if aliens traverse a billion space miles to get here, the Muricans can clearly kick their ^sses without argument. Didn't John and Joan Wayne win WWII? Fully funded with $100K USD, NASA will get to the bottom of these Alian jerks and will offer a stern warning backed up of course by the UK. [It's a long long way to Tipperary... da da dahhh da dahhhh...] We will drive the aliens mad with this song and they will know our resolve.
We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the Van Allen Belt; we shall never surrender.
And who among you doesn't trust NASA? "Who among you accepts the idea of someone inspecting the gynecological files of a mother, a sister, a daughter?" Said Mr. Nasrallah [sorry wrong quote]... Nobody trust anyone more than NASA so it stands to reason NASA would be trusted to inspect the gynecologial files of ..... etc.
And now a moment of Paranoia.... H G Wells
Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.
This is a few year old...
See page 3, paragraph 11...
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/after-45-years-irans-f-14-tomcats-are-still-airborne-173805
"And that’s when things got weird. F-14 crews protecting the facilities reported seeing increasingly sophisticated and bizarre drones, according to Taghvaee. “The CIA’s intelligence drones displayed astonishing flight characteristics, including an ability to fly outside the atmosphere, attain a maximum cruise speed of Mach 10 and a minimum speed of zero, with the ability to hover over the target.”...
Ignoring the UFO bit, that's an interesting article about the F-14s.
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Its being run by "one of the largest Democratic donors in history" and his private Foundation.
https://www.influencewatch.org/person/james-simons/
This is going to be about as unbiased as an investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails.
We missing something here? Bringing together experts? How can you be an expert unless you have extensive knowledge of something. Is NASA admitting there are Aliens in UFO's nipping around our sky's? and the 'experts' have been studying/working with them for years?
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