deirdre
Senior Member.
i've had the 'my little pony' song stuck in my head since you wrote that comment. thanks a bunch.
J
johne1618
Guest
J
johne1618
Guest
I still find it hard to believe that he entirely made up the story about discovering the Gemini film canisters under the floor.
I don't understand how he determined the distance to objects of unknown size from photos taken from a single viewpoint.
It is funny that he mistook a Pony balloon for some sort of spying device. Also on the face of it he seems rather paranoid about military planes near his house. It does make one question his judgement.
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deirdre
Senior Member.
no offense, but you find all sorts of normal, everyday things hard to believe. you find it hard to believe the UFOs are balloons when you are literally looking at them with your own two eyes.
what i find hard to believe is that someone can be making money by claiming a unicorn balloon is a spy device. or that anyone would believe that every few months a ufo flies over this guy.
i mean... c'mon.
Leak
Member
Well, I guess hubcaps-on-a-string and other such things should count as "craft", at least if there's a bit of effort in them...
NorCal Dave
Senior Member.
Just to follow up a bit, I found this description of the camera equipment used, at least on Gemini IV.
Which is interesting because, while I can't find any reference to "missing film frames of UFOs from Gemini spacecraft" except for Rudnyk's own claim, I can find the famous and publicly available photos of the "Gemini IV UFO" right out there on the web:
https://www.bing.com/images/search?...ndex=0&idpp=overlayview&ajaxhist=0&ajaxserp=0
So it's not that secret!
And was probably just space junk:
https://www.history.nasa.gov/SP-168/section3b.htmTheir cameras included not only the NASA-modified Hasselblad Model 500-C used successfully on previous flights, but also super-wide-angle Hasselblads with Zeiss Biogon 38-mm lenses and 70-mm space cameras with Xenotar 80-mm lenses.
Which is interesting because, while I can't find any reference to "missing film frames of UFOs from Gemini spacecraft" except for Rudnyk's own claim, I can find the famous and publicly available photos of the "Gemini IV UFO" right out there on the web:
https://www.bing.com/images/search?...ndex=0&idpp=overlayview&ajaxhist=0&ajaxserp=0
So it's not that secret!
And was probably just space junk:
http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/case978.htmYet McDivitt himself has never made much of his sighting, however often he has politely retold the tale to fascinated audiences and interviewers. He remains of the mind that he saw some unidentified but still man-made piece of orbital debris. There is no evidence anybody took the slightest official notice, nor is there any record that the astronaut ever filed a UFO report with Project Blue Book.
JMartJr
Senior Member
I marked "agree" on that, on the grounds that I agree with the majority of the points. I agree that it is unclear how, or even if, he determined the distance to the objects. I agree that the points you mention, among others, makes one question his judgement.
As to the first point, I don't find it hard to believe that a person might totally make up an unlikely sounding story -- history is filled with instances of people who have done that. I'll also note that there is at least some range of possibillites between "he actually found missing cannisters of Gemini film under the floorboards," and "he totally made it up." Examples might include "he found some film in the floor at JPL that he assumed was missing Gemini film stock when in fact it was a copy of already known footage" or "he found something he assumed was film stock under the floorboards but since they wouldn't let him take it home, since it belonged to them, not him, he couldn't really verify anything -- but it makes a good story if you assume it was Really Important Secret Stuff and Men In Black equivalents took it away from you for nefarious purpouses, so let's go with the better story." Or other possibilities. I am not saying either of those is likely to be the answer -- but in addition to lying his @@@ off, which humans sometimes do, there are options like "he was wrong" or "he took a story that wasn't quite as cool as it might have been and added cooler bits." If one wanted to think better of him, one could hope it was one of those sorts of situations.
(Typos corrected...)
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J
johne1618
Guest
On the question of a small balloon nearby or a large alien craft far away we have Father Ted:
Source: https://youtu.be/vh5kZ4uIUC0
Source: https://youtu.be/vh5kZ4uIUC0
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NorCal Dave
Senior Member.
This a great story to analyze just on the face of it, never mind evidence or the changing details or the un-named other people involved. What is the actual story saying? At it's heart, it's a hero quest, or in Western Christan terms, a testimony or conversion story. Let's break it down:
1. The hero and the troupe.
It starts with our hero finding the film cans. Finding a lost or secret treasure or knowledge is a standard plot device used all the time. The discovery will start our hero on his path to conversion. It's a troupe. And where does he find the treasure, in storage room or locker? No, he has to rip up the carpet and go down in the crawl space of the building. This is Gilgamesh or Aeneous going into the underworld. Our hero has to go into the bowels of the JPL to discover the secret treasure. After finding it though, he's not too sure what he has, but that's ok because now comes:
2. The Oracle and the Grimoire.
Our hero learns about the significance of the treasure (film) from the Oracle, the keeper of secret wisdom. In this case, it's the coworker/friend that's into UFOlogy. And he has a Grimoire to help understand the treasure, that is, a notebook that apparently lists all the films taken from the Gemini spacecrafts and where to find pictures of UFOs on the films according to UFO lore. He's the keeper of secrets and the ancient written wisdom the explains the treasure. And what is revealed? The need to quest on:
3. The Conversion and Quest:
Turns out the treasure creates more questions than answers. The frames mentioned in the notebook have been removed. The treasure is incomplete, evil forces (government) have conspired to hide the truth and even this incomplete treasure is too valuable and has to be confiscated and once again hidden away. Yet, these hidden truths reveal the greater truth. There is yet more secret knowledge to obtain. Our hero is now converted, in modern speech he has swallowed the Red pill. He now moves on like Sir Galahad searching for the Grail and spreading the gospel of UFOlogy.
On a side note, it's full of other clever devices to make it nearly unfalsifiable and timeless. The sceptic is asked to prove a negative. We can show that, according to historical records is very unlikely that there would have been Gemini films at JPL, but it can't be proven. We can probably find all the photos taken by the Gemini crafts archived somewhere, but he has already said the evidence is missing.
He never actually saw any UFO pictures, therefore he's not locked into any particular UFO/alien zeitgeist. Had he said he saw pictures of flying saucers with little green men back then and now we know the aliens are grey and travel in tic-tacs, it would have dated his story. But he didn't see anything, so what he did not see can be applied to any scenario.
NorCal Dave
Senior Member.
Mendel pointed out to me that in the above post (#51) point 1, I misspelled "trope" as "troupe". As "troupe" was spelled correctly I didn't get a red line and didn't notice. I didn't get a chance to go back and edited it before the window closed, so my bad.
Please read "troupe" as "trope".
Please read "troupe" as "trope".
deirdre
Senior Member.
you mean the hero myth isn't a troupe!? you just shattered my whole understanding of reality
you can always ask Mick or Landru to edit misspellings for you , if you are actually concerned.
J
johne1618
Guest
I got a reply from Marian Rudnyk. He confirmed that he just estimated the distance by eye given his knowledge of the local area, the cloud deck heights and reference landmarks.
In his book he estimates that the objects are at a ground distance of 2640 ft and diameter of 18 ft. If they were big balloons of size 2 ft then their ground distance would be 2640 * (2/18) = 293 ft.
If the objects were that close wouldn't he notice? They would be just across the intersection.
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Mendel
Senior Member.
Humans are notoriously bad at estimating even medium distances without cues such as object size or observer motion.
Article: Stereoscopic vision works most effectively for distances up to 18 feet. Beyond this distance, your brain starts using relative size and motion to determine depth.
Article: If an O[bserver] is presented with unfamiliar objects in a situation where secondary cues to distance are lacking (e .g., an otherwise completely dark room), his judgments of size and distance are not reliably related to the actual sizes and distances of the objects.
It is not simply that such judgments are inaccurate, but rather that their variability, both between and within as, is so large as to make it virtually impossible to establish psychophysical functions.
Article: 
The data in the last quote refers to a setup in a dark railway tunnel with a LED at the "observation distance" (with the tunnel being "dark" or "light" up to that distance), and a second LED at an additional "depth" behind it.
This is similar to the observation here, as the distance to the traffic lights would be estimable from visual cues, but visual cues to the depth of the flying objects behind would be completely missing, except for the imagined size and speed of the UFOs—the sky is empty.
Rory
Closed Account
Thanks for doing that: it's always good, if we can, to go to the source.
As pointed out above - and as common sense should tell us - I would propose that those estimates are basically worthless.
I wonder where that leaves this case - and Rudnyk's credibility - then?
J
johne1618
Guest
For me the jury is still out!
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