On our local, 10 o'clock news last night, the feed from the network ended with a pronouncement that the authorities didn't know what it was. but that it wasn't a national security issue. They cut directly to the local anchor, who had his head cocked to the side and a quizical look on his face. He said " How do they know it's not a national security risk, if they don't know what it is?" Indeed.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
"The new searches are done with screeners' hands sliding over a passenger's body. However, the searches require screeners to touch passengers' breasts and genitals. And that's prompting some fliers and the American Civil Liberties Union to question the policy's intrusiveness and effectiveness."
http://travel.usatoday.com/flights/2010-10-29-tsa-pat-downs_N.htm
A pilot enraged over treatment at LAX getting to altitude ASAP?
BucyrusAll I am asking is this: Do we have a military defense system that will, with certainty, detect a foreign submarine 35 miles off of our coast? And if such a submarine fired a missile, 35 miles off of our coast, would our defense system detect that? If so, how would our military react?
Dan
Looking at the video, I don’t think that was a jet. It had a rocket trajectory, and one massive contrail. It looked like every rocket launch I have ever seen. It is laughable to conclude that it could have been the work of a rocket hobbyist, as has been suggested by some experts.
It is possible that the U.S. military could have launched a missile for some reason that they want to keep secret from the public. But, if so, one might have expected them to do it in a way that the public would not have been able to see it.
No, that was a message to us, or a test of our response by either Russia, China, or Iran. Our military got the message, but they don’t want to share it with the public.
I am surprised that the authorities have not yet told us that it was simply a UFO sighting.
Maybe, it's the work of those folks that are messing with our precious bodily fluids?
When does a missile launch off a railroad car in Western Nebraska and our military claims no knowledge?
Stealth containers from Asia. Top load only.
The most obvious culprit is China. They wanted us to see the missile launch, and see how close to California they could pull it off. They are very irritated over our new QE2 fed monetary policy. It will basically rip them off as holders of our debt. A few years ago, they threatened to nuke Los Angeles over some other much less significant little issue they were unhappy about. So when they saber-rattle, they seem to think of California.
Our officials got the message, but they don’t want to tell us, because if our public finds out, it will intensify China’s message. More importantly, it would raise a call for some kind of response to China. Moreover, if our country publicly called China on the launch, they could just deny it. Or, if we recovered pieces of a Chinese missile, they could say that we staged it to make China look bad.
CNW 6000 Bucyrus: All I am asking is this: Do we have a military defense system that will, with certainty, detect a foreign submarine 35 miles off of our coast? And if such a submarine fired a missile, 35 miles off of our coast, would our defense system detect that? If so, how would our military react? Anyone ever see/read "The Hunt for Red October"?
Bucyrus: All I am asking is this: Do we have a military defense system that will, with certainty, detect a foreign submarine 35 miles off of our coast? And if such a submarine fired a missile, 35 miles off of our coast, would our defense system detect that? If so, how would our military react?
And /or the following, also by Tom Clancy:
Red Storm Rising; The Sum of All Fears; Debt of Honor; and perhaps others.
Short answer - yes. Penn State at State College, PA used to offer courses in sonar design and analysis - though I have no idea why there, since it was so far inland - except that it really involves electrical signals and the processing of same to differentiate the true 'signal' from the spurious 'noise', and the physical oceanographic conditions that promote or degrade the transmission of sound waves in water, such as thermocline layers, 'covergence zones', and the like - which is way beyond anything I really understand.
- Paul North.
P.S. As for the UFO theory, as one of Clancy's characters - Capt. Robby Jackson - said in Patriot Games: "That ain't even clever, boy." - PDN.
I have every Tom Clancy book and have read them cover to cover. Love 'em. The line in THFRO I was referencing was Jack Ryan talked to Skip Tyler (ex-sub driver now designer):"When I was a kid, I helped my daddy build a bomb shelter in our basement because some fool decided to park a dozen warheads 90 miles off the coast of Florida. This thing could park a coupe of hundred warheads off of Washington and New York...and nobody would know anything about it 'till it was all over."
Pretty much likewise, except for those after Executive Orders - the Master seemed to have lost his touch thereafter, in my view.
Anyway, on the questions that Bucyrus raises - then we get into the 'head games'/ psychology of these things. Here, it would be: Even if we could and did detect a foreign submarine 'close-in' off our shores - would we then let the sub or the ChiComs know that they'd been detected ?
Or not - and so mislead them by keeping them 'dumb and happy' thinking that they'd successfully penetrated our defenses, until it became 'for-real', by which time we would have accumulated lots of data on their sonar/ acoustic signature (kind of like a 'fingerprint'), penetration techniques and routes, operating patterns and methods, etc., right up until we drop the anvil on their head.
Which strategy do you think would be most effective ?
"...Which strategy do you think would be most effective ?"
Dear Paul and Bucyrus;
Put my vote down for the; "Don't Pee down my leg and tell me it's raining strategy."
The government doesn't know who shot off a missile from the area of Point Magu [Naval Base Ventura County]?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Air_Station_Point_Mugu
Note:FTL; "... The facility adjacent to Point Mugu, California was developed in the late 1940s as the U.S. Navy's major missile development and test facility..."
I'll tell you what it was:
Some Marines celebrating the 235th Birthday of the USMC(11/10/10). With some borrowed fireworks.
Semper Fi!
I can see how a lot of head games might get played over this event, not only between the U.S. and the perpetrator, but also between the U.S. officials and the U.S. population. Over and over, the pentagon says that it was not one of their missiles without once addressing the obvious possibility that it might have been a foreign missile. I do not know how much video might be available of this incident, but reportedly, witnesses say they saw fire immediately trailing the object.
The litany of absurd explanations attempting to convince the public that it was not what it looked like leaves me no choice but to believe that U.S. military officials know exactly what was fired off the coast of California and who fired it. If they did not know, but were willing to share the information if they should find out, they would tell us they were continuing to investigate.
Obviously, however, the U.S. officials want the public to stop questioning what they saw because if they tell the public it was a Chinese missile, for instance, they will be acknowledging to the Chinese that the U.S. is officially aware of it. And then it would follow that the U.S. officials should do something about such a provocative threat. Therefore, the U.S. officials want us to stop speculating and forget about it. So, they say it was a jet contrail; “case closed.”
I predict that there are experts out there who have no vested interest in pulling the wool over the public’s eyes, and that they will soon come forward and offer informed, technical explanations based on what the video showed.
When the time is right, China will take back Taiwan, but they hesitate because of their uncertainty over how we will react. Maybe this missile off out coast was a test to gauge our probable response if they were to make a move on Taiwan. If that were the case, I guess the Chinese learned that when the public sees Chinese smoke plumes over Taiwan, U.S. officials will tell us that it is just a jet contrail. "CASE CLOSED."
Well, I guess the above statement secures for Bucyrus the official position as FORUM PROPHET!
The news Media is officially reporting the "missile' contrail as actually a contrail of a scheduled ariliner flight from Hawaii to AZ.
I suppose that writes Fini! On that little kerfluffle
Nothing more to this Eleanor, Time to move on!
It's that daggone kid from "The Loved One" launching complete cemeteries into space to clear space for more retirement communities.
What's retirement?
I'll probably croak on the job I still love or in my apartment when the stink gets the residents upset.
rixflix aka Captain Video. Blessed be Jean Shepherd and all His works!!! Hooray for 1939, the all time movie year!!! I took that ride on the Reading but my Baby caught the Katy and left me a mule to ride.
Kind-of-Odd Coincidences Dept.: Tom Clancy's 'Jack Ryan series' novel Debt of Honor that I mentioned above in connection with sonar detection ranges, etc. was written around the premise of a deliberate attempt by a Japanese businessman to wreck the US economy by sabotaging and crashing the New York Stock Exchange market, among other nefarious deeds. The book therefore also included a couple of fairly good explanations of the workings and vulnerabilities of the US financial system, in the form of dialogue between Ryan and his Secret Service bodyguard, the President and his advisers, the Secretary of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Chairman, and Wall Street investor George Winston - whom I suspect was modeled on now-retired Vanguard Group Chairman and CEO John Bogle.
But another major part of the plot was the effort to find nuclear missiles in Japan, which involved having an unnamed Amtrak engineering official - ex-GN, actually - come in to the CIA to help it study satellite photos of the Japanese railroad system and figure out where the missiles might be. One notable bit of dialogue was along the lines of, "Those photo-reconnaisance satellites cost as much as Amtrak's budget for an entire year !" There were other interesting points about that effort scattered throughout the book, which were pretty true-to-life except for the terminology - I never heard a railroad engineer call a curve a 'turn', nor the MOW equipment as 'track maintenance cars'.
Finally, the plot involved a sneak attack on and the sinking of 2 US submarines, crippling damage to 2 US aircraft carriers, and the occupation of several 'US' islands in the Western Pacific - all of which the government went to great lengths to conceal from the American public and news media for a good while.
So is truth stranger than fiction here ? Is life imitating art ? Was that missile launch actually done by the US as a 'stalking horse' - to demonstrate to the Chinese that even if the ChiComs tried such a thing, that then the US government could 'manage' or 'spin' the public and media response/ reaction to mitigate or neutralize the effects that the Chinese would be hoping to create ? More 'head games' . . . ?
"At 5:29:45 a.m. local time on July 16, 1945, the Atomic Age entered the history books with a blast in the New Mexico desert......
The test—untill then, the most violent man-made explosion in history—was felt and seen for hundreds of miles. As far as the military’s press release was concerned, an ammunition depot had exploded in the desert."
http://www.takepart.com/news/2010/07/16/trinitys-anniversary-and-legacy-the-atomic-bomb-turns-65
Eleanor had no idea until later.
Paul:
" HEAD GAMES!" THAT MAY BE WHY THEY ARE PUSHING THE MARIJUANNA USE in California? Get everybody out there stoned, and they would think a ChiCom rocket attack might be a fireworks show, and not a prelude to an invasion?
Of course, You remember the TROJAN HORSE (?), Maybe the Chi Coms are going to ride in on a couple of Container Ships docking in LA and then shoot off a bunch of fireworks, and all the 'stoners' in California will think it is just another Chinese New Year? Inatead of a Big Dragon leading their parade, they'll use an effigy of Eleanor R.? THAT would be pretty scary, in itself.
I think maybe Tom Clancy mentioned Eleanor in Debt of Honor someplace . . .
PDN, you are so well-informed and write so well. Do you have a background in academics or journalism, something like that? - allen
Geez - thanks for the compliment, allen.
No to both, other than having spent 19 years in various institutions - of learning and 'higher education' as a student, that is. "I am but a humble engineer (civil)" - Lafayette College, B.S.C.E.,1975, but even there the requirement to take 1 liberal arts course each semester to improve our ability to read, write, and relate to the rest of the world - we had the 'rithmetic part 'down cold', of course - didn't work too well. However, my other degree is in law - J.D., Villanova University School of Law, 1980. Of course, that involved an awful lot of reading - much of it by very learned and gifted lawyers, judges, and scholars - and writing in various forms. And several of my employers/ supervisors have been quite skilled in writing, and were willing to mentor me.
My father was also a lawyer and English major at Temple Univ., so he had an appreciation for good writing, and I may have inhertied some of that. But in my senior year in high school, I 'downgraded' myself from the high-falutin' 'Accelerated' English Lit course to the College Prep English, to get a better ability and the nuts and bolts of writing.
Really, though, I think what modest writing skills I have come from reading - and re-reading - some books and authors, such as almost anything in Trains -esp. by David P. Morgan, Ben Bachman, John Kneiling, George Hilton, and many others, Tom Clancy, Frederick Forsythe, Ian Fleming, a few James Michener books, etc.
-- ATLAS SHRUGGED: Legend, Myth or Reality?
For some time now I have had in the back of my mind a disparaging remark one contributor made here on the TRAINS boards about Ayn Rand's 1000-page 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged, which has as its central character a female railway executive who heads up "Taggart Transcontinental," a railway that truly was transcontinental. (Its crack passenger train, the Taggart "Coment," ran NYC - San Francisco.) Taking one passenger train clean across the USA is a useful conceit, and many vintage movies (1940's The Women comes to mind) have characters stepping on a train in NYC and gonig clean to Nevada, or L.A., or wherever -- or at least having no reason to dwell on a Chicago transfer or through routing of a Pullman car.
What got me to thinking was that the comment one poster made -- a side remark in a context I don't remember but probably doesn't matter -- was that Ayn Rand didn't know anything about how real railroads are operated. Surely, there are slips, as when she describes the subterranean hum of passenger trains "coursing" (I think that's her word) underneath the Taggart Transcontinental terminal. But it's a terminal in the hand of the founder's grandchildren, so I suppose there would not have been the need for all that through-routing with the possible occasional exception.
Granted, different RR companies had different command structures (the book The Men Who Loved Trains described the Pennsy and its onetime captive N&W as "military" or "vertical" as opposed to the more "collegial" atmosphere at NYC and especially the Southern Rwy.), and liberties were taken; but OTOH her working knowledge of as manifest in the plot appears to me to be accurate in discussing the role of dispatchers, districts and divisions. She paid very ittle heed to the precautions of unions because the plot had more to do with the predations of big government and the economic misery wrought by increasingly socialistic regimes (and at the hands of a unicameral 'Legislature' in Washington), in one case writing that any employee caught drunk showing up to work would, in the olden days, have been fired immediately. (Of course she did mean the founder, Nat Taggart's, days, who seems to have been from the Cornelius Vanderbilt era.)
Ayn Rand herself was a Russian emigrant who came to this country in her teens and at first supported herself (and learned English), in the 1920s, by typing scenarios (movie scripts) for Hollywood. It seems to me she must have done a little research into the topic of American railroading, not coming from a railroading family. We do know that she learned enough about 20th-Century architecture while writing The Fountainhead in the Forties to have a little insight into the spaciousness and economy of some of Frank Lloyd Wright's houses and office buildings, though probably she needed little or no knowledge of the engineering principles behind such design.
Surely there are people here who have read Atlas Shrugged who can recall from (or will briefly review) it and can say which parts of the plot concerning the mythical Taggart Transcontinental rail system ring true and which were more likely conjectural or based on mis-assumptions. I am not out to crusade to protect Ayn Rand's literary reputation or honor; IOW I'm not looking for a fight -- just curious! allen
As Paul Harvey said to Eleanor Roosevelt; "Here's the rest of the story!"
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2010/11/10/did-you-see-the-fire-in-the-nyc-sky/
November 10, 2010 11:59 PM
NEW YORK (CBS 2) — Did you see it? Chopper 2 HD sure did.
It was a bizarre, glowing red-hot streak in the sky — right at sunset Wednesday — moving briskly behind the Manhattan skyline.
CBS 2 reached out to a top astronomer who looked at the video. He said it looks beautiful, but that is was like nothing more than what’s known as a “contrail” — condensation from a commercial or military jet.
The aliens, apparently, are not coming.
I have not had this much interest in something since that Air Force B-47 dropped an A- Bomb on Mars Bluff, South Carolina in 1958!
Did smoke and vapor from Franklin & Eleanor's rail travels ever give rise to mass hysteria like Orson Well's War of the Worlds? Did Eleanor's C-47 leave contrails, or was it strictly low altitude?
Victrola1 Did smoke and vapor from Franklin & Eleanor's rail travels ever give rise to mass hysteria like Orson Well's War of the Worlds? Did Eleanor's C-47 leave contrails, or was it strictly low altitude?
Interesting questions. I wonder if any aircraft pre-fanjet (i.e., prop) flew high enough to leave contrails? CONdensation TRAIL sounds like a very 1950s coinage to me (cf. 'Conelrad,' 'NORAD,' COMmunist SYMPathizer, etc.).
Don't really know, though
al-in-chgo Interesting questions. I wonder if any aircraft pre-fanjet (i.e., prop) flew high enough to leave contrails? CONdensation TRAIL sounds like a very 1950s coinage to me (cf. 'Conelrad,' 'NORAD,' COMmunist SYMPathizer, etc.). Don't really know, though
You evidently have not seen combat footage of B-17s in formation flying over Europe. Especially in winter when the Jet stream and tropopause were lower a whole formation of B-17s would each leave a contrail. ( Great targets for German fighter aircraft and anti-aircraft batterys. Depending on conditions the contrail might only be behind all the engines and at other times off all of the wing as well.
Contrails happen when the atmosphere the engine or wing is traveling thru lowers the local pressure to the dew point. Saturated air will form clouds as pressure drops.
To further complicate the contrail question all early jet fighters and bombers (B-47, F-80 -- F100s (?) were straight jets and they produced significantly more contrail than the later fan jets. The present jumbo jets do not produce contrails as much because the bypass ratio (air bypassing combustion by way of the fan vs combustion air) is much greater. Doesn't stop contrails but they are fewer today than in the 1960s - 1990s.
Note: Rockets have both contrails and exhaust clouds depending on type of fuel. Makes me wonder as the US air B-737 attributed to the contrail over west coast is a fairly high bypass fan jet. (CFM-56). Would like to know Jet stream location and tropopause altitude.
Paul_D_North_Jr Geez - thanks for the compliment, allen. No to both, other than having spent 19 years in various institutions - of learning and 'higher education' as a student, that is. "I am but a humble engineer (civil)" - Lafayette College, B.S.C.E.,1975, but even there the requirement to take 1 liberal arts course each semester to improve our ability to read, write, and relate to the rest of the world - we had the 'rithmetic part 'down cold', of course - didn't work too well. However, my other degree is in law - J.D., Villanova University School of Law, 1980. Of course, that involved an awful lot of reading - much of it by very learned and gifted lawyers, judges, and scholars - and writing in various forms. And several of my employers/ supervisors have been quite skilled in writing, and were willing to mentor me. My father was also a lawyer and English major at Temple Univ., so he had an appreciation for good writing, and I may have inhertied some of that. But in my senior year in high school, I 'downgraded' myself from the high-falutin' 'Accelerated' English Lit course to the College Prep English, to get a better ability and the nuts and bolts of writing. Really, though, I think what modest writing skills I have come from reading - and re-reading - some books and authors, such as almost anything in Trains -esp. by David P. Morgan, Ben Bachman, John Kneiling, George Hilton, and many others, Tom Clancy, Frederick Forsythe, Ian Fleming, a few James Michener books, etc. - Paul North.
Johnny
Al - in - Chicago, you mentioned Ayn Rand's supposed lack of knowledge of railroad operation, and debunked the statement.
What you say of a scrivener who writes of "gearboxes popping as they cool when the steam engine stops" and a "deadman's pedal on a steam locomotive?"
blue streak 1 al-in-chgo: Interesting questions. I wonder if any aircraft pre-fanjet (i.e., prop) flew high enough to leave contrails? CONdensation TRAIL sounds like a very 1950s coinage to me (cf. 'Conelrad,' 'NORAD,' COMmunist SYMPathizer, etc.). Don't really know, though You evidently have not seen combat footage of B-17s in formation flying over Europe. Especially in winter when the Jet stream and tropopause were lower a whole formation of B-17s would each leave a contrail. ( Great targets for German fighter aircraft and anti-aircraft batterys. Depending on conditions the contrail might only be behind all the engines and at other times off all of the wing as well. Contrails happen when the atmosphere the engine or wing is traveling thru lowers the local pressure to the dew point. Saturated air will form clouds as pressure drops. To further complicate the contrail question all early jet fighters and bombers (B-47, F-80 -- F100s (?) were straight jets and they produced significantly more contrail than the later fan jets. The present jumbo jets do not produce contrails as much because the bypass ratio (air bypassing combustion by way of the fan vs combustion air) is much greater. Doesn't stop contrails but they are fewer today than in the 1960s - 1990s. Note: Rockets have both contrails and exhaust clouds depending on type of fuel. Makes me wonder as the US air B-737 attributed to the contrail over west coast is a fairly high bypass fan jet. (CFM-56). Would like to know Jet stream location and tropopause altitude.
al-in-chgo: Interesting questions. I wonder if any aircraft pre-fanjet (i.e., prop) flew high enough to leave contrails? CONdensation TRAIL sounds like a very 1950s coinage to me (cf. 'Conelrad,' 'NORAD,' COMmunist SYMPathizer, etc.). Don't really know, though
Thanks for the info and the corrections. I have to admit my education offered me remarkably little about World War II, especially its airborne aspects. Perhaps this is a good day to start making amends. I promise to keep my eye out for contrails in aviation -- your points are well made. BTW not too many months ago I rented a 1955 British flick --- DAMBUSTERS -- and it was fascinating to me to learn about the plan (mid-WWII air raid by English on hydroelectric dams on tributaries of the Ruhr and other German industrial-zone rivers, using an improved type of underwater bomb to crack open the dams, flood the industrial valleys and of course deprive the Fatherland of a great deal of electric power) -- but then that cinematic work depended on process photography and I don't think contrails were part of the programming in that very pre c.g.i.-motion picture era.
Back to topic (somewhat), it was IIRC this past Saturday (same day as the red-contrail phenomenon) in the early afternoon on the last day of CDT here in Chicago that Chuck and I noticed several contrails coming from both EB and WB aircraft, high up. That is not terribly rare but relatively unusual here; although we are called 'flyovers' and a lot of trunk-line passenger flights pass over the Great Lakes region, they are usually kept a little south of the crook of southern Lake Michigan at the Chicago eastern boundary w/ Hammond, IN. Therefore I, too, wonder about tropospheric conditions and how "bulg-y" the jet stream was on that day. Unfortunately, I missed the WGN Channel 9 weather report during which Messrs. Skilling, Ramsey et al. generally inform us about how the jet stream was flowing, and whether "derechos" (wind straight out of west) and other such meteorological background prevail. Maybe there was "stuff" going on militarily; one of the WB planes appeared to be a four-engine job but of course that is not out of the question on a coast-to-coast flight even today. OTOH if the Air Force went to Defcon One wouldn't we hear about it? So I don't know if something a little covert took place or maybe weather-wise we were just having a slightly abnormal mormal day. But it was early Saturday afternoon about 2:00 p.m., which would be Noon just off the West Coast.
Also, finally stumbled upon http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/contrail. You are right on the money and I salute you! "Contrail" is defined as having entered the language between 1940 and 1945 and is of course a portmanteau of "condensation" and "trail." I was reminded then that my late father always referred to them by a term that site introduced as a synonym, "vapor trails," and since Dad taught a kindred subject, Celestial Navigation, at Barkesdale Field (Shreveport, LA) during WW II, I think it was his call on which term to use. "Vapor trail" is at least self-descriptive even if it does lack the military-industrial snap of "contrail."
Regarding Ayn Rand and the faithfulness to reality of Atlas Shrugged: A few months ago i stumbled across an account of her being granted cab-ride privileges on the New York Central from NYC to Chicago, and even being allowed to take the throttle for a few minutes, so that what she wrote would be well-grounded in reality. Give me a couple of days, and I'll see if I can retrieve that account and re-post the link here.
As to the technical parts - I read most of it while recovering from surgery about 10 years ago, but was under the influence of pain-relief meds., so my recollections are hazy at best - I'd have to re-read it to refresh my recollection. But some of the rail steel we have today is not that far off from what she envisioned as a future 'ultimate' in that book.
P.S. - It was easier and faster than I hoped. See:
http://aynrandnovels.com/novels/history-of-atlas-shrugged.html , about in the middle of that webpage;
See also pp. 211-212 of Ayn Rand and the World She Made, by Anne C. Heller, Random House, 2009 - I found those excerpts on-line via Google Books.
I wonder if Ayn Rand ever met Eleanor ? - PDN.
Deggesty Al - in - Chicago, you mentioned Ayn Rand's supposed lack of knowledge of railroad operation, and debunked the statement. What you say of a scrivener who writes of "gearboxes popping as they cool when the steam engine stops" and a "deadman's pedal on a steam locomotive?"
Johnny, I never said she committed no factual errors, just wanted to separate the wheat from the chaff.
But I DID maintain she had some working knowledge of how RR companies are (were?) organized.
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