This post is a response to a comment my Sis made, but my response comment started to get too long so I figured I'd post it with links and such :)
Her comment:
So here's my question for you. The other night we watched The Right Stuff with Monk. Have you seen that movie lately? Well, at one point when John Glenn is orbiting the earth, he suddenly sees "fireflies" everywhere. There's no real explanation offered in the movie. We found it pretty astounding.
Today I did a search for John Glenn and fireflies on google and came across a few different theories about.
I was just wondering if you'd looked into that at all...
Me Now:
Ya know, as I think about it, I can't recall if I've ever seen the movie "the right stuff". If I did it was when it came out which was in 1983! 24 years ago!? wow.
Anyway, I've not heard this story before, but on first glance I found this on wikipedia...
As the sun rose over Canton Island, he saw thousands of "little specks, brilliant specks, floating around outside the capsule." Glenn had the impression that the spacecraft was tumbling or that he was looking into a star field. A quick hard look out of the spacecraft window corrected this momentary illusion. He definitely thought the "fireflies," as he called the small objects, were streaming past his spacecraft from ahead. They seemed to flow by slowly but did not seem to be coming from any part of the spacecraft. As Friendship 7 moved into brighter sunlight, the "fireflies" disappeared. They were probably small ice crystals venting from onboard spacecraft systems.
Next I found this discussion on imdb (You might have to register to read the comments)...
One of the theories is that it was the Constellation Urion... as in, they did what's called a "urine dump" from the spacecraft and that's what Glenn saw frozen in space (I think a trained astronaut would know this though so I don't think thats it). Some on the message board say that on his flight they didn't do a urine dump because it was a short flight.
This comment by "flyingswan" is short and probably more likely:
Well, on the next mission Scott Carpenter got a whole cloud of them when he banged the side of the capsule. Best bet is ice crystals.
The photo I found on this website.
just a couple more comments...
I remember seeing a story on the news once where John Glenn Punched a guy in the nose (I may have the details wrong) because the guy questioned him on UFO's. To be fair though, the guy was acting like a real jerk and very confrontational, and questioned Glenn's Achievements... I don't blame Glenn at all for taking a swing :)
I also saw a show on Larry King not too long ago (couple months maybe?) where John was one of the guests debating UFO's. I don't think John actually came right out and said it, but he gave the impression that he did not believe in UFO's. I wish I could find the transcript or youtube of this because my memory may be cloudy on this. It did have Michael Shermer on too who coincidently was on the Colbert Report last night! (I'm not a big fan of Shermer's as you can probably guess, he is too dismissive for my likings).
Conspiracy sidenote:
During my attempt to post this, the entire blogger.com website just went offline. Coincidence? ;)
I've not had a chance to watch it yet, but I've heard a lot of "buzz" about this video on youtube called "out of the blue" ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdZpRcTBwdA
Speaking of UFO's, the scifi channel has a video of one of the military guys who has "confessed" to handling the strange metallic material to have been found at the Roswell Crash. http://www.scifi.com/roswell/index.php
wow... I guess I had a lot to say on this subject :)
UPDATE: I totally forgot to mention "Sprites and Blue Jets" - now that is some really interesting phenomena... google this "ufo sprites blue jets" and click on the top link for footage. (note: This is more of a natural phenon and may have nothing to do with ufo's).
No comments:
Post a Comment