Thursday, April 14, 2005

US rolls out robotic broadband airship

"Sanswire has almost completed a prototype of the Stratellite, but is awaiting a green light from NASA and the FAA to conduct tests over Edwards Air Force base - hopefully within the next three or four months. All being well, the Stratellite will then go into production next year."





There's something enticingly "Blade Runner"-ish about an automated blimp drifting overhead. Only in this case we won't be hearing any rousing calls for America to make the move to off-world colonies (along with custom-tailored, genetically engineered replicants).

On another note, I predict Stratellite test flights will result in not a few spurious UFO sightings.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"On another note, I predict Stratellite test flights will result in not a few spurious UFO sightings."

Interestingly, there was a spate of "airship" sightings in the U.S. around 1890 that most UFO researchers (including Vallee) regard as genuine early UFO sightings, since this was a couple of decades or so before the invention of the Dirigible. My own theory, however, is that the mystery airships actually WERE airships and were an early secret project of this sort by the U.S. government (never made public to this day). Witnesses actually saw humanlike crew descend from the airships, reascend, and, in one case, an airship was reported to have exploded in flames, strong evidence to my mind of a large, hydrogen-filled gasbag.
--WMB

Mac said...

I'm familiar with the "secret airship program" hypothesis. One idea I quite like -- although I don't find it all that plausible -- is that the dirigible pilots were instructed to act "alien," therefore disguising the airships' actual origin. There are several accounts of meetings with occupants, and while they seem human enough, they definitely qualify as eccentric.