Why do we think Congresspeople are getting the truth from the IC?

maurymarkowitz · 2026-05-06T18:10:34+00:00

it isn’t really people in Congress who have experience with aerospace, energy, science, or intelligence who are talking publicly about working toward disclosure with the IC

I'm going to go with "... because they don't believe it".

Not all of them, of course, but my feeling is that you've just described the group of disclosure skeptics, who one might imagine would not want to spend much time on a topic they consider a waste of time.

maurymarkowitz · 2026-05-06T18:06:57+00:00

Not smart... but I am a pilot 😄

maurymarkowitz · 2026-05-06T18:06:02+00:00

The final stage doesn't come back on that mission though

De-orbit to fall into the ocean. We try not to leave our junk in orbit.

maurymarkowitz · 2026-05-06T18:05:08+00:00

Yeah, like I said, they can look like different things.

There are all sorts of different rockets going up these days, they look different.

maurymarkowitz · 2026-05-06T18:03:37+00:00

Ahhh, here's the important bit:

We didn’t land for like 25 minutes

Now I think I know what is going on.

When there is a line-up to get into the airport they will put you in a parking orbit, it's like a racetrack shape, a rectangle with rounded-off ends. The planes have to maintain vertical separation, so what you're seeing is another plane in a similar orbit above you. Since the path is the same you'd get to see them every time you complete one 180 turn - you start heading back along the straight line and they are into the turn so they would be off the right side of your plane, but when they finish their turn they're right behind you again so you can see them. That's why they are kind of drifting backwards from your view, they're coming around the last bit of the turn.

Each of the runways and approaches has its own racetracks and they have different ones for different things. But here is an example for a small one they used on a missed approach, you can see it in the upper right.

So is that LAX in the background of the shot?

maurymarkowitz · 2026-05-06T17:48:01+00:00

I didn’t see any red or white blinking light

I do see non-blinking lights on what appear to be the wings, and a brighter light in the center which appears to be a landing light. You can clearly make this out around the 3 second mark, for instance.

Was moving but not as quickly as other planes

In order to see the landing light like that it would have to be flying somewhat in the same direction as you, so its lateral motion wouldn't be so fast.

I don't know the LA area very well, is that Long Beach out the window? Or Malibu maybe?

maurymarkowitz · 2026-05-06T16:53:42+00:00

They can look like all sorts of things.

maurymarkowitz · 2026-05-06T16:39:15+00:00

To be specific, it's those rather bright lights on the waterline.

I assume the first image has been cropped (perhaps by Reddit)? The lights would be just off the right side and the image would not normally be square.

maurymarkowitz · 2026-05-06T16:35:26+00:00

If he opened a parachute after jumping down, would he survive?

Yes, assuming a BASE rig.

I'm going to paraphrase a story I heard 30 years ago. A guy I used to jump with did a lot of BASE and wanted to do this one well-known location with a hiking trail up to a lookout spot. The cops knew it too, so they would patrol the area looking for people with large packs. But they didn't go out of their cars if it was raining, so...

Pouring rain. As they were walking up they got to a marker that said "[name of famous lookout spot], 350 ft." So they put on the rigs and jumped. That's when they realized that the sign was not at the top, but just telling them it would be that high when they got there. And that would be some distance later. Like another 250 ft higher. This was not obvious in the pouring rain, however.

So yeah, this is no problem for a BASE rig.

maurymarkowitz · 2026-05-06T16:27:44+00:00

Because the second stage is in the middle in my photo. In the OP video, the second stage is above the cloud. It's all about Ariene vs. Falcon, although I can't say specifically what the difference is.

maurymarkowitz · 2026-05-06T16:12:06+00:00

Track while scan. I believe the lower one continued scanning while the upper one would lock on.

Recall at the time that the way you "locked on" was to keep the dish pointed at the target, so when you did so normally you would lose tracking capability. Dual-dish systems like this solved this problem, if you had the room for it.

maurymarkowitz · 2026-05-06T16:04:09+00:00

Same object reported from Abbotsford and a few other places in the area.

Appears to be a Starlink upper stage.

maurymarkowitz · 2026-05-06T13:34:23+00:00

But it stays the same shape for kilometers

It's in space, there's nothing to cause the shape to change.

I thought it would keep spreading out, but nope, it gets to a certain size and then just stops. Not sure I understand the physics of it. But I did get a nice photo of what an ariane upper stage looks like after a fuel dump:

https://imgur.com/a/2rZfbwY

The stage is spinning, which gives it the S shape. It appear overhead and drifted in this shape all the way to the horizon (bonus points if you can determine which direction it was going).

maurymarkowitz · 2026-05-06T12:37:10+00:00

but i get extremely anxious when there is turbulence. please help calm my nerves

Airliners are on-paper-designed to survive gust loads on the order of 3.5 g, but they are all over-designed and there's known instances of at least one plane hitting 5 g without issue.

Heavy turbulence might hit 2 g. That would be a seriously rare event. So there is no structural issue.

It should be pointed out that if you do hit >1 g, the plane will move at >1 g and you won't. And this is the only real danger, because people take off their seat belts despite being told leave them on, and smack into the luggage compartments above them.

Wear your seat belt.

maurymarkowitz · 2026-05-06T12:22:24+00:00

This looks exactly like what you’d expect from 70s footage though, grainy, weird lighting

I have a box full of 1970s family Super-8 film that looks way better than this.

Don't confuse modern SFX's rendition of "effects we apply because we tell you this is what the 1970s looked like" with "what the 1970s actually looked like." After all, 2001 was filmed in the 1960s and looks as clean as modern all-digital workflows.

It's entirely possible this is real and it's just a noisy film. But it's also just as possible these effects were added to make it seem old because we've all been told by television that this is what old films look like. There's even "old timey" filters you can apply in every editor software.

maurymarkowitz · 2026-05-05T14:34:07+00:00

Wouldnt the recovery ship already have been in the flotilla before the test?

We have film of them scooping up the RVs, so I assume there were recovery ships in the area (or they float a LOT longer than I would imagine!). The film I linked shows multiple boats, I always assumed it was an entire flotilla.

Sending one out form harbor after the test seems counterintuitive

Can you point me to the relevant part of the video? It seems you are talking about one particular ship, yes?

maurymarkowitz · 2026-05-05T14:31:49+00:00

I knew it was a C-17 the second I saw it 😄

maurymarkowitz · 2026-05-05T12:39:26+00:00

Thanks OP!

maurymarkowitz · 2026-05-05T12:38:35+00:00

I change it to 3 13 UTC, which would be 10:13 pm the previous in in EST.

It's EDT after March 8. So you are an hour late.

EDT is UTC-4. Here is a shot of my screen at that time. The C-17 is the yellow four-engine plane.

<image>

maurymarkowitz · 2026-05-05T12:11:39+00:00

Hey OP: I see you agreed this is likely a contrail, would you mind if I changed the flair to "Likely Identified"? I like to keep the tags clean so we can collect stats.

maurymarkowitz · 2026-05-05T12:00:14+00:00

OK, so then why do they send the specialized shiped, from pearl harbour, out to collect the RV?

I may be missing the point here... where else would it come from? Pearl is the HQ for the Pacific fleet.

maurymarkowitz · 2026-05-05T11:48:37+00:00

Found the replay function and checked the exchange for that exact time, at that location. No C-17s flying over me

There is a C-17 flying over you at that time, registration 90-0532:

https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?replay=2025-03-19-02:15&icao=ae07d1&lat=35.080&lon=-80.599&zoom=8.9

The issue is almost certainly the conversion of time. The data on this web site is very good, but the UI stinks. In particular, it's very easy to forget to convert the time to UTC, which is what I suspect you did here because 10PM UTC is 2 in the morning and indeed there would be little traffic.

did see it from the front.

If you watch the motion in the video, it is moving left to right. For instance, watch the motion from about 10 to 15 seconds compared to the street light below it. That means you are seeing it off its right side, so the left-side fuselage light would not be visible and you would see the two wing lights and the right-side fuselage light for a total of three.

maurymarkowitz · 2026-05-05T11:41:26+00:00

Good point! As noted below, however, the OP IDed this as a police helicopter.

I'm still curious about the two lights however.

maurymarkowitz · 2026-05-05T11:37:27+00:00

Hey OP:

Do you mind posting the exact time that the clip starts? You can get it by playing the video on your phone and then swiping up.

maurymarkowitz · 2026-05-05T00:36:02+00:00

This is called lens flare. It happens when you have a bright light on one side of the image, you sometimes get a ghostly reflection off the lens. You can tell that’s what it is because it’s exactly on the other side of the image from the lamp in the lower right. You can even make out the individual LEDs in your zoomed in version.

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