From: James Oberg <joberg@houston.rr.com>
Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2001 08:51:44 -0600
Fwd Date: Fri, 07 Dec 2001 10:51:24 -0500
Subject: Re: More On The X-15 - Oberg


 >Date: Thu, 06 Dec 2001 19:11:47 -0600
 >Subject: Re: More On The X-15
 >From: Lan Fleming <lfleming5@houston.rr.com>
 >To: <ufoupdates@virtuallystrange.net>

 >As I noted in a previous message, the fuel was actually hydrogen
 >peroxide. But that's really irrelevant since hot steam is not
 >going to freeze into ice on the hot surfaces of a hypersonic
 >aircraft in a near vacuum. And even if it could, the APUs were
 >behind the cockpit, not in the nose where any debris seen by
 >White would have to have originated.

Correction accepted, but my point is, water is still the
by-product. And liquid water (hydrazine, too) cools by
evaporation, so the remaining material quickly -- within seconds
-- freezes. This applies to effluents from the APU and from the
thrusters -- which ARE nose-mounted. Water vapor exiting from
the shuttle's flash evaporator, in gaseous form, also gives rise
to very striking snowstorms, as many videos have shown.


 >You can't seriously be suggesting that evaporative cooling of
 >water droplets could produce "snow flakes" the size of a human
 >hand, as White described the object, can you?

No, it's clear from all the new information on White's sighting
that the bigger thing he saw was a very unlikely ice structure
of any kind. The snowflake behavior does establish that
vehicle-generated debris will fly along with the vehicle plenty
long enough to be noticed and remarked on. And heavier/denser
material will be less affected by the miniscule aero forces
there.

 >You seem to have missed a fine point: the X-15 wasn't a space
 >shuttle. It wasn't traveling at space shuttle altitudes; it was
 >at an altitude where atmospheric drag was still a significant
 >factor on any "snow flakes".

Have you ever seen videos of the Space Shuttle ET jettison,
especially closeups around the propellant line doors? All sorts
of little junk is floating around, flying in different
directions as it breaks off the structure. And the altitude of
ET jettison is LOWER than the altitude White was at in his X-15.
So I suggest that actual flight experience, documented on video
and by eyewitnesses, trumps your theoretical calculations of
what _must_ happen in that environment.

 >Given White's obvious excitement
 >over his observation, it's odd that it seems to have aroused so
 >little interest among project scientists

Maybe, just maybe, the folks on the scene at the time understood
the phenomenon better than you or I.