SUBJECT: UFO's and the Shuttle FILE: UFO46
PART 4
Video Encryption: Hoagland alleges that since STS-48, all
external STS video has been encrypted and will be viewed only
after NASA review and approval. I have checked with a NASA Public
Affairs official, and have personally verified, that things (as
usual) are not quite what Richard Hoagland alleges. On STS-42,
the second flight after STS-48 (the STS-44 DoD mission went
between them), the International Microgravity Laboratory
(Spacelab) science group requested that medical video imagery
from the cardiological studies (sonogram images) be treated as
privileged medical information, as all previous audio
conversations with doctors had been. NASA discovered that having
to continuously reconfigure the White Sands TDRSS site and the
TDRSS satellites back and forth for encrypted video transmission
was a laborous process. Rather than spend all that time, it was
decided to go into encrypted mode continuously and decrypt the
raw video at NASA Goddard for immediate release over the "NASA
Select" circuit. Normally, when there was shuttle video, the
White Sands to Goddard raw video link had been unencrypted, and
the Goddard relay to "NASA Select" required no further
processing; but when medically-privileged video was to be
transmitted (a new innovation on STS-42, planned for years),
complex encryption processes had to be initiated on the shuttle,
on the TDRS satellites, at White Sands, and at Goddard. The
procedure for constant encryption was implemented to avoid the
cost of many switchovers between modes. But the NASA Select video
from Goddard was to continue to be decrypted except for the
medical transmissions, which were to be openly announced on the
audio feed, just not piped into a million homes and schools
nationwide. Since then, the NASA Select video (originating at
NASA Goddard, and containing other sources of video, too) has
continued to be transmitted as before, with the only change that
the White Sands to Goddard link (which viewers could previously
observe when it was active) is now encrypted. There is no hint
from air-to-ground conversations that anything other than the new
(and long scheduled) medical video imagery is being interrupted.
And although it is encrypted, the White Sands raw feed can be
observed to tell if there is a video signal or not on the feed,
so I am told.
Conclusion: The standing explanation, that the objects are near
the shuttle, are sunlit, and are affected by the plume field of
an RCS jet firing, remains valid.
P.S. Hoagland made a number of other factually erroneous comments
about live planetary image transmissions. He says that all
previously NASA planetary probes transmitted live imagery.
Actually, only fly-by probes did that, particularly the fly-by
probes which had slow transmission rates which took many minutes
to build up each image. Probes orbiting other planets (Venus and
Mars, for example), do not (and I believe, never HAVE)
transmitted live imagery, since they are frequently occulted by
the planet's mass. Each orbit's imagery is stored and dumped over
a short portion of each orbit, and the imagery data is initially
decoded over the next hours and days. Live coverage of the actual
image transmission would usually be blank, but for a few minutes
every few hours would show images flipping across the screen at a
very fast rate, if there was enough computer power to decode them
in this "real time" speed. There is no practical reason why
computers have to be built so powerful to keep up with the high-
speed dump rate for a few minutes, then rest idle for the next
several hours. Outside of avoiding whines about censorship,
there's no reason to do so.
Robert Sheaffer - Scepticus Maximus -
[email protected]
Past Chairman, The Bay Area Skeptics - for whom I speak only when
authorized!
"Mystical explanations are considered deep. The truth is that
they are not even superficial."
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