October 2003

The news items below are updated daily and will cover any paranormal and interesting topics we come across. They are written by HUFOS member, Rita A. Jennings, who kindly donates her time and effort in keeping these News In General pages full of upto date information.

Rita Jennings

Hull UFO Society c/o 62, Egton Street, New Cleveland Street, Hull. N. Humberside HU8 7HU Tel: 01482 219887 Mbl: 07754 036536 Email: Hull UFO Society

Don't forget we hold a monthly meeting every second Tuesday
of every month were we read out more interesting news items like these.

(See Monthly Meetings link on the left hand side of this page)

New Plans To Rescue Damaged Shuttles - The next time a shuttle is damaged during lift off or in flight, Nasa hope that the astronauts onboard could dock with the International Space Station and the damaged shuttle could be ditched in the safe part of the South Pacific Ocean. Nasa are devising a plan whereby, food, supplies and equipment, enough to cover 7 stranded shuttle astronauts and the 2 men crew of the ISS, would be available onboard to cover for at least 86 days. Nasa could then launch a second shuttle to rescue the men. If the shuttle was linked to the ISS, it would have to be undocked to let the rescue shuttle dock. This has caused a few problems and it has been suggested that the damaged shuttle would be sent back to earth, to land in the Pacific Ocean, well away from habitual land. This would all have to be done by remote control and require minor shuttle computer software changes. In the future, all further Nasa shuttle flights will be launched to the space station only. The normal shuttle flights look likely to be grounded well until 2005. Nasa says it hopes to launch its first post-Columbia shuttle flights between mid-September and mid-October 2004. It remains to be seen, if this will be the case.

The Great Wall Of China Myth - According to what we have all read "The Great Wall of China" was visible to the astronauts on the Moon. - Sorry, this is false.

No human constructions are visible from the Moon. The Great Wall of China is visible from Earth Orbit only. Ed Lu, the science office of Expedition 7 onboard the International Space Station, which is in orbit around the earth states "The wall is hard to find. Long stretches of its thousand miles have been covered by sand over the eons." This week Chinese astronaut Yang Liwei made history for China, when China entered the space race with its first mission to put a man into space. According to several newspapers Yang said in an interview with China Central television. "I did not see our Great Wall from Space." Yangs flight onboard a Shenzhou 5 was reported to be 125 miles to 220 miles above Earth. The space station is at roughly 250 miles high and this is why he most probably did not notice it. Ed Lu onboard the I.S.S, is trying to take a picture of the wall but due to weather problems he has not been able to do so.

Garage Doors Jamming - New Radio Towers Nato has just put up in Denver as a security measure for a defence ministers conference to be held, are causing a headache for the population. If you have an automatic garage door - it won't work anymore. Hundreds of calls have been made to the Overhead Door Company in Colorado Springs from people who have not been able to get into their garage. Even people who had a computer key-pad entry to their homes could not get in and were locked out of their homes. One employee of Overhead a Tina Oetken said "With over 600-plus calls, it's hard to believe that it can be anything but NATO." The garage-door transmitters work on radio frequencies and Nato also uses radio frequencies, but according to their spokesman, they insist they are not the same. An Army Lt. Col.Gary Keck stated "We've double-checked out system, and there's no technical reason that we should be causing the problem." People assumed it was the batteries that was at fault and a nearby Radio Shack sold out of 12 volt batteries and when they got a new shipment this was sold out in 90- minutes. As a post-note:- In this weeks Sunday Mirror, there is an article about Mobile phone-masts causing chaos for thousands of motorists by jamming their engine immobilisers. If you park your car too close to a mast, drivers have found that they have been unable to start their car again and some find that they cannot unlock their doors. The powerful radio waves from the masts are interfering with the weaker ones sent by key fobs. One man had his immobiliser burnt out and it cost £600 to get a new one. - So watch out where you park, you have been warned.

Moon Plots - If you have a spare £25. you can buy yourself an one-acre plot of the moon, or even a 10 acre "Lifestyle" plot for £130. - yes? really. A Nevada based entrepreneur, a Mr. Dennis Hope noticed a loophole in the 1967 United Nations Outer Space Treaty . Apparently, the treaty bans Nations for laying claim to the Moon but does not mention individuals. Hope has been cashing in on this fact since 1980. He registered a claim for the Moon and Planets with the United States, the Soviet government and the United Nations. Operating as Lunar Embassy, he has been selling extraterrestrial real estate ever since. Lunar Reality, based in Melbourne, has also bought the Australian rights to sell the land. Since l980, two million people from 180 countries have bought a slice of the Moon. (That must make him a very rich man). So - if you have any spare cash, this would make a great heirloom to pass onto your children.

Here is a advert I found on the Google search engine............... Acre of the Moon - The most unique gift ever!

Now you can buy your very own plot of land on the moon, and just to make sure you don't lose the plot, each purchase includes a Deed, Constitution, Property Map, Mineral Rights, and a copy of the original Declaration of Ownership.

Summary of Moon Estates gift pack:

* Lunar Deed, which confirms your registration of the one acre of the moon and gives the co-ordinates of your plot.
* The Lunar Map so you can see where your property is located.
* A document confirming you have Mineral Rights to your land.
* The Lunar Constitution and Bill of Rights which details the Lunar laws, your rights.
* A transcript of the Declaration of Ownership. This is the document filed with the USA and Russia along with the United Nations General Assembly in 1980 in which Dennis M. Hope - first laid claim to the Moon.
* Postage paid registration Card.

Just so you are prepared for when/if you visit your plot, here are some Lunar facts:

* The Moon is a 4.6 billion year old ball of rock that circles around Earth once every 27 days, 7 hours and 43 minutes.
* The moon's diameter is about 2,160 mi (3,476 km), somewhat more than 1/4 the earth's diameter. The moon has about 1/81 the mass of the earth and is 3/5 as dense.
* On the Moon's surface the force of gravitation is about 1/6 that on earth.
* The surface temperature rises above 100°C (212°F) at lunar noon and sinks below -155°C (-247°F) at night.
* The plane of the Moon's orbit is tilted, or inclined, at an angle of about 5° with respect to the ecliptic.
* There is no air on the Moon, but it has recently been announced that water is definitely present - according to NASA between 10 and 300 million tons of water-ice is scattered inside the craters of the lunar poles.
* There are dark areas on the Moon. These are really dry land but long ago astronomers thought they were filled with water, so they called them seas.
* In 1969, the first astronauts landed on the Moon. This trip was followed by five more missions, the last in 1972.

The Hull UFO Society is now selling plots on the Sun. With heat all year round you'll get a great tan, offers anyone? :-)

Kennedy Space Centre. Release No.59-03 Dated 11.7.03 - A spacecraft for a Nasa mission to test Einstein's Theory of General Relativity was shipped from the Lockheed Martin Space Systems facility in Sunnyvale California, to the launch site at Vandenberg Air Force Base, after it had completed environmental testing. The mission Gravity Probe B. also know as GP-B will use four ultra-precise gyroscopes to test the theory. Two factors will be measured. How space and time are warped by the presence of the Earth, and how the Earth's rotation drags space-time around with it. The testing was performed by Stanford University in Stanford, Calif. and Lockheed Martin. The vehicle was transported by road and arrived at Vandenberg for pre-launch operations on the 10th July. The GP-B programmed was managed by Nasa's Marshall Space Flight Centre in Huntsville, Ala. The prime contractor for the mission was Stanford University who conceived the experiment and is responsible for the design, mission operations and data analysis, as well as the design and integration of the science instrument. The testing of the space craft and some of its major payload components was done by Lockheed Martin. The first stage is currently scheduled to begin on Sept 15th at Vandenberg Air Force Base on Space Launch Complex 2 (SLC-2). On September 16th to 18th the attachment of 9 strap-on solid rocket boosters (in sets of 3) will begin. The second stage for mating atop the first stage on Sept. 19th. On October 29th GPB will be transported from the spacecraft hangar to SLC-2 and hoisted atop the second stage. On November 5th. the Delta 11 fairing will be installed around the spacecraft. This will be part of the final pre-launch preparations. The launch will be the responsibility of Nasa's John F.Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.

Crop Circles, Bainbridge, Ohio - According to Larry Roberts the reporter for News Channel 4 in Ohio, a series of crop circles has appeared in a soybean field in Ross County. The farmer who the field belongs to said "Somebody knew what they were doing. If you ask my wife and daughter, they say it's terrestrial", but he is convinced it is vandals. The Ross County Sheriff Ron Nichols stated that he had no reports of anything suspicious in the area and no sightings of spaceships. But something or some-one has left a two-acre geometrical sign in the soybean field. Sightseers and scientists have arrived from all over the country to view the filed. Mark said "They're looking at the bean pods....where it opened at. But I know they had a Geiger counter thing going around, or whatever they use." One farmer a Mr. Keith Johnson said "He turned it on, it glowed and went out. They're real...whatever real means."

Massive Sunspot Spotted On The Sun - The largest sunspot for years (The size of Jupiter) has been spotted on the sun. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Environment Centre has issued an Official Space Weather Advisory saying that two very intense centres of activity have emerged on the Sun. It may even get larger. The area is known as Region 484 and it has developed very quickly.

On October 19th this region produced an X-Class solar flare, but the effects on the earth were minimal, as the eruption was luckily pointing away from us. But they say that any eruptions occurring during the next week will be pointing directly at us. The LASCO instrument onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) shows another region rotating towards us behind Region 484, which has already produced two violent eruptions. The Space Environment Centre states "These eruptions may herald the arrival of a volatile active centre with the potential to impact various Earth systems." If the strong eruptions impact Earth in sequence, this will cause a thinning of the planets magnetosphere which could result in disruptions to our electrical systems and as well as effecting the weather. The most intense period of Solar activity ever recorded was in 1959.

Black World Technology - Politicians and officials all deny the existence of discrepancies in the defence budget, which is all down to the BLACK WORLD technology. We all know of the spin offs which we now enjoy due to the knowledge we have gained by going to the moon etc. (Although, some still maintain we did not go). The computers that were developed for the moon expeditions, we are all using now on our desktops. The defence jargon for the real world is "White World" Boeing at the moment, the world's largest aircraft manufacturer are working on anti-gravity propulsion. If they succeed, this will revolutionize conventional aviation."GRASP" or Gravity Research for Advanced Space Propulsion has only just been reported in Jane's Defence Weekly, but the U.S. Military may have had the technology for years. According to the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) which is based in Nevada. They stated that the U.S. Military craft using this kind of technology has been in the skies since the 1980's. Britain and France have projects in the Black Budget area but it is the U.S. which has the largest Black Budget on the planet. According to the U.S. Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) classified or black programmes account for about $23.2 billion or 17 percent of the 2004 budget requested from the Department of Defence. Half of this is for research and development, and this is on the increase.It is impossible to penetrate any secret programme to do with this technology, it is tightly controlled. Only when they are ready to unveil it to the rest of the world, do we get to know about it.

UFO'S In The Middle East - Last week a spate of UFO's were seen in Baghdad and Bahrain. Mohammed Jaffer al-Hajer and six of his friends saw the UFO which displayed strange lights. The object was videoed twice by Al-Hajer on his digital camera. The UFO gave off a bright yellow light and then split into two before disappearing. People in the nearby town also saw it and reported it, but the flight controllers at Bahrain International Airport stated that they had not picked anything up on radar. Apparently the lights of the UFO were seen for 3 hours in Baghdad and according to witnesses was videoed by the press. Why is it, that we never get to see these tapes? What happens to them?

Fears For The International Space Station - Nasa stated it was safe for the most recent crew to go to the I.S.S., but warnings about unreliable equipment on the I.S.S. were given in reports. Un-named engineers stated that it is not possible to maintain the space station as long as the shuttle is grounded. They say that it is impossible to repair or replace faulty equipment on the I.S.S. A growing array of hardware problems have occurred which prevents Nasa from assessing the quality of the air, water and radiation levels.

According to medical officials, the problem has been going on over a year. The I.S.S. astronauts have been complaining of headaches, dizziness and in some cases, "an inability to think clearly". Nasa spokesman, Robert Mirelson said " there was a full discussion by engineers who decided that the launch could proceed safely." But two officials who were overseeing health and environmental conditions on the I.S.S. would not consent to the launch. Nasa Administrator Sean O'Keefe (Left) has stated "As he understood it, there was no immediate hazard to the crew, but conditions could deteriorate in the next six months and force the crew to abandon ship." On Monday two days after blasting off from Kazakhstan, American Michael Foale, Russia's Alexander Kaleri and Spain's Pedro Duque reached the Space Station. Mr. Duque will stay on the station for 8 days and will return to earth with American Ed Lu, and Russian Yuri Malenchenko, who have been onboard since April 28th. Michael Foale, (Right) said he had been aware of the problems for several weeks

Gemstones Found On Mars - The Nasa Orbiter spacecraft (Mars Global Surveyor) has spotted huge outcrops of the green gemstone Olivne (known as Peridot) on the planet Mars. This suggests that Mars must have been cold and dry for billions of years. The discovery was found in a shallow depression called Nili Fossne. If the conditions had been warm and wet the mineral would have simply weathered away.

Eclipse Of The Moon - There is going to be a lunar eclipse of the moon which will take place on November 8th and 9th 2003 from around 10.20 pm. According to the chairman of the Hull and East Riding Astronomical Society "This will be one to watch."

The first part is when the moon passes through the outer part of the earth's shadow from about 10.20pm. and is usually hard to see. The first thing you will notice is a darker notch cut out of the uper left of the moon, round about 11.40.pm. Then by about 1.05am. on Sunday the whole of the sun's disc will appear anything from a bright coppery red to a dark bronze in colour. Click here if you want to watch a 30 second movie clip showing the eclipse in full.