Dear Chris,
Here is a copy of the letter I had published in UFO Magazine(UK) if you want 
to add it to the newsletter.

EXPLANATIONS

I was fortunate to come across a letter from Chuck Shaw who was the lead 
Flight Director for STS-75 on the web, which addressed issues raised by 
James Oberg concerning anomalous images that appeared on the STS-75 footage. 
As luck would hav it the letter also had Mr. Shaw's e-mail, so I decided to 
put a few questions to him.

Here are his replies to my questions, which arrived on 4 January, 2001. It's 
funny don't you think, how Mr. Shaw refers to UFOs, when I did not even 
mention the term in my original letter!

DAVE: Mr Oberg said that the (anomalous phenomenon) was simply 'cosmic 
rays', but could not comment further after I pointed out that the CCD 
(Charge Coupled Device) cameras were incapable of picking this phenomena up?

CHUCK: Unfortunately you are quite incorrect insofar as CCD's not picking up 
cosmic rays. I am an amateur astronomer, and enjoy astro-photography using 
both film and a CCD camera I built (a CB245). Quite often i get images with 
cosmic ray hits on them. I usually take a series of images and average them 
to improve signal to noise. And it is not unusual to have several images 
with cosmic ray hits in them in a series of images. This is well known and 
quite common to the CCD community. As to whether or not the image artifacts 
were cosmic ray hits, there is simply no way to tell, However, it is not 
unusual to have them.

DAVE: The main question that has foxed me all this time is: if these 
'disc-shaped objects' were indeed ice crystals close to the camera lens, how 
would the camera have picked them up if it was focusing on an object (the 
tether) which was reported by the film commentator to be 70+ miles away? 
Surely they would have been focused out, as would water drips on a window if 
you focused on a far away object? Or are NASA saying that these ice crystal 
are several miles in width?

CHUCK: It is not unusual for light reflections off ice crystals to cause sun 
glints back into the cameras. The sun glints are not sensitive to distance 
(within reason). In addition, any moisture in the camera lense (and there is 
always some there), aggravates any glints and causes internal reflections 
inside the lenses. It would be nice to have state of the art camera on the 
Shuttle, since they are getting old and suffer a lot from optical and 
mechanical aggravations. However budget pressure makes you concentrate on 
more important issues and we learn to live with things like this.

DAVE: We are told that the footage is taken three days after the Tether 
broke away and that the 'phenomena' that we see is a 'toilet flush' that had 
been carried out a few hours before filming commenced. Anyone can apply 
simple mathematics and work out that the Tether must be moving away from the 
Shuttle at approximately one mile an hour (72 hours and 70+ miles away). If 
this is so, we can calculate that the 'toilet flush' should therefore be 
approximately two miles away, not right in front of the camera.

CHUCK: You are neglecting the effects of orbital dynamics, which is the 
dominant effect. When the Tether separated, the satellite and Tether di, in 
effect, a 100 ft/sec posigrade manouvre due to differences in altitude of 
the two masses (which had been constrained to be in the same orbit, and that 
same effect was what was providing the tension in the Tether), which moved 
the satellite and Tether up and behind the orbiter. After three days we 
lapped the satellite (i.e. we had moved approximately 25,000 miles ahead of 
it and were coming up on it from below and behind). The 'toilet flush' you 
mentioned was actually a supply of waste water dump that we periodically 
have to do. The fuel cell and waste water are stored in tanks, and when 
those tanks get full they get dumped through the nozzles overboard. The 
water freezes as it is dumped and makes a huge cloud of 'snow'. We typically 
dump the retrograde to allow orbital dynamics to help dissipate the cloud 
away from the orbiter, but there is always a portion that stays with us 
since the cloud expands very rapidly in all directions when it hits a 
vacuum. It is not unusual to have a cloud of ice crystals around the orbiter 
at a variety of distances for several days after dumps. As much as I would 
like to think some type of UFO was around, the fact is there was not 
anything up there that we did not understand.

From: Dave Cosnette
Cosmic Conspiracies
http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk
UFORCE International Director (UK)

UFO Magazine Editor Graham Birdsall replies: Although a particularly 
intriguing contribution to what is an on-going debate over anomalous images 
gleaned from space shuttle cameras past and present, and in particular that 
concerning NASA's STS-75 mission, one has to say that whiles Charles Shaw's 
self-built CCD camera may indeed be capable of detecting what he terms 
'cosmic rays', equate that with the assertion by professional CCD 
manufacturers Lexx Systemes sa (Belgium), that anomalous images known as 
'the Second Space Phenomena' and which feature in the video tape The Secret 
NASA Transmissions: The Smoking Gun, 'cannot be attributed to a CCD being 
affected by 'cosmic rays' or anything else'. All the more curious then for 
Charles Shaw to concede that there is 'simply no way' of telling what the 
image artifacts ('Second Space Phenomena') are. Moreover, to offer the 
excuse that anomalous objects seen to hover, change direction and make 
intelligently controlled manouvres during the STS-75 mission is due entirely 
to 'budgetary pressures' that have resulted in a lack of 'state of the art 
cameras on the Shuttle' beggars belief! And while it may not be unusual 'to 
have a cloud of ice crystals around the orbiter at a variety of distances 
for several days after dumps', it is damned unusual to say the least for 
that cloud to manifest itself in the vacuum of space and do what it does 
during the Tether sequence.

A sequence so unique, incidentally, that not one segment of footage from any 
other STS mission has been found to remotely resemble it. Given Charles 
Shaw's remarks, one might be forgiven fot offering to donate a standard 
digital camera to NASA, complete with decent lens for future shuttle 
missions, given the amount of moisture and debris that apparently plagues 
NASA's on-board cameras at present. Though it would be interesting to 
determine quite what the manufacturers of said cameras make of his 
criticisms.

Graham Birdsall
UFO Magazine Editor (UK)


READERS MAYBE INTERESTED TO LEARNED THAT: The complete 2002 budget request, 
released Monday 9th April, 2001 by President Bush, would give NASA $14.5 
billion for fiscal year (FY) 2002. That would be an increase of $250 million 
-- just under 2 percent -- over the FY 2001 budget. The increase, at best, 
allows the agency to keep pace with the rate of inflation.

SO SURELY QUITE A FEW GOOD QUALITY CAMERAS COULD BE BOUGHT????


Dave Cosnette
Cosmic Conspiracies
http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk




From: "Cosmic Conspiracies" 
To: Kx32i483@aol.com
Subject: Re: Ive received the video/Thank you...
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2001 11:41:48 +0100