Short: The Vela Incident

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Thinking Sideways. It's mystery short stories of things we simply
don't know the answers to. Hey, guys, welcome to another
episode of Thinking Sideways. This one's a shorty bonus episode.

(00:28):
It's been a while. Yeah, sorry about that. We'll try
to be better about that. We won't though, we're lazy.
Yeah we are. Um, if you're joining us for the
first time, I'm Devin, joined by Steve and Joe, and
we're going to talk about the Vela incidents. This is
one of the scarier ones, well not really in space

(00:49):
where nobody can hear you scream. Don't remind me, don't
remind me. So okay, you guys remember the Cold War
that they it lasted like twenty years, a little longer
than that. It was about twenty years to site. Actually,
this is interesting. Historians are like very hotly debate how

(01:11):
long it lasted. Yeah, well, I mean that definitely there
was there was a really cold, cold part of it,
and then there it was like ninety five up to
like the seventies, and then there was detents and then
and then things kind of went downhill again with Afghanistan
and stuff. But then finally sort of economies are kind
of like through in the towel in nine when the

(01:33):
Soviet Union fell. Hopefully I got that date right. So
one of the things that happened, and in this thing,
the Cold War, in the middle of it, really was
that in nineteen sixty three there was a signing of
what is officially called the Treaty Banning Nuclear weapon tests
in the atmosphere, in outer space and underwater, which is

(01:55):
more often referred to as the Partial Test Band Treaty, which,
as you can understand, you would call it something shorter. Obviously.
It all that stuff, the thing about testing weapons in
the atmosphere and outer space, testament outer space. Will you
fry a lot of satellites with the MP so it
really is a practical good thing to do. Basically, it

(02:16):
said that no nation could test detonate nuclear weapons except
for underground. Got it pretty straight up? Yeah, pretty much.
In order to help enforce this, because the world's police is,
of course the United States America to America, the USA
built a number of satellites as part of Project Vela.
They called it the Vela Hotel. Part of the project

(02:38):
that was the satellites building, and there were four satellites
I think in all um you mean you mean four models,
four models, so yeah, sorry, not just four of them. Yeah,
that makes sense, right, Actually, they put a bunch of
these things up, they did. They put a whole mess
of them up, VELA five, A and B and then

(02:59):
velass A and B. So basically they built these things.
The pictures are pretty cool. They built these things together,
and they would launch them together, these models, um, and
then they would detach in space and kind of float
away from the sea. They were kind of a tetrahedron
kind of yeah, and it's really interesting. Yeah, and then
they deployed for solar panels and yeah, it was all

(03:21):
fular panels pretty much. They built the originally to have
like an eighteen month's shelf life, and you know, they
lasted a lot longer, way longer than that. Yeah, because
that's back when they built things to actually last. They
still do for space. But well, yeah, I was just saying,
my DVD player is not that he's not getting launched
into space, so it might actually the way it's acting speaking,

(03:41):
I got stick that things will last. We've got a
space probe that's approaching Pluto, now, keeping your eye on
that a little bit. Yeah, I got a problems. Next
in July, it's going to be swinging by Pluto. Now
that thing's been out there for years and it's still
tooting along. So keep your eyes open for our next
episode on Pluto Probe. It's Plu to a planet, is it?
We'll find out anyways, The VLA Hotel satellites monitored for

(04:07):
X rays, neutrons, and gamma rays, and over the twenty
six year lifespan of the VLA Hotel project, they correctly
identified dozens of nuclear detonations, which is a lot, especially
since there was like a treaty against it. Nobody was
supposed to be doing it. Well, let's be honest. Treaties
are there to keep the people who want to follow

(04:28):
the rules in line. It's kind of like the locks
on your car. You really shouldn't have to lock your
car door, but you do because some people break the
rules and get into your car to take things that
aren't there. People break the rules, that's why they're there for.
Treaties are treatise are you know? They're only followed the
extent that people think it's in their interests to follow them. All.

(04:51):
The test ban treatise has actually been mostly successful. Yeah,
let's talk about September of nineteen nine. Okay, okay, great,
one of the Vale Hotel satellites detected what's called a
double flash in uh three thousand mile radius around the
print Prince Edward Islands off the coast of Antarctica. Hey,

(05:13):
guess what island by the way island in that? Yeah. Yeah,
So obviously with the Aliens coming back from their ship. Well,
and I think you need to clarify because a three
thousand mile radius, that to some people is going to
sound like this satellite sucks. But that's because we're used
to very accurate GPS satellites and things like that. Today

(05:37):
it wasn't. I mean, we got to remember this was
in seventy nine, built in this the late seven or
early seventies, It wasn't a super accurate thing. They're also
monitoring huge swaths. It wasn't you know. It was kind
of one of those this is my patch and something
happened in my patch. Come check it out. So what
would happen in this situation is Air Force jets would

(05:59):
be deplus woid. They had sensors on them to pick
up the kind of particle materials and things like that
that they would fall out, Yeah exactly. That's that's how
inaccurate they were, and that was to verify the area
that it might have been. Yeah, and another reason they
are so inaccurate is is that there their their orbit
was really high. They were like or but there were

(06:20):
seventy three miles up, which is a third of the
way of the Moon. So the Earth at that point
it's kind of pretty small, kind of small. Yeah, their
focused cone of viewing is a huge, huge area. Yeah.
The interesting thing about this particular satellite too, is this
satellite was actually kind of officially retired. Yeah, and we'll

(06:41):
get to that actually, Yeah, Yeah, it's a relevant point,
it is. It absolutely is. So the just for people
who don't know, a double flash is caused because there's
the initial fireball that happens after a nuclear detonation and
then there's the shock wave after it, and it's those
two light anomalies caused the double flash. So there's the

(07:01):
first like really fast one and then a slower burn one. Yeah,
if you've ever watched the or any of the films
of nuclear nukes going off, you'll see the one. To
its fair if you've ever seen an image of it,
it's it's clear way, it's super distinct. But in case
you haven't there, I'm sure there are people in this
world who haven't. They are lacking. According to the d

(07:22):
i A, nothing was found when the jets deployed to go,
say hey, let's sense all this fallout and figure out
who might be responsible for this sort of thing. The
official line is that it actually wasn't a nuclear detonation,
that it was something else entirely, and there are some
good explanations, yeah, there, there absolutely are, But I do
want to quickly point out we're going to go into

(07:42):
theories in a second, but before we do that, I
want to say that even though the official line is nope, nope,
nothing nothing to see here. If nothing happened here, there
was an official list compiled of who could have been
responsible for the detonation, and I mean it was. It
was submitted into the official report about this. It was like,
this definitely wasn't a detonation, but if it was, this
is who might have done it. To be fair, the

(08:03):
reason the list was assembled is because when they initially
detected the flash, they presumed that it was a nuclear
device that had gone off. So the first course of
action is who could have done it. It wasn't until
later after the committees were assembled and all the other
theories were put out there. So that's just so people
know why this list was assembled. Trumping on my fun alright,

(08:27):
stop stop, stop theories. Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it.
Let's assume it's an actual nuclear detonation, right, and it wasn't.
And it wasn't the chupa. He didn't do it. Yeah,
who could have done it? That's a good question. So
here's the list. Israel South Africa and Israeli South African

(08:48):
Effort or Alliance, which according to a reporter who I
couldn't never find the name of. I'm sure it exists somewhere,
But according to this reporter, the Israeli South African Joint
Force did employ two ships with a whole lot of
quote Israeli military men and nuclear experts unquote on it
to kind of the Prince Albert Island area pretty close

(09:11):
to around the time that this flash double flash was detected. Well,
I know, back in those days, there was a lot
of military cooperation between Israel and South Africa, that's true.
The this theory would further go that the US would
also try to help cover up and Israeli test like
this to kind of help cover the international profile of

(09:33):
kind of a controversial alliance between the US and Israel.
Why is it? Why is it? Okay, So I got
I understand the Israeli South African alliance because they're both
they're kind of the bad kids on the block. They've
got all kinds of sanctions against them, so of course
they team up. But how do the Americans play into that? Well,
there Israel is our ally, yeah, and that's where they've

(09:58):
been their allies forever. Yeah, it was, But but but Jimmy
Carter at the time was pushing non proliferation efforts. Okay, Okay,
that's where I got the you know that we're going
to work together because everybody else hates us idea. Yeah,
but yeah, the but yeah, I think that that's one
of the theories out there, and I'm not getting ahead
of it, is that that would have forced us to

(10:19):
take a position on Israel developing nuclear weapons, even though
we knew they had been doing so for quite some time.
But technically we're not, We're going to approve that kind
of activity. So that would have you know, it's better
to just pretend like this didn't even exist, because that
would have put potentially put us at odds with our
ally got it okay and too, I guess to piggyback

(10:41):
on that a little bit. In two thousand and ten,
it was reported that apparently on February twenty seven, President
Jimmy Carter wrote in his diary, because apparently that's the
thing we have access to, quote, we have a growing
belief among our scientists that the Israelis did, in fact
conduct a nuclear test explosion in the ocean near the
southern end of Africa. This is alleged. I couldn't I

(11:04):
only read this in one place. I couldn't verify it,
but it's interesting if it's true. Um So that's some
backing up proof about the Well I will put out.
The one thing about South Africa is that when the
South African government switched over after you know, anti apartheid
and all that, all their stuff came out and it

(11:25):
wasn't until three months after this that they were at
nuclear capability according to their official documentation. I understand it's
your official documentation. Yeah, but also if it was an alliance,
wouldn't if it was well, yeah, but but one of
your one, your second bullet point was South Africa. So
I'm just I'm putting that out there for that because

(11:46):
it just caught up with me generally believed that, Yeah,
they didn't quite that weren't quite at that point, but
of course they would want to, they would want to
participate in this, they'd want to see missionary of learning opportunities.
So there's gotta be more. I'm sure there's more suspects here.
Of course there are. Of course, one is obvious. I'm
not even going to go into the reasons why it
could have been is the Soviet Union. I feel like

(12:08):
that's pretty clear. India apparently did have their own nuclear
testing program at that point. They cod named it Smiling Buddha.
It seems very at odds. Yeah, I personally doubt this
so long because I think if the Indians were going
to touch off a test, they would do it in Pakistan. Yeah,

(12:29):
I agree, but they do. They do apparently have a
pretty documented history of conducting unauthorized trials of nuclear explosions,
and so it's possible it could have been them. I
don't know why they would have done it so far away,
but sure, I guess why not Pakistan, because of course
we would say Pakistan did it, but I'm just going

(12:50):
to reverse my India theory there. Yeah, yeah, I think
that's fair France because the Prince Edward Islands, many of
them are owned by France, so it could have been
done on French soil, which France did their own nuclear tests,
but they always did it off their own soil on
some of these, you know, out in the ocean. Yeah,
so that that does make sense, I guess kind of. Yeah. Yeah,

(13:12):
and then they usually did theirs in this in the Pacific, right,
they did South Pacific. Yeah, but I mean it stands
the reason if they're going to go one place, why
not go to another because that's super far away. Why
go so far away if you can do it in
your other place. I don't have any answer to that.
Killed a ton of sea life over the South. Seals

(13:34):
they're awful. Baby seals are the worst. I wonder. I
wonder after they conducted some of those ocean tests, like
out in the Pacific and stuff, how many you know,
how many miles of dead animals were floating up to
the surface. Yeah, that's depressing. I don't want to think
about it. Yeah, let's just say lots. Yeah, the shock
wave that was how many miles it would go. Yeah. Um.
And then the last one that I have on the list,

(13:56):
which isn't on the official list, is it could have
been US. The US would have been the good old USA.
That seems like something that we kind of would have
done and they covered it up. Well yeah, but I mean,
in that case, why report the satellite findings at all?
I think that it was a joint coalition of it wasn't.
It wasn't the military that was in control, in control, sorry,
that was monitoring what was coming down from the satellites.

(14:17):
It was a group of scientists who were reporting to
the military. But if the scientists said, oh, hey, by
the way, military, here's public record that says that we
saw this thing happen. Better deploy, they would be like, well,
all right, I guess we'll go out there. And then
you tell your guys in the jet, hey, I don't
care what you pick up. Nothing happened. You know. I'm

(14:37):
not saying it's a good theory. I'm just saying it's
as reasonable as many of the other country theories out there.
For me, Okay, well, can I just do one thing
about the possibility of the USA? Sure? Is you said, well,
we sent the jets out to test for fallout. One
of the weird things about the path that they took
is they weren't at the right l of Asian or

(15:00):
altitude excuse me, to be within the air currents that
should have been carrying any of that fallout. They should
have been much lower and instead, evidently, according to the
stuff I've read, they were actually higher than they should
have been. So you know, they're going with the wind
instead of against it, so therefore they wouldn't be picking

(15:22):
up any of that fallout, that seems. But yeah, they
sounded like a lot of planes out there though that
they didn't all fly in the same direction. I understand that.
But but you know, if you put them all at
the same altitude and there's a prevailing wind in one direction,
or you know, a downward I don't know. I didn't
go too far into it. I just remember seeing stuff
about we were totally at the wrong altitude. Fair could

(15:43):
be So next theory is that it was space debrie
or meteorite like a micro media, right, Yeah, obviously if
a meteor rte bigger than your time I hit that thing,
it would just blow to piece. It would blow Yeah,
it would blow the satellites pieces, but if something smaller
than that would break up. Probably, and this is actually
the official evaluation of the Office of Science Technology, it

(16:07):
was that a small piece of space debris or a
small meteor I hit the satellite, which caused particles to
fly past the sensors, which caused Fawlty readings that looked
like the double flash. Okay, I can, I can see that. Okay.
For me, this answer is a little too convenient, you know,
I like the answers that are a little more conspiratorial
or out there. I mean, there's a bunch of stuff

(16:28):
flying around space, right, I mean a bunch of stuff
lying around space. And that thing had been in space
for what nine years? More than that, I think, I
think it had been in for ten. Maybe I thought
it was lost. It's nine seventy, but I could be
wrong more than more than five. Right, somewhere around ten

(16:49):
years after that that amount of time, it's very likely scenerally,
you're gonna get hit by something, some tiny little piece
of debris. It seems like, yeah, and I guess that
was the thing. I couldn't find any other reports and again,
and I could have missed it I will always allow
for that, But I didn't find any other reports of
a reading like this coming from space debris hitting one
of these lots and lots of satellites that were up there. Yeah,

(17:10):
we had lots of these things up there. You would
think that more than one would get pinned by a
piece of joke. Yeah, we'll talk about this actually when
you talk about the storm. But the flash was allegedly
verified by a couple of different sources, the double flash.
But you know, the US Air Force jets that were
sent to pick up chemical traces to you know, pick
up the fallout. They they didn't find any anomalies. But

(17:33):
again it was the US jets that were sent in
foil habrid um. The thing that piggybacks on this, I
guess is, as we were talking about, this satellite was
pretty dang far past its shelf life. It was Vela
Hotel six nine one one, and it was apparently at

(17:55):
least two years over its design lifetime. Yeah. What's interesting
about about this particular model of the satellite is the
original design lifetime of it was eighteen months, and then
they extended it out. They extended it to seven years,
So it's it should have ended in nineteen seventy seven.
And that's an interesting thing about it is apparently there
was the impression out there that the that it was

(18:17):
actually retired no longer working. Yeah, it seems that that's well,
it wasn't entirely working though, that wasn't working totally working. Yeah,
it was documented to have a faulty e MP sensor
electric micanogic pulse sensor, and uh, it did develop a
fault in its recording memory, which quote cleared itself. It

(18:39):
took two years to clear itself. Yeah, but it cleared
itself in March of nineteen seventy two. Pretty clever little machine.
Pretty smart. Here's the great thing about having a computer
floating in space is you can just tinker with it
and tinker with it and eventually maybe get it to work.
If that happens to your computer in the house, you
get bad and thrown away and go get a new one.

(19:00):
I could never imagine going, well, I haven't been able
to save anything for two years, but hey, I keep
using it. Yeah, so that I mean, it's possible that
the reason that it thought that this was a double flash,
even if it was just space debris hitting it, was
because it was faulty, and that the rest of them
hadn't been as faulty for whatever reason, so they wouldn't

(19:21):
have read m you know, some space debris as this
double flash. Again, I don't, I don't know. It seems weird.
And again there's the stories that it's that other things
picked this flash up, which leads us to another theory,
which is that there was some huge freak storm and
that it was they call it a super lightning bolt,

(19:41):
which seems apparently says things happen. I guess something, I
I guess it does happen. Yeah, it seems like it
would have had to have been giant. Do you remember
the Skycowakes episode and we talked about the Bell Island
incident briefly, Yeah, and that was supposedly a super lightning
bolds situation. It's been equated to have to be essentially

(20:03):
the same thing would have happened, which is odd because
they're kind of they're in the same decade. To have
two of those happened, odd since those are kind of
one in a gazillion strikes, the lightning super lightning strikes today,
it just happened like where just instead of getting a
bunch of lightning bolts like zig and zagging out of

(20:24):
the sky. Everything ever, the clouds all just charge all
at once. It's like a lightning ball, right, I to
be honest with you, it's been long enough that I've
done the reading on how it happened that because we
go through so much research that I don't remember exactly
what it is. But it is a perfect chain of events,
because lightning is when you've got that a perfect alignment

(20:45):
from the cloud to Earth for that electricity to pass
pass through. In this case instead of a single line,
it's basically it's a cable. Is the only way that
I can think to describe it. And that's off memory,
and I that's not exactly right. Yeah, so that's a theory.
I guess it would explain why there was no but

(21:06):
it seems like the jets are generally deployed quick enough.
There would have been some mention of well it was
kind of stormy down there or something three thousand mile
radius though I don't know. Aren't that fast? That's true? Yeah,
And then of course our final theory is aliens. Yeah,
what were they doing? They were getting their lifeboat, yeah, yeah,

(21:29):
and then they knew did to cover up their footprint. Yeah, yeah,
they didn't, or they're dropping it off. I can't remember
exactly how to be honest, I don't remember exactly. I
think the lifeboat was discovered and like the mid sixties. Yeah, okay,
so they're picking it. They were wiping out the evidence
trying to or they were angry. They came back and
they were like, where's our boat here? Yeah? Anyways, any

(21:56):
other theories you guys have, No, I'm kind of thinking
it was, um the Israeli South African joint efforts myself,
but and then obviously we we chose not to acknowledge that.
I really just think the satellite was hosed because I
don't know that it ever did any reports after that.
I couldn't find anything that said that it ever sent

(22:16):
any reports after that, which makes me think, since I
know it's I think it was, it's e m P
sensor was down, it was already falling apart. I think
that it just had a short circuit. Well it's possible,
but you know, if it but it continued on in
service for a little bit a little bit more than that,
you would think that if it was all all jiggy
and stuff and all jankie you think there would have
been more of these, And remember I mentioned that it

(22:37):
was the satellite was officially retired sort of kind of. Yeah,
that's one of the things is that the Israelis and
South Africans obviously would be aware of these things and
where they are in orbit any given time, and wanting
to conceal their tests, they chose to touch off the
bomb at a time when this at satellite, which was
of course not functioning supposedly was was the one satellite

(22:59):
passing over head. Well, and yeah, I mean we can
we can go down that rabbit hole, and we can
go down the rabbit hole of there's um, you know,
there's the Soviet spy who says that he knows that
it was all true and and something along the lines
of what you're saying is happening, but we don't know. Yeah,
and I'm not faulting the Israelis for for testing nuclear weapons.
We live in a rough neighborhood, so but but yeah,

(23:22):
that's still my favorite theory. I'm with Joe. Actually that's
my favorite theory too. So there you go, all right,
all jeez, okay, solve that. Yeah, solved it in record time.
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(23:45):
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Bye bye everybody,