4 ms·

Well yes, but think about this way. Why would a UFO crash? Why do UFOs always seem to crash in reports? It seems a bit unlikely that an advanced craft that can

Well yes, but think about this way. Why would a UFO crash? Why do UFOs always seem to crash in reports? It seems a bit unlikely that an advanced craft that can levitate without propulsion and travel across stars would just crash or be taken down by a missile or at the time of the 50s by artillery shells. A bit like a less advanced tribe from Africa shooting arrows at an F35 and taking it down. Secondly even if it was a UFO of extraterrestrial origin, I would imagine upon crashing or sensing it is in danger, it would send a beacon to whoever sent it, alerting our presence to whatever. And this could easily be perceived as an act of war. Next best thing is, Earth technology is more advanced than we are led to believe. At least military-wise.

ponector 3y ago
Tribes shooting down F35? A pair of gees will be enough to ground a F35! Not a good example, F35 is advanced but brittle machine.
mike_hearn 3y ago
> Why would a UFO crash? Malfunction, unanticipated conditions or pilot error, same reason human craft crash. > Why do UFOs always seem to crash in reports? They don't. I'm struggling to think of any UFO claim that ends in a crash except for Roswell. Almost always UFO sightings end with it disappearing, often by appearing to make sudden apparently impossible accelerations. > It seems a bit unlikely that an advanced craft that can levitate without propulsion and travel across stars would just crash or be taken down by a missile or at the time of the 50s by artillery shells. It's doubtful that Earth has been visited by UFOs but if we had been, this seems like an extremely likely outcome to me! Think about the horrific engineering challenge that would be faced by any alien spacefaring race on inventing an FTL drive: they need to create a ship that can travel vast distances, handle almost any kind of planetary conditions found on arrival, deal with completely unknown alien technology (ours) and presumably there's some pretty harsh stealth requirements in there too. Frankly that sounds like a recipe for constant disasters as they figure out how to balance all those requirements. I think the intuition here is that because our current physics says FTL is impossible, if an alien race were able to do it that'd imply a godlike level of perfection. This seems like a very dubious assumption. If FTL is possible then we don't know how hard it is or how many breakthroughs are required to get there. It's conceivable that an alien race might develop an FTL drive whilst being only slightly more advanced than ourselves. It's certainly not obvious why this specific invention implies unlimited technological capability in every imaginable field, which isn't something usually posited for any other kind of discovery.
- d1sxeyes 3y ago
  Does not necessarily need to be FTL. It may be a generational ship, or potentially simply these aliens have very long lifespans, and travelling the cosmos is not a problem for them, because they anyway measure their lifespan in millennia. I agree with you though, no reason to assume that these aliens would have definitely solved all of the engineering challenges visiting a planet might pose, especially considering our own track record shows that we are relatively good at getting stuff to its destination in the solar system, but not so great at low altitude manoeuvres or landings when we get there. (to be clear, I don’t think that we’ve been visited by aliens, just that it doesn’t seem to be impossible).

ponector 3y ago

Tribes shooting down F35? A pair of gees will be enough to ground a F35! Not a good example, F35 is advanced but brittle machine.

mike_hearn 3y ago

> Why would a UFO crash? Malfunction, unanticipated conditions or pilot error, same reason human craft crash. > Why do UFOs always seem to crash in reports? They don't. I'm struggling to think of any UFO claim that ends in a crash except for Roswell. Almost always UFO sightings end with it disappearing, often by appearing to make sudden apparently impossible accelerations. > It seems a bit unlikely that an advanced craft that can levitate without propulsion and travel across stars would just crash or be taken down by a missile or at the time of the 50s by artillery shells. It's doubtful that Earth has been visited by UFOs but if we had been, this seems like an extremely likely outcome to me! Think about the horrific engineering challenge that would be faced by any alien spacefaring race on inventing an FTL drive: they need to create a ship that can travel vast distances, handle almost any kind of planetary conditions found on arrival, deal with completely unknown alien technology (ours) and presumably there's some pretty harsh stealth requirements in there too. Frankly that sounds like a recipe for constant disasters as they figure out how to balance all those requirements. I think the intuition here is that because our current physics says FTL is impossible, if an alien race were able to do it that'd imply a godlike level of perfection. This seems like a very dubious assumption. If FTL is possible then we don't know how hard it is or how many breakthroughs are required to get there. It's conceivable that an alien race might develop an FTL drive whilst being only slightly more advanced than ourselves. It's certainly not obvious why this specific invention implies unlimited technological capability in every imaginable field, which isn't something usually posited for any other kind of discovery.

d1sxeyes 3y ago
Does not necessarily need to be FTL. It may be a generational ship, or potentially simply these aliens have very long lifespans, and travelling the cosmos is not a problem for them, because they anyway measure their lifespan in millennia. I agree with you though, no reason to assume that these aliens would have definitely solved all of the engineering challenges visiting a planet might pose, especially considering our own track record shows that we are relatively good at getting stuff to its destination in the solar system, but not so great at low altitude manoeuvres or landings when we get there. (to be clear, I don’t think that we’ve been visited by aliens, just that it doesn’t seem to be impossible).