On May 17 there was what appears to be a pretty freaky UFO identified over Roswell, New Mexico:
https://twitter.com/RSkybyrd/status/1659168576169824258
It’s pretty clear video, taken by several people, of something that looks to be a shiny silver rocket.
Fortunately some other Twitter users were pretty quick to tentatively identify it as a blimp from a company in Roswell called Sceye:
Sceye is developing craft they call HAPS, High-Altitude Platform Stations, for such purposes as providing high-speed Internet to remote areas, mapping, and just about anything else someone might want to do from on high.
An apparent problem with this identification is that blimps don’t typically fly in a vertically-oriented position. I was not familiar with Sceye so I didn’t know anything about it either. So I did a crazy thing: I asked them!
In a very speedy and courteous reply to my email inquiry, Sceye’s head of business development, Kristian Ullum Vind, wrote me:
Hi Brian, our HAPS performed nominally and if you watch some of our previous launches on our Youtube page you can also see a similar trajectory. Hope that clears things up.
And sure enough, their YouTube and Instagram pages include videos of them launching, and they do take off vertically, looking much like a rocket (albeit a very slow one that leaves no exhaust trail). Why do it like that? Their shape is optimized to ascend fastest and with the most stability in that orientation. They are uncrewed, so it doesn’t really matter.
Sometimes keyboard warriors forget that we can do things like actually contact real human beings when we have a question. My favorite case of doing just this was back in 2014 when I was researching my episode on the St. Clair Triangle UFO from 2000. The story sounded more than anything like an advertising blimp. I tracked down a major operator in that part of the country, the American Blimp Company, since acquired by Van Wagner Airship Group, and gave them a call. I asked their operator if they had any old timers on staff who had been around in those days, and they did. They connected me to a super friendly and talkative old guy who worked in their machine shop, if memory serves. This guy gave me enough information about blimps to solve a thousand UFO cases. He didn’t remember that particular incident, but the reason was that they happened all the time. Their blimps were constantly being reported on the news as UFOs, pictures and everything, and they’d always call the TV station and say “Hey, that was just our blimp.” He even knew the route the 2000 blimp was taking, which was from a sports stadium in one city to another one, always with sightseeing dilly dallying along the route for VIPs.
So, if you have a question about something weird, find the right person to ask, and ask them. You’ll find they’re almost always delighted to be of service, and to help set a record straight.