Odd thing in Houston

[303pilot]

This isn't soaring related, but I just saw the oddest thing out my office
window. My office is on the beltway, 15 miles from downtown. The sky is
clear. A large (bigger than a 737) passenger jet escorted by one or more
small aircraft circled downtown Houston about 30 minutes ago and departed to
the east. It made at least 1 3/4 circuits of the downtown area. The
smaller aircraft - from this distance just a glint - was at times behind and
at times ahead of the passenger jet. I first saw the passenger jet banking
over the N end of downtown, watched it make a complete circuit, begin a
second one and exit to the E.
I can't find anything about this on the news, but the local TV stations have
gotten the same report from others and are investigating. Hope it's just a
procedural infraction or something like that.

[Marc Ramsey]

303pilot wrote:
> This isn't soaring related, but I just saw the oddest thing out my office
> window. My office is on the beltway, 15 miles from downtown. The sky is
> clear. A large (bigger than a 737) passenger jet escorted by one or more
> small aircraft circled downtown Houston about 30 minutes ago and departed to
> the east. It made at least 1 3/4 circuits of the downtown area. The
> smaller aircraft - from this distance just a glint - was at times behind and
> at times ahead of the passenger jet. I first saw the passenger jet banking
> over the N end of downtown, watched it make a complete circuit, begin a
> second one and exit to the E.
> I can't find anything about this on the news, but the local TV stations have
> gotten the same report from others and are investigating. Hope it's just a
> procedural infraction or something like that.

Probably just an advertising photo shoot. We see them all the time here
near the Golden Gate bridge...

Marc

[Mark Zivley]

Saw it too, I'm pretty sure it was the 747 Shuttle Transport aircraft
with a Nasa T-38 as escort, probably for a photo shoot of the transport
with downtown Houston as the backdrop. There was a similar picture
taken 10-15 years ago that I've seen in a number of places at JSC. If
you noticed, it had the additional vertical stabilizers located on the
ends of the horizontal stabilizers.

Mark

303pilot wrote:
> This isn't soaring related, but I just saw the oddest thing out my office
> window. My office is on the beltway, 15 miles from downtown. The sky is
> clear. A large (bigger than a 737) passenger jet escorted by one or more
> small aircraft circled downtown Houston about 30 minutes ago and departed to
> the east. It made at least 1 3/4 circuits of the downtown area. The
> smaller aircraft - from this distance just a glint - was at times behind and
> at times ahead of the passenger jet. I first saw the passenger jet banking
> over the N end of downtown, watched it make a complete circuit, begin a
> second one and exit to the E.
> I can't find anything about this on the news, but the local TV stations have
> gotten the same report from others and are investigating. Hope it's just a
> procedural infraction or something like that.
>
>

[John Shelton]

Did the "escort" take off between two lines of luminous globes that were
floating in the air but were neither flares or balloons? And was it shaped
like a black arrowhead and did it leave a green boron-fuel trace behind it
in the classic "String of Pearls" design as it streaked out into space at an
impossible rate? And then, some time later, did the globes light up again
and did it come back to Earth to land glowing red from the heat?

I was standing with Marc Ramsey on the runway at Current Ranch Airport in
Nevada talking to a local rancher about just that same kind of odd thing. It
was "just the Aurora", the guy said. Marc left after his first landout of a
two landout day and missed the rest of the story. I have been sworn to
secrecy about those details.

So, rest easy. It was probably just a non-existent hypersonic replacement
for the SR-71 that is hidden somewhere deep in CIA funding and is of no
interest to you.

Please disperse.

[Libelle Driver]

Mark Zivley's answer is probably the answer. I used to work in downtown
Houston and when the shuttle was being ferried back to Florida it would
circle downtown before going on to Ellington AFB, out by NASA. It was quite
a site.

Fred Blair

[David Martin]

It was the 747 used to transport the shuttle and a T38 escort. Was
all on the 10:00 PM news. Lots of people were scared that it was a
'terrorist' attack.

NASA apologized for scaring people.

David Martin
ASW 27 BV

[303pilot]

Unnerved me. My wife was meeting a friend for breakfast in the financial
district of Manhattan in on her birthday, September 11, a couple years ago.
She made it through that OK but I guess I'm now a little twitchy when I see
a big plane do something unusual over a downtown area. We live just across
the bayou from downtown.

Brent
"David Martin" > wrote in message
om...
> It was the 747 used to transport the shuttle and a T38 escort. Was
> all on the 10:00 PM news. Lots of people were scared that it was a
> 'terrorist' attack.
>
> NASA apologized for scaring people.
>
> David Martin
> ASW 27 BV