Talk:Lonnie Zamora

From The Black Vault Encyclopedia Project

Let me describe for you what Lonnie Zamora said he saw (see http://www.geocities.com/youcreatedcosmos/zamorareport.html for his original report)...

When Zamora radioed Nep Lopez for confirmation of the sighting, Zamora said, “It looks like a balloon” and was “O in shape”. The object had a clean burning, orange to bluish flame that roared whenever it was engaged, but the flame was usually only engaged for about ten seconds at a time. Zamora stated that the, “Flame might have come from underside of object, at middle, possibly a four feet area”. The object gently descended and ascended, taking six seconds just to rise from the ground to an altitude of about 25 feet.

Coincidentally, many hot air balloons are often described as O in shape. Hot air balloons typically also use the clean burning, orange to bluish flame of a propane torch, that roars loudly whenever it is turned all the way up. The flame is rarely used continuously but rather in intermittent bursts of ten seconds or so. The flame is located in the middle on the underside of the balloon. Hot air balloons gently descend and ascend and it would not be impossible to imagine a hot air balloon taking about six seconds to rise from the ground to an altitude of 25 feet.

What about the burned bush? The object described by Zamora was clearly in distress and therefore it is very probable and reasonable to presume that if the object were a hot air balloon, when the balloon crashed landed, the basket would tip over to its side as well. Now if a bush happens to get in the way of the burner while the basket is on its side, it might get a little singed, don’t you think? So that easily explains the burned bush, and it does not contradict the other evidence clearly pointing to the object being a hot air balloon.

What about the fused sand? Sand is mostly silicon dioxide, which melts at 1650°C. A propane torch can approach maximum temperatures anywhere from 1995°C (in air) to 2820°C (in pure oxygen). In either case, a propane torch can clearly get hot enough to fuse sand so if sand happens to get in the way of the burner while the basket is on its side, it might get a little fused, don’t you think? So that easily explains the fused sand, and it does not contradict the other evidence clearly pointing to the object being a hot air balloon.

Is it difficult to believe that a police office and former aircraft mechanic of 7 years would have trouble identifying something as mundane as a hot air balloon? Not if hot air balloons were still something of a novelty back then -- which they were, especially close up in a back water town like Socorro was back then.

Would a hot air balloon sighting merit investigations from the FBI, Air Force, and Dr. J. Allen Hynek? Well they wouldn't know that BEFORE the investigation now, would they? Besides, just look at Project Bluebook if you want hundreds of examples of a government agency investigating mundane things as being UFOs.

All of Zamora's descriptions can only be reasonably interpreted as a hot air balloon. No better interpretation has or can be offered without referring to other facts that do not exist. To summarize:

1. It looked like a balloon
2. It was O shaped
3. It looked like a car upended on its radiator
4. It ascended and descended gently, taking a whopping six seconds to rise a mere 25 feet
5. It had a propane-like flame

The propane-like flame:

6. Was located at the underside of the object
7. Burned some brush
8. Fused some sand
9. Was engaged in short bursts instead of continuously like a rocket engine would be

So if it looked like a hot air balloon, sounded like a hot air balloon, and acted like a hot air balloon…then why couldn't it be a hot air balloon? If you have no trouble believing in UFOs, despite the complete and utter lack of evidence for their existence, you should have no trouble believing in hot air balloons, which are very well documented as existing, am I right?

As for being an unimpeachable witness, Zamora confesses that the Sun was in his eyes, making vision difficult for him, which in turn was compounded by the fact that he was wearing dark, green-tinted sunglasses. Despite these handicaps, Zamora's description was still a very accurate description of a hot air balloon.

Incidentally, the Wikipedia article on Lonnie Zamora laughably estimates the hot air balloon’s peak speed at 2160 MPH (or an average of 1080 MPH), having supposedly traveled six miles in under twenty seconds, and then offers this misrepresented fact as “evidence” that the object was not a balloon but rather something out-of-this-world. If the author of that article had even bothered to pay attention or actually read Zamora’s report, at the point their estimate is being made, Zamora had said this was only when he had seen the “object [a] second time”, and estimated that this second sighting lasted only maybe twenty seconds. This implies Zamora had lost sight of the object for an indeterminate amount of time after the first time he sighted it, and who knows how far it could have drifted by then? Also, the Six Mile Mountain Canyon was not six miles away from Zamora, it was six miles away from Socorro. Since Zamora was at least half-a-mile outside of the outskirts of Socorro, and the object disappeared BEFORE it reached Six Mile Canyon, having disappeared behind a mountain that was BETWEEN Six Mile Canyon and Box Canyon. So the total distance the balloon drifted was not even close to six miles, but was less, therefore the ludicrous Wikipedia estimate is based on a somewhat distant and already moving object. Furthermore, other alleged “witnesses” to this event all described the object as slowly floating, not as moving at anywhere from Mach 1 to Mach 3.

I find it curious how all of the drawings of what Zamora saw are drawn incorrectly and not according to what Zamora described in his report. Drawing it the correct way would make it look more like a hot air balloon — and we wouldn’t want anyone to mistake what Zamora saw for a mundane hot air balloon now, would we now?