Showing posts with label Crashed. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Crashed. Show all posts

Thursday, September 22, 2011

A Camera Lens Fell Out of the Sky and Crashed Through This Woman's Roof [Cameras]

A Camera Lens Fell Out of the Sky and Crashed Through This Woman's RoofHaving an inanimate object blow a hole in your roof after careening through the sky is a real bitch no matter what. But at least if it's a meteor or cruise missile, you understand how. But a Canon lens? What?

California woman Debbie Payne was minding her own damn business when her entire house shook, the San Jose Mercury News reports. When she checked to see what'd caused this tremor, he equally startled neighbor pointed to a somewhat destroyed, two pound 24-105mm Canon lens lying on the ground. The gear had punched a hole clean through Payne's roof. But where did it come from?

The FAA's investigating the obvious explanation that it dropped out of an airplane, but is that really so obvious? Did someone open the door to their plane and try to take a photo? How did just the lens fall down? The FAA itself is stumped: "This is an unusual occurrence—even proving this came from an aircraft could be difficult," lamented a rep.

So where else could it have come from? Not space—it would have been vaporized. Was it catapulted from a nearby town? Did some sort of massive bird drop it from its talons? Is this the start of some new, modern Old Testament-style plague, to punish us for our consumer whoring ways? Are we all to die by the same things we drool over and purchase? Payne's lucky to have escaped without a lens-sized hole blown through her body—but somewhere, some guy thought, Ah, fuck I can't believe I just dropped my lens. [Mercury News via PetaPixel]

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Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Nobody Has Any Idea What the Hell This Mysterious Crashed Drone Is [Airplanes]

Nobody Has Any Idea What the Hell This Mysterious Crashed Drone IsAn (allegedly) American drone just crashed in Pakistan. That's not altogether surprising—we fly drones over them all the time to hunt militants. But this one's different. It's tiny. And, uh, it's shaped like a bird. What is it?

Danger Room's Spencer Ackerman points out the ornithological similarities between the mystery UAV and the SmallBird drone—but they're clearly different. The Pakistani specimen holds no weapons—only what appear to be cameras, or what DefenseTech speculates are "four sensor apertures." There's also some strange photographic-looking equipment lying nearby. DT asked their drone gurus, and the only thing resembling conjecture they could turn up is the possibility that "It may be a Lockheed Martin Desert Hawk with the tail plane modified to look more like a bird for camouflage." That's very clever!

But not clever enough to keep it from falling out of the sky, it'd seem. It appears to have crashed on its own, rather than being shot out of the sky—the wreckage looks almost entirely intact, save for some scorch marks. At any rate, we can be sure of one thing: Pakistan's got it, and they're probably giving it a very thorough inspection right now. We need to be more careful about not dropping our stealth crap in their backyard. [Danger Room and DefenseTech]

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