Pilot who fell linked to NASA theft probe

Houston Chronicle ^ | November 19, 2002 | TERRY KLIEWER and RUTH RENDON

[taxed2death]

Sounds like one for Mulder and Sculley.

[BlessedAmerican]

This doesn't make sense! If the pilot banked steeply apparantely to the side from which the guy fell then the pilot would have been aware of his every move sense he would have been looking in that direction. If he banked the other way there is no way the guy could climb out of a Cessna without the pilot knowing... Cessna's of this type are pretty close quarters! I think there is going to be more to this one....

[FreePaul]

Very strange. Was this guy a candidate for The Rapture?

[Fred Mertz]

Paging Mulder and Scully!

[TruthShallSetYouFree]

Anyone else old enough to remember D.B. Cooper?

[Dog Gone]

Here's the deal. This guy stole the computer from NASA and came up with the bogus story that he bought it from a guy based on a bulletin board ad at the local supermarket. That's BS, of course. He stole it from work.

Now, here's the rest of the story. That laptop contained classified information which shows that the moon landings were faked.

NASA had to have him killed, of course, and this crazy story was concocted to cover it all up.

[Mamzelle]

Sounds like the first chapter of a Tom Clancy novel!!

[EggsAckley]

Sure, DB Cooper. He was never found, I believe.

[EggsAckley]

heheheh

[twigs]

Who was the pilot and what are his connections?

[AnAmericanMother]

I'm puzzled myself. I took all my early flight training in the predecessor to the 152, the 150 . . . basically the same airplane. The cockpit is so tight that two grown men are scrunched in elbow to elbow. My flight instructor was not a big guy - and when I started I was a skinny 15 year old kid - and the two of us had that cockpit full up. When my husband (6'6" but at that time very thin) took flying lessons he was physically too big to fit in the 150 and had to start in a 172. The door is also a tight squeeze for a grown man - and the noise when you force it open against the airstream is just tremendous.

The only thing I can figure is that the guy stealthily unfastened himself, leaned against the door in the steep bank, then slipped the latch and let himself fall out head first. It seems to me that you COULD get out pretty quickly that way - the squeeze is in getting your feet up to the threshold and swinging your legs out onto the step. If you don't care how you land, then it could happen pretty quick. The pilot could have been looking at his instruments and straight ahead - in a steep bank looking down into the bank can mess up your coordinated turn. When I flew for photographers, I always was watching my horizon and my instruments, not whatever they were taking pictures of.

This did bring to mind how my flight instructor used to pop the right hand door open and hang his leg out on a hot summer day. I always teased him about losing his shoe and having to walk back across the flight line with one shoe -- but I never worried about losing my flight instructor . . .

[cynicom]

500 ft would have been high enuff.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

He was whacked, it sounds like to me.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

The pilot was in waste management in Paramus, NJ.

[TruthShallSetYouFree]

So, what are you trying to say?

[txzman]

This guy stole a Government computer, got caught and was about to be fired and prosecuted. He felt stupid and distraught and did what alot of depressed people do when they feel cornered on all sides.

Anyone who steals a computer and uses the existing modem connection on it through a corporate or govt gateway ain't too bright.

[Cultural Jihad]

Hmmm. Being brought up on charges of theft of secret gubermint information, only one witness to his feet leaving the aircraft. And how this Mr. Peachfuzz Munoz just happened to notice the current altitude?! There is something amiss here. Filler was probably an unconvenient critic of Homeland Defense or he knew too much about Enron or he was into proselytizing jury nullification and the Free State Project. ;)

[Chancellor Palpatine]

I wasn't sayin' nuthin' about nuthin'. Know what I'm sayin'?

Nice gif, BTW - end of the last episode of the first season, right?

[Chancellor Palpatine]

He was a patriot and a constitutionalist, I'm sure.