Why are U.F.O's call flying saucers?

Question

If a spaceship was saucer shaped then the rooms on the outer edge would be a strange shape indeed! IKEA flat packed furniture would not fit in the corners because there are no corners on that 'wall'. That certainly limits how you could arrange the room even for an extra terrestrial!! Your views please

Answer 1

Kenneth Arnold was flying his plane and he saw several lights moving in the sky he could not explain. 'they moved like saucers skipping on water' he said. The press called them flying saucers.

Now I've never skipped a saucer across water and I'm sure you haven't either. I assume it is very similar to a stone. If I'm right then aliens must be immune to seasickness.

It's a very strange phrase to make and there's some debate as to what he meant by it. Saucer is such an unfortunate phrase. Now people inevitably ...ahem... 'see alien spaceships' and they're almost always saucer shaped. I wonder what people would say if he'd said 'stone' instead of 'saucer'. Hmmmmmm

Answer 2

Ah, you think people or aliens live in the outer edges of flying saucers? How far from the truth... The outer edges are filled with mechanisms for flight and supplies because of the odd shape of the various compartments. The occupants live in the center of the saucer where height and lateral space are the best for undisturbed flight.

The early UFO sightings all made reference to a disk shaped object that people saw. That is how the phrase flying saucer came into common usage. If the flying
object had looked like a wiener or a sausage, I guess we would refer to them as flying hot dogs or flying phallus's.

Answer 3

A lot would depend on how you were shaped and thus how the furniture was shaped. But your point is valid; my generation ran into similar home-decoration difficulties when everyone wanted to move into a geodesic dome.

I suppose that the 'flying saucer' got its start from early reports of 'unidentified flying objects' in which someone specified that they saw a 'saucer-shaped' object. There were also cigar-shapes, wheel-shaped, and spherical objects as well, but the saucer seemed to have captured the imagination of the people who write about such things.

Answer 4

You could call them any name you wanted they would still be the same things.
The flattened edge of the saucer actually accommodates the wedge shaped bodies of the aliens.
The fat ones from the other galaxy can't fly in a saucer they use spheres.
They have cloaking devices,we can't see them or we would call them flying balls.

Answer 5

When UFO's were first photographed english people thought they looked remarkably like a silver saucer turned upside down. Hence the expression "flying saucer"

Answer 6

UFO's are called Flying Saucers, because the first sitings in modern times were by a man who thought they looked like saucers. (His name was Kenneth Arnold-he was on an airplane in the state of Washington, I believe).

Answer 7

U.F.O. stands for Unidentified Flying Object. The idea that they are flying saucers is something that sf is responsible for. Any aircraft that is not immediately identifiable is a U.F.O.

Answer 8

the word saucer descibes the movement of the craft not its shape. the man who first reported them said the moved like a saucer skipping over water. i belive what he saw was actually cigar shaped....not sure about that bit though

Answer 9

In 1947, one of the descriptions by a pilot (Ken Arnold?) of how the UFO flew "as if it was a saucer skipping over water"; caught on with the press and the public.... and the CRAZE continues!

Answer 10

as most of the other people say most of the early UFO sightings were reported as saucer shaped hence flying saucers