As well as old Slim Whitman songs.
If aliens came, as you say, with a quick arrival and departure. I would say in response to such an event …“I don’t fucken blame them!”.
With any hope, space funding will increase and research will accelerate. Right now there’s a great many people who seriously doubt interstellar travel will ever be done; not whether it’s technically possible, but whether it’s practically possible. If we see someone else can do it, we might get off our backsides of deciding whether or not we can do it, and start figuring out how. Unless they simply came up from the depths of Jupiter and we got it all wrong :-/
Military budgets will also balloon. They’re geared towards potential, not actual, threats. I don’t see a bigger threat for them than beings that could wipe us out from orbit without our so much as being able to lift a hand against them. There would be space stations armed with nuclear missiles up from the US/Russia, maybe China, within a matter of years, possibly months. Maybe a station around/base on the moon.
I also disagree with the statement earlier in this topic that it would be doubted later. We’d have more video of it than a single person could observe in a lifetime (given all the recordings taken, and the fact that pretty much everyone has a camera (phone) on them at all times). We would have thousands of sensor readings monitoring everything from radiation to gravitational pull. Depending on where it put itself, people might attempt to land on it, or shoot it, and we’d have that too. We’d have every single head of state, every single major media, political, and religious personalities statements on it, everyone everywhere on social networking sites, leaving the biggest single best documented case of anything anywhere ever. It would be easier to deny that 9/11 took place 300 years on than it would be to deny the visit from the space craft, and I’d bet my life that some of us can get off this rock for good and be on our way to finding said visitors within those 300 years.
Parking a large spaceship above a major city is most likely a provocative act designed to elicit our best response.
I believe humanity would lose their collective minds; with half chosing to fight, and half chosing to flee. The pentagon would probably take over the government, as would the military establishments of most industrialized countries.
I see nothing good coming from such an event.
Either the non terrestrial ship made a wrong turn at albeque or its sending us a message, non verbally. I would be asking what was going on in the world prior to this even, like were we planning on lobbing nukes at someone or something like that.
No ships company is going to take a space going vessel into a gravity well, unless they can negate any weapons that can be used against them, so they are back in orbit somewhere and call us on the phone, and then we just open standard diplomatic contact.
If they want to land and revictual, we kindly point them at kwajelin island and give them embassy status, while all the worls poobahs show up and try and get special deals on what ever they could sell us.
Mind you, this is all nullified, if its a couple of alien kids stealing moms spaceship and pulling a prank, then posting it on their version of facebook.
Declan
What would happen is that I would social engineer my backside off to get access to the craft, find out how they travel faster than light (if they do) and acquire any other advanced technology they had lying around, destroy their craft so it looked like an accident, then sell off the technology I acquired in dribs and drabs, becoming a multi-billionaire in the process.
(But I’m an amoral slug - YMMV)
Gee, UFC Is Sux I did not know that you’re coming from U.C. Santa Cruz. 
Nah, you dont want the drive, you want the astrogation data, thats were the money is.
Declan
I could imagine certain factions using incontrovertible proof of an advanced alien civilization to further needle the members of the Abrahamic religions. "Your Holy Book didn’t even contemplate the existence of aliens? “Your Holy Book didn’t have a prophecy about the most astonishing event ever to happen to humankind? Meh.”
I could imagine that some of the religions will undergo some drastic reformation to take into account the alien contact.
I think new religions would be generated, and existing religions would work the event into their belief systems. The stock market would fluctuate. Some people would panic, assuming it was the end of the world. Other people would carry on as usual, annoyed that they had to go to work. There would numerous talking heads on news programs, providing insubstantial statements. Some locales would sink two inches from the weight of newly acquired guns and ammo. Countries would point fingers, accusing each other of nefarious schemes for world domination. Some folks would blame the sighting on illegal aliens, alcohol consumption, and teens having sex. Since the spaceship leaves in a few days, and does nothing except be seen, I think as far as the general public is concerned, for the most part, it would be like any other day ending in the letter “y.” Except for numerous folks bitching about their favorite television programs being preempted by news coverage.
I think that people often make external events fit into their conception of reality, and a spaceship sighting would be no different.
I do think that the Pentagon would get a significant increase in their budget. However, I think that NASA would have a fight on their hands getting more money because the number of people who secretly fear the idea of interacting with a more technologically advanced race would overtly show their fear, and want to pull a blanket over the entire planet.
Actually, there are two passages/sections of the KJV that some say strongly hint at the existence of otherworldly life. John 14:2 (“In my Father’s house there are many mansions …”) and Ezekiel 1, describing his vision of a wheel and otherworldly creatures. Of course other passages directly contradict that, but contradictions abound in that particular book anyway, so its no big whoop.
300 years? There are people who deny that planes crashed into buildings on 9/11 NOW, despite it being just about the most well-documented large scale terror attack ever. Forget sciencey things like “sensor readings” and laws of physics; those get hand-waved away in light of statements that “Footage can be faked, therefore it WAS faked! All of it! All those people with the iPhones faked their video as they streamed it in real time! All 20 million eyewitnesses were paid by the government to lie! It’s a big conspiracy!”
Given the concept that this thing would be hovering over a non-American city, I think in the moment, a lot of people would treat it as a big deal, NASA would get a temporary bump in budget, and a lot of people would change the channel and watch the Kardashians’ latest bullshit show. Eventually, if nothing further really did appear from outer space, it would be a footnote history mystery on the order of the Tungunska event.
Tell me about your abduction experiences. I’m interested in hearing about them.
The Powers That Be would probably destroy it in order to prevent its existence from being known. If anything otherwordly did indeed crash-land in Roswell, it’s either been destroyed or crated away in that big warehouse of top-secret stuff we see at the end of* Raiders of the Lost Ark.*
Did you read the OP? Millions of people with camera phones, plus local news stations and within hours, global news stations all with hours and hours of footage of the craft. Plus it hovering over a major city, for an extended period of time.
No government on Earth could “cover it up”. It’s known. Globally, and undisputedly (within reason. There are always idiots and worse who would decry it as a hoax, like today’s “Truthers” and “Birthers”) but in general it’s an unquestionable fact, as described in the OP.
I would so like to believe in Alien abductions but, having had over 40 years of studying it I have come to the conclusion that it has no basis in reality. And I say this for three reasons: 1) It is extremely unlikely (one scientist put it as likely as two humans having identical fingerprints) that the air on the Alien planet is anywhere near ours 2) The crossover of viruses and germs (they are much more likely to have erradicated harmful viruses - like we have with the polio virus - so they would surely not risk their health by possible contamination from us) 3) we hear of telepathic messages from the Alien entities, surprisingly always in English! So who is doing the translation? Or have the Aliens thoughtfully learned our language before arrival?! And we must remember there has never ever been one shred of proof of an abduction. Nothing whatsoever. Just hearsay. No DNA from the Aliens, craft or clothes, absolutely nothing. Mind you, saying that, I still have an open mind and am well up for other thoughts on my three reasons. I can’t be the only one who has these doubts…
One thing’s for sure. I would start a tinfoil hat manufacturing plant and end up with more money than god.
To paraphrase Terry Pratchett, given governments’ track record for bumbling incompetence in every other area, it’s amazing how they are credited with such efficiency when it comes to organising conspiracies.