[wolfen]

In his post-NASA career, Cooper became known as an outspoken believer in UFOs and charged that the government was covering up its knowledge of extraterrestrial activity.

"I believe that these extraterrestrial vehicles and their crews are visiting this planet from other planets, which obviously are a little more technically advanced than we are here on Earth," he told a United Nations panel in 1985.

"I feel that we need to have a top-level, coordinated program to scientifically collect and analyze data from all over the Earth concerning any type of encounter, and to determine how best to interface with these visitors in a friendly fashion."

He added, "For many years I have lived with a secret, in a secrecy imposed on all specialists and astronauts. I can now reveal that every day, in the USA, our radar instruments capture objects of form and composition unknown to us."

[turtle777]

discuss !

-t

[MacNStein]

or had "his cheese slid off his cracker"™?

[djohnson]

Either he knows something or he doesn't... I do know that Space Shuttle images were screened before they were broadcast on earth, same with the ISS. I wonder if the x prize cup people are allowed to take pictures?

[CD Hanks]

Originally posted by djohnson:
Either he knows something or he doesn't... I do know that Space Shuttle images were screened before they were broadcast on earth, same with the ISS. I wonder if the x prize cup people are allowed to take pictures?

This brings up a VERY VERY interesting point.

NASA doesn't talk about this much, and I believe they have all employees sign NDAs regarding this, but there are scores of photos that aren't released or retouched that have all sorts of strange anomalies in them. Even more interesting, are the recollections that astronauts have regarding what they see when they're in orbit.

If anyone here ever has the chance to buy a current or former astronaut of any space agency a beer (or ten), do so, and don't forget a word they say.

Now, with the advent of comercial space flight, I think a lot of this is going to come to light fairly rapidly...get ready, the outlook is for an bumpy ride...

[djohnson]

Originally posted by CD Hanks:
This brings up a VERY VERY interesting point.

NASA doesn't talk about this much, and I believe they have all employees sign NDAs regarding this, but there are scores of photos that aren't released or retouched that have all sorts of strange anomalies in them. Even more interesting, are the recollections that astronauts have regarding what they see when they're in orbit.

If anyone here ever has the chance to buy a current or former astronaut of any space agency a beer (or ten), do so, and don't forget a word they say.

Now, with the advent of comercial space flight, I think a lot of this is going to come to light fairly rapidly...get ready, the outlook is for an bumpy ride...

Ahh but what could it be? I seriously doubt that there are aliens flying around in space... but who knows. If God wanted to create other people, so be it...

[CD Hanks]

Originally posted by djohnson:
Ahh but what could it be? I seriously doubt that there are aliens flying around in space... but who knows. If God wanted to create other people, so be it...

Heh, it would be funny if at some point we make contact with another intelligent, reasonable species, and they say "God?" or (if they are anything like us) "God? HHAHAHAHA, you guys are so full of ****...HAHAAAHA"

[dcmacdaddy]

Originally posted by CD Hanks:
This brings up a VERY VERY interesting point.

NASA doesn't talk about this much, and I believe they have all employees sign NDAs regarding this, but there are scores of photos that aren't released or retouched that have all sorts of strange anomalies in them. Even more interesting, are the recollections that astronauts have regarding what they see when they're in orbit.

If anyone here ever has the chance to buy a current or former astronaut of any space agency a beer (or ten), do so, and don't forget a word they say.

Now, with the advent of comercial space flight, I think a lot of this is going to come to light fairly rapidly...get ready, the outlook is for an bumpy ride...

What about the whole secret-poison-capsule-when-you-are-lost/trapped-in-space bit I have heard and read about numerous times? [I]That/I] would be a serious NDA to have to sign.

[olePigeon]

I have a hard time believing that aliens with technology advanced enough to travel billions of miles, suddenly lose it due to air turbulence.

[Twilly Spree]

Originally posted by olePigeon:
I have a hard time believing that aliens with technology advanced enough to travel billions of miles, suddenly lose it due to air turbulence.

Maybe they screwed up some metric vs imperial measurements..

No wait..

[wolfen]

Originally posted by olePigeon:
I have a hard time believing that aliens with technology advanced enough to travel billions of miles, suddenly lose it due to air turbulence.

"lose it" ? What you mean?

[CD Hanks]

Originally posted by dcmacdaddy:
What about the whole secret-poison-capsule-when-you-are-lost/trapped-in-space bit I have heard and read about numerous times? [I]That/I] would be a serious NDA to have to sign.

I'm not sure if NASA still issues them to current astronauts on SS flights, but back in the Apollo lunar missions, the crews were all issues cyanide tablets.

Originally posted by olePigeon:
I have a hard time believing that aliens with technology advanced enough to travel billions of miles, suddenly lose it due to air turbulence.

Unless of course they were meaning to.

Originally posted by wolfen:
"lose it" ? What you mean?

He's referring to various crash sites (Roswell, etc).

[MilkmanDan]

By 'lose it' you mean 'shot down'? Right?

I bet there are ETs posting on MacNN... right... now...

[Apple Pro Underwear]

aliens think different?!?

whatever, i believe aliens exist(ed) — but i don't know if they have been inside our solar system

[phoenixboy70]

if there is "life" on other planets in the universe, i HIGHLY doubt it will have evolved the same way we did (the math on this is fairly simple if you factor in all the evolutionary steps it took to get us where we are now).

what i do think is far more possible though, is time travel.

imagine this scenario: human beings in 200 or 2000 years will have found a way to breach the space-time continuum, and then, because the earth has essentially become uninhabitable, - go to different planets in the universe, populate them, and a couple of thousand years later decide to "fly" back in time (to now), and make us "believe" they're aliens....

hmmm...ok, back to work. *g*

[acadian]

Sagan said it best when he stated that the laws of physics make the logistics of embarking on interstellar travel so daunting that it is much more feasible for an advanced civilization to make some sort of radio communication with us first. Whether signals of this nature have been intercepted by the government(s) is up for debate, though I personally think it is quite likely they already have recieved communication in one form or another (most likely algebraic).

[wolfen]

The universe is billions of years old. They likely had a big head start.

Imagine mankind playiing with technology for another million years. Think we might be able to travel 500 light years if we hade a million years to plan for it? I'm thinking yes. If so, why couldn't some other civilization with a million year head start already be doing that?

[phoenixboy70]

Originally posted by wolfen:
If so, why couldn't some other civilization with a million year head start already be doing that?

because it takes a "unique set of coincidences" for a "lifeform" to even want to do that. time really isn't a factor here. it's a matter of various evolutionary steps either taking place or not. there isn't a single cell in our body that doesn't (or hasn't at one time) served an evolutionary purpose.

[turtle777]

Originally posted by CD Hanks:
This brings up a VERY VERY interesting point.

NASA doesn't talk about this much, and I believe they have all employees sign NDAs regarding this, but there are scores of photos that aren't released or retouched that have all sorts of strange anomalies in them. Even more interesting, are the recollections that astronauts have regarding what they see when they're in orbit.

If anyone here ever has the chance to buy a current or former astronaut of any space agency a beer (or ten), do so, and don't forget a word they say.

Now, with the advent of comercial space flight, I think a lot of this is going to come to light fairly rapidly...get ready, the outlook is for an bumpy ride...

Are you trying to say something here ?
Our government would NEVER lie to us, right ?

-t

[Disgruntled Head of C-3PO]

Originally posted by olePigeon:
I have a hard time believing that aliens with technology advanced enough to travel billions of miles, suddenly lose it due to air turbulence.

Ya and if a primitive culture was living on Mars they would find it hard to believe that a space probe that we send millions of miles from earth would smash into the planet because some rocket scientist forgot to convert from metric.

- Mars Climate Orbiter (1999) One set of engineers crunched the navigation numbers in English units while the other assumed the figures were in metric units.

http://www.spaceprojects.com/Mars/

[wolfen]

Originally posted by phoenixboy70:
because it takes a "unique set of coincidences" ...

It has yet to be proven that there is a unique set. Right now our sample size is 1 solar system. There is sentient life in that solar system.

Everything else is hypothesis. Unless you were, say, an astronaut with decades of experience and knowledge. Then you might have a bit more to go on.

[An Alias]

Everyone should believe in UFOs, how else is Jesus gonna come back?

[CD Hanks]

Originally posted by turtle777:
Are you trying to say something here ?
Our government would NEVER lie to us, right ?

-t

With some things they would, and with others they wouldn't.

Feel free to figure out which is which.

[Ozmodiar]

Originally posted by An Alias:
Everyone should believe in UFOs, how else is Elvis gonna come back?

Fixed.

Just kidding.

Back to business. Why would they need a million-year head start? What if an alien culture developed at the same speed as on our planet, only they didn't have an 800-year period of no development (the Dark Ages)? I think we'll be colonizing space in less than 800 years, and if had just skipped over the Dark Ages (or whatever is historically accurate to call them) we'd be colonizing space right now.

[turtle777]

Originally posted by Ozmodiar:
Fixed.

Just kidding.

Darn, I thought you were serious.
So how else is Elvis coming back ?

-t

[CD Hanks]

Originally posted by Ozmodiar:
Fixed.

Just kidding.

Back to business. Why would they need a million-year head start? What if an alien culture developed at the same speed as on our planet, only they didn't have an 800-year period of no development (the Dark Ages)? I think we'll be colonizing space in less than 800 years, and if had just skipped over the Dark Ages (or whatever is historically accurate to call them) we'd be colonizing space right now.

You're pretty well dead on with saying that had we as a species not had to deal with a Dark Age, we'd already be in space. But you're still presuming that an alien intelligence/species would develope at anywhere near the same pace as us. What may take us 100 years they could do in a single year, and vice versa.

Hell, we may be the slowest creatures around, while the rest of the universe works at what is considered a "normal" pace, and again, vice versa.

I've heard a few arguments regarding what the probability of an alien lifeform being bipedal, and it seems to go both ways, depending on who you talk to. To the guy who said that perhaps what we know as "grays" are simply highly evolved, time traveling humans has brought up a (as of late) much debated point. Too bad there aren't any answers known, yet.

[An Alias]

Originally posted by turtle777:
Darn, I thought you were serious.
So how else is Elvis coming back ?

-t

He'll be waiting to do his comeback tour just after Armageddon

[turtle777]

Originally posted by An Alias:
He'll be waiting to do his comeback tour just after Armageddon

Too bad.

I will have left the building by then

-t

[An Alias]

Originally posted by turtle777:
Too bad.

I will have left the building by then

-t

uh huh huh, I'm all shook up. lol