atpcliff

Astronaut Neil Armstrong

"We have no proof, But if we extrapolate, based on the best information we have available to us, we have to come to the conclusion that ... other life probably exists out there and perhaps in many places." -- Neil Armstrong, Oct 21, 1999.

Astronaut Story Musgrave

"Statistically it's a certainty there are hugely advanced civilizations, intelligences, life forms out there. I believe they're so advanced they're even doing interstellar travel. I believe it's possible they even came here. It’s logical to presume the universe must have other life in it and by virtue of association that we could be visited at some point." Astronaut Storey Musgrave.

Astronaut Gordon Cooper

"The evidence points to the fact that Roswell was a real incident and that indeed an alien craft did crash and that material was recovered from that crash site, says Mitchell, who became the sixth man on the moon in the Apollo 14 mission. Mitchell doesn't say he's seen a UFO. But he says he's met with high-ranking military officers who admitted involvement with alien technology and hardware. Cooper told a U.N. committee recently, Every day in the U.S.A. , our radar instruments capture objects of form and composition unknown to us. Cooper speculates that public skepticism toward UFOs will shift dramatically." -- Astronaut Gordon Cooper and Ed Mitchell in an interview.

Cosmonaut Victor Afanasyev

"It followed us during half of our orbit. We observed it on the light side, and when we entered the shadow side, it disappeared completely. It was an engineered structure, made from some type of metal, approximately 40 meters long with inner hulls. The object was narrow here and wider here, and inside there were openings. Some places had projections like small wings. The object stayed very close to us. We photographed it, and our photos showed it to be 23 to 28 meters away.

Many cosmonauts have seen phenomena which are far beyond the experiences of earthmen. For ten years I never spoke on such things. The encounter you asked me about happened on May 5, 1981, at about 6 PM, during the Saljut Mission. At that time we were over the area of South Africa, moving towards the area of the Indian ocean. I just made some gymnastic exercises, when I saw in front of me, through a porthole, an object which I could not explain. It is impossible to determine distances in Space. A small object can appear large and far away and the other way around. Sometimes a cloud of dust appears like a large object. Anyway, I saw this object and then something happened I could not explain, something impossible according to the laws of Physics. The object had this shape, elliptical, and flew with us. From a frontal view it looked like it would rotate in flight direction.

It only flew straight, but then a kind of explosion happened, very beautiful to watch, of golden light. This was the first part. Then, one or two seconds later, a second explosion followed somewhere else and two spheres appeared, golden and very beautiful.

After this explosion I just saw white smoke, then a cloud-like sphere. Before we entered the darkness, we flew through the terminator, the twilight-zone between day and night. We flew eastwards, and when we entered the darkness of the Earth shadow, I could not see them any longer. The two spheres never returned." Cosmonaut Victor Afanasyev commenting on a UFO sighting that occurred while en route to the Solyut 6 space station in April of 1979.

Astronaut Scott Carpenter

"At no time, when the astronauts were in space were they alone: there was a constant surveillance by UFOs." Astronaut Scott Carpenter photographed a UFO while in orbit on May 24, 1962. NASA still has not released the photograph.

Astronaut Eugene Cernan

"I've been asked about UFOs and I've said publicly I thought they were somebody else, some other civilization." Commander Eugene Cernan, Commanded the Apollo 17 Mission-The quote is from a 1973 article in the Los Angeles Times.

Astronaut Gordon Cooper

"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. 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.... 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. And there are thousands of witness reports and a quantity of documents to prove this, but nobody wants to make them public.-Colonel L. Gordon Cooper, Mercury and Gemini Astronaut, in an address to the UN in 1985 after announcing that he had seen and chased UFOs over Germany in the 1950s. Cooper also reported a greenish object, which passed by his capsule going east to west (opposite normal man-made orbits) while in orbit in May of 1963. The object was tracked by ground-based equipment in Perth, Australia. The press was told it could not question Col. Cooper on this aspect of the mission. I know other astronauts share my feelings.... And we know the government is sitting on hard evidence of UFOs." Col. Gordon Cooper, January 14, 1997.

"The U.S. Government hasn't maintained secrecy regarding UFOs It's been leaking out all over the place. But the way it's been handled is by denial, by denying the truth of the documents that have leaked. By attempting to show them as fraudulent, as bogus of some sort. There has been a very large disinformation and misinformation effort around this whole area. And one must wonder, how better to hide something out in the open than just to say, 'It isn't there. You're deceiving yourself if you think this is true.' And yet, there it is right in front of you. So it's a disinformation effort that's concerning here, not the fact that they have kept the secret. They haven't kept it. It's been getting out into the public for fifty years or more."Dr. Edgar Mitchell, from the same interview."

Astronaut James McDivitt

"At one stage we even thought it might be necessary to take evasive action to avoid a collision.; Astronaut James McDivitt commenting on an orbital encounter he and Ed White had with a ;weird object with arm-like extensions which approached their capsule. Later in the flight they saw two similar objects over the Caribbean." Astronaut James McDivitt

Astronaut Donald Slayton

"I was testing a P-51 fighter in Minneapolis when I spotted this object. I was at about 10,000 feet on a nice, bright, sunny afternoon. I thought the object was a kite, then I realized that no kite is gonna fly that high. As I got closer it looked like a weather balloon, gray and about three feet in diameter. But as soon as I got behind the darn thing it didn't look like a balloon anymore. It looked like a saucer, a disk. About the same time, I realized that it was suddenly going way from me-and there I was, running at about 300 miles per hour. I tracked it for a little way, and then all of a sudden the xxxx thing just took off. It pulled about a 45 degree climbing turn and accelerated and just flat disappeared." Donald Slayton, Mercury astronaut, in a 1951 interview."

Astronaut Brian O'Leary

"We have contact with alien cultures." Astronaut Dr. Brian O'leary

11Fan

On this subject, John Glenn went into great detail during a Radio Interview about unidentified objects he saw in space but there was a technical glitch and the recordings were never made public.

I think is was on KACL, Seattle, about ten or so years ago.

Transcript:

"Back in those glory days, I was very uncomfortable when they asked us to say things we didn't want to say and deny other things. Some people asked, you know, were you alone out there? We never gave the real answer, and yet we see things out there, strange things, but we know what we saw out there. And we couldn't really say anything. The bosses were really afraid of this, they were afraid of the War of the Worlds type stuff, and about panic in the streets. So we had to keep quiet. And now we only see these things in our nightmares or maybe in the movies, and some of them are pretty close to being the truth."



http://www.enterprisemission.com/glenn.htm


I'm listening.

LifeNtheFstLne

The code name for the spottings during NASA missions is 'Santa.' Numerous audio and text transcripts make reference to them.

rickair7777

Statistically, the odds are exceedingly high that they are out there somewhere, almost to the point of certainty.

But the odds that they are HERE, have ever been, or have the technology to come here are very, very, very low.

UFO's are just that...unidentified objects. They are not space aliens.

jungle

Just remember, the aliens aren't in the machines, they are the machines.

Winged Wheeler

Frank Drake, an astronomer from the 1960s, attempted to quantify these odds. The Drake equation is:

N = N* fp ne fl fi fc fL

or, in English

(the number of stars)X(thr fraction of these with planets)X(the fraction of these planets that can sustain life)X....

You can read the whole thing here:

SETI: The Drake Equation

It even has a calculator so you can run the numbers yourself. It is an interesting exercise, but limited in scientific heft as all the values except the first one are guesses. If you limit the calculation to one galaxy the number of stars (the first value) should be pretty close--plus or minus one order of magnitude. The product (the odds that they are out there) can be exceptionally high, or exceptionally low, depending on the other values you put in.

WW

tomgoodman

Oh, Great. More of our flying outsourced to aliens with Shiny Saucer Syndrome.

rickair7777

We know enough about our galaxy to have a good idea of how many sun-like stars are out there.

Safe to assume good odds that such stars have planets in the habitable range, and the newest space telescopes are actually reinforcing this premise on a daily basis.

So the only real variables becomes:

1. How likely is life to occur given the correct environment? My guess: very likely.

2. How likely is is such life to become intelligent? This one is not so easy to guess. But even a very low number produces positive end results due to the vast number of stars out there.

This is all very realistic and does not account for exotic biology which might thrive outside of the liquid-water temperature range.

But the laws of physics are stacked very, very steeply against convenient interstellar travel. I think they may be out there somewhere, but I'm pretty darn sure they've never been HERE...

Planespotta

this message is too short

Dubes

YouTube - Neil Tyson talks about UFOs and the argument from ignorance.

Until an astronaut steps forward with tangible, physical evidence to support those claims, their stories will be treated as arguments from ignorance.

Yes, the probability is there, but sometimes that just isn't enough for everyone else.