Current UAP Debate Could Use An Injection Of Common Sense

After weeks of media speculation about the U.S. government’s potentially revelatory recent report on so-called unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) —- which your grandparents likely called flying saucers and your parents likely called UFOs (unidentified flying objects) —- the report itself was frustratingly inconclusive. 

Arguably, its most interesting admission was that “UAP clearly pose a safety of flight issue and may pose a challenge to U.S. national security.” The report primarily covered UAP incidents that occurred between 2004 and 2021 and concludes that most UAP reported probably do represent physical objects and a limited number appeared to exhibit unusual flight characteristics.

Whether these phenomena are the result of technologies wholly of this earth remains unclear, however. That’s a mystery that won’t be settled anytime soon, but here are several points to consider. 

—- Astronomers are far from experts on the UAP-UFO phenomena

Astronomers are quite adept at observing and analyzing everything from passing near-Earth objects to galaxies forming near the dawn of time. But they are no more equipped to make educated judgements about potential alien spacecraft operating within our atmosphere than proverbial pig farmers in Iowa.

Such discussions are best left to the professional aerospace community as well as atmospheric scientists. The people who actually work day-in and day-out designing and building all manner of flying vehicles —- from drones to hypersonic weaponry. And the people who have spent their lives researching earth’s meteorology and atmosphere.

Astrobiologists and astronomers are really not the right people to turn to with such questions. Yet continually, the mainstream media does just that.

—- If they are not ours and they represent some sophisticated surveillance technology from one our potential adversaries like Russia or China, then we are in bad shape.

That would mean that Russia and China are much further along than anyone could have dreamed. But given the power-hungry nature of their past and present leadership, surely, this technology would have already been used to basically subdue any nation they choose. 

—- Why the sudden interest in publicizing this phenomena?

Why release 15-year-old gun-camera footage of bizarre objects now? Especially, when through the decades the U.S. military has never had any qualms about keeping secrets. Is this sudden UAP concern merely a disinformation smokescreen to provide cover for new technologies of which even our own fighter pilots are unaware?

—- Full disclosure. I’ve never seen a UFO nor a wayward alien. 

I’d rather run across a pack of angry rattlesnakes than to ever come face to face with extraterrestrials. Consider the miserable fate of this continent’s own indigenous populations. Time and again, when primitive societies have come into contact with a civilization that is more technologically advanced, the outcome is mostly catastrophic.

—- The idea that technological civilizations a minimum of 10,000 years ahead of us could not have found a way to circumvent the laws of physics to get here in record time is unfathomable. 

We earthlings do little or nothing to research interstellar propulsion. This is a subject that I’ve covered for the past 25 years and less is being done to research advanced propulsion technologies today than a quarter century ago. This is obviously not a priority for any of the major space agencies. 

But even $500,000 to facilitate the research of refereed papers probing the possibilities of how to make a warp drive that doesn’t violate Einstein’s axiom about the speed of light would help. Give some postdoctoral researcher a $10,000 grant to take time to write a paper that would then be submitted to a refereed astrophysics and/or applied physics journal.  If someone would even donate $100,000 to generate ten such papers per year, then you would start to see real progress in out-of-the-box propulsion technologies. 

—- Don’t forget that in 1910, vaunted Harvard University astronomer William Henry Pickering declared that transatlantic airplane travel was something “wholly visionary…”. 

Thus, my advice is not to turn to the professional astronomical community for answers about whether or not aliens could visit us or whether we will eventually be able to visit the aliens.  I think both are possible, but if we want to get out beyond our own solar system, then we are going to have to start taking interstellar propulsion more seriously than we have in the last half century. 

It took six decades after NASA astronaut Alan Shepard’s first suborbital flight before the first private commercial entity was able to send its founder into sub-orbit in his own spaceship. I applaud Richard Branson for doing so, but I’m astounded that this wasn’t done in 1980. I’m continually at a loss for why humanity is so backward and unimaginative in its thinking.   

—- If interstellar travel is truly not possible, perhaps there is an advanced civilization that is already in our solar system and they originated here. 

Astrobiologists go on forever and a day about the possibility of complex life evolving in oceans underneath the frozen surfaces of Europa and Enceladus. If such putative life evolved and became truly intelligent and technological, then perhaps they found a way to dig out of their frigid home oceans and develop a civilization that could build spacecraft. Admittedly, this sounds far-fetched. But, if so, perhaps they’ve been visiting earth for thousands of years, even though they still call these moons of Saturn and Jupiter home. 

—- We also need to drop the assumption that a longlived civilization will inherently be altruistic. 

Although our presence is likely known to anyone with half a brain within thirty light years of Earth, I’ve never been one to advocate making active contact via radio signals intentionally sent into the cosmos. The idea that our relatively primitive hundred-year-old technological society would somehow benefit from an encounter with sentient creatures from parts unknown is shocking and misguided. For the same reason, i would not thrash around like some sort of maniac in shark-infested waters. 

As for me, I personally don’t have a dog in this hunt. To paraphrase Jill Tarter of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute who I first interviewed three decades ago, if our civilization ends up being the only technology-bearing species in the cosmos, that’s a philosophically humbling result. 

But I don’t expect us to be the only spacefaring civilization in the cosmos. The views from any number of remote mountaintops in northern Chile are simply too thick with stars to bet against astrophysics and evolution.