Arken

The article may be found here: http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/TV/0....ap/index.html

I don't know what makes me more disgusted, that they're boosting their ratings in a claim of altruism or that they're lobbying congress about this.

Radcliffe Emerson

I agree. There's a very good reason that crap is on the Science FICTION channel.

Marduk

I see no harm in investigating, people as diverse as Gerald Ford, former astronauts and Jimmy Carter have all tried to get this sort of thing done, without much luck.
Barry Goldwater tried in the 1960’s. and got the runaround, Carter tried and was told by then CIA chief George Bush that he didn’t have the clearance! He was the President for cryin out loud!

Arken

Oh come on. It's been investigated thoroughly by both government and private groups and the only ones who believe there's any validity to any of this is the UFO buffs who believed it when they started and thus went in with a bias. There has not been one single unbiased search for little green men in flying discs that came up with anything... as for the harm, remember that it's your and my taxpayer dollars going to this. Project Bluebook, the Air Force's investigation into UFOs (which turned up no results and was cancelled because it was getting too expensive) cost us all 20 million dollars in 1960s money. I shudder to think what it would cost us these days.

Nostalgic Pushhead

I don't think it should be any top priority... and I don't really believe in UFO's... but if people want to investigate it, and people want to fund people investigating it, whatever.

Edit: Misread. Congress. Yeah. I ain't paying for it.

I do have an interest in the paranormal... and all claims should be investigated... but I don't really believe in UFO's, and I doubt any government investigation will turn anything up. Because if there ARE UFO's, its secret technology, and they're not going to lift the lid on themselves.

Arken

Why should all claims be investigated? If we have investigated one million claims and we have never turned up anything, is it really important to continue investigating the claims? It seems to me that there is a point where we can safely assume that all claims are false and thus do not need to be investigated.

For example- there is still a Flat Earth Society. Really. There are still people who claim the Earth is flat. We are assured from multiple experiments, observations, etc. that it isn't so why keep trying to prove it?

Marduk

“Oh come on. It's been investigated thoroughly by both government and private groups and the only ones who believe there's any validity to any of this is the UFO buffs who believed it when they started and thus went in with a bias. There has not been one single unbiased search for little green men in flying discs that came up with anything... as for the harm, remember that it's your and my taxpayer dollars going to this. Project Bluebook, the Air Force's investigation into UFOs (which turned up no results and was cancelled because it was getting too expensive) cost us all 20 million dollars in 1960s money. I shudder to think what it would cost us these days.”


Arrrrgh! Blue Book was a joke, it was sent on a debunking mission, nothing more. Never was intended to be a serious investigation, just to pacify the public.The cases it couldn’t handle got buried. Which is why several scientists quit the project before they even started. It was biased from the get go. Dr. Hynek admitted so after he retired. (he was the guy who came up with the “many UFO’s are ‘swamp gas’ line, which he admits was a farce). Keep in mind Blue Book started ca. 1952 as Project Sign which concluded UFO’s were extraterrestrial vehicles, the Air Force made them do it over with a different conclusion or else.

Actually they wouldn’t have to spend any money at all, simply release the UFO data they amassed over the past 50 years UNEDITED. I will even allow for them to keep anything after 1970 classified if they wish, but anything from the 1940’s through 1970 is obsolete and no longer vital regarding national security.
Have you ever looked at UFO data acquired through the Freedom of Information Act? It is a joke, page after page of blackened out, censored data. Some kid keeps a collection on-line at www.blackvault.com if you want to waste some time.

Case in point Roswell: First the Airforce issues a press release saying they recovered a crashed disk, then they retract “oops. did we say a crashed disk? We meant a weather balloon” Someone in the Air Force can’t tell the difference between a bag of air and a crashed disk. Later they retract the weather balloon story and say it was a secret spy balloon . Oh that makes all the difference in the world now. OK fine, if it was a spy balloon then why are all the Roswell files still blackened out and censured? Why is anything from that long ago regarding UFO’s censured?
“damn Russians! They may have found out about our atomic bombs and stealth aircraft but they’ll have to pry any information about our 1947 spy balloon from our cold dead fingers!”

This is why the topic remains alive, the Government is at fault. On one hand they scoff and ridicule any talk of aliens and UFO’s while on the other they hoard all the data under a label of Top Secret. They deserve what they get.

Arken

marduck, I believe the military doing that is intentional. If the public can be distracted with 'are they hiding aliens?!' they can more successfully test secret aircraft. Did you know that one of the most commonly-sighted UFOs in the 1970s was a 'black triangle'? Then a few years later, the government announced that the Stealth Bomber had been developed. Hmm, wonder what that black triangle was?

Radcliffe Emerson

Any funding for something this ridiculous should come strictly from private sources, not public. We should never have to pay taxes something this idiotic.
The only UFOs out there of a space ship nature are secret projects governments are working on, not space aliens.

The Stealth bomber for example, tested at Area 51. Anyone seeing it the 1st time would think it was an alien ship.

Arken

You know... you've also got to wonder about a race of intelligent beings that are advanced enough to make multiple trips across a vast number of light years to secretly come to this planet and clandestinely study us (rather than actually making contact where they could get more reliable data), but don't understand basic camouflage when even insects with their little two-watt brains here one Earth can do it.

You'd just think they could make their spaceship look like a helicopter or something, you know?