Timothy Good writes that HAM radio operators receiving the VHF signals
directly picked up the following message which was screened by NASA
from
the public.
Mission Control: What's there? Mission Control calling Apollo 11.
Apollo 11: These
babies are huge, sir ... enormous....Oh,
God, you wouldn't believe it! I'm telling you there
are other space craft out there... lined up on the
far side of the crater edge... they're on the moon
watching us.
Good uses "SAGA UFO SPECIAL #3" as a source for this quote. The following
is an excerpt from the transcript of the Apollo 11 technical debriefing.
Aldrin: The first unusual thing that we
saw I guess was one day out
or something pretty close to the moon. It had a sizeable
dimension to it, so we put the monocular on it.
Collins How'd we see this thing? Did we
just look out the window
and there it was.
Aldrin Yes, and we weren't sure but
what it might be the S-IVB. We
called the ground and were told the S-IVB was 6,000 miles
away. We had a problem with the high gain about this time,
didn't we?
Collins There was something. We felt a bump
or maybe I just imagined
it.
Armstrong He was wondering whether the MESA had come off.
Collins I don't guess we felt anything.
Aldrin Of course, we were seeing all
sorts of little objects going
by at the various dumps and then we happened to see this one
brighter object going by. We couldn't think of anything else
it could be other than the S-IVB. We looked at it through the
monocular and it seemed to have a bit of an L shape to it.
Armstrong Like an open suitcase.
Aldrin We were in PTC at the time
so each of us had a chance to take
a look at this and it certainly seemed to be within our
vicinity and of a very sizeable dimension.
Armstrong We should say it was right at the limit of
the resolution of
the eye. It was very difficult to tell what shape it was.
And there was no way to tell the size without knowing the
range or the range without knowing the size.
Aldrin So then I got down in the LEM
and started looking for it in
the optics. We were grossly misled because with the sextant
off focus what we saw appeared to be a cylinder.
Armstrong Or really two rings.
Aldrin Yes.
Armstrong Two rings. Two connected rings.
Aldrin Yes.
Collins No, it looked like a hollow cylinder
to me. It didn't look
like two connected rings. You could see this thing tumbling
and, when it came around end-on, you could look right down
in it's guts. It was a hollow cylinder. But then you could
change the focus on the sextant and it would be replaced by
this open book shape. It was really weird.
Aldrin I guess there's not too much
more to say about it other than
it wasn't a cylinder.
Collins It was during the period when we
thought it was a cylinder
that we inquired about the S-IVB and we'd almost convinced
ourselves that's what it had to be. But we don't have any
more conclusions than that really. The fact that we didn't
see it much past this one period --- we really don't have
a conclusion as to what it might have been, how big it was,
or how far away it was. It was something that wasn't part of
the urine dump, we're pretty sure of that.
In his book "RETURN TO EARTH" Colonel Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. writes
the
following on pages 223-224. I quote directly.
In the middle of one evening, Houston time, I found myself idly staring
out the window of the Columbia and saw something that looked a bit
unusual. It appeared brighter than any star and not quite the pinpoints
of light that stars are. I pointed this out to Mike and Neil, and
the
three of us were beset with curiosity. With the help of the monocular
we
guessed that whatever it was, it was only a hundred or so miles
away.
Looking at it through our sextant we found it occasionaly formed
a
cylinder, but when the sextant's focus was adjusted it had a sort
of
illuminated "L" look to it. It had a shape of some sort -- we all
agreed
on that -- but exactly what it was we couldnt pin down. We asked
Houston
some casual questions: "How far away is the Saturn third stage?"
The
response was in the vicinity of six thousand miles. That wasn't
it.
It could possibly have been one of the panels of the Saturn third
stage
which fly off to expose the LM and cannot be traced from earth.
We could
see it for about forty-five seconds at a time as the ship rotated,
and we
watched it on and off for about an hour. We debated whether or not
to
tell the ground we had spotted something, and decided against it.
Our
reason was simple: The UFO people would descend on the message in
hordes,
setting off another rash of UFO spottings back on earth. We concluded
it
was most likely on of the panels. Its course appeared in no way
to
conflict with ours, and it presented no danger. We dropped the matter
there.
In his book "Carrying The Fire" astronaut Michael Collins the command
module pilot makes no mention of this incident.
Apollo 12 November 14, 1969 (Conrad, Gordon, Bean)
On day out on the earth moon leg of the trip the astronauts radioed
Mission Control that two flashing lights had appeared off the bow
. of
their capsule. After rejecting the possibility that the objects
could be
spinning pieces of the Apollo booster rocket the capcom suggested
that
they could be the jettisoned protective panels. One of the astronauts
replied " Gee that could be, but one of those lights just shot out
of
here at tremendous speed ".
James Oberg writes concerning this the following explaination which
certainly sounds reasonable.
Take the Apollo 12 case. In this famous incident the initial reports
are
indeed true, as the astronauts jokingly asked the earth about some
flashing lights. When told that they were probably tumbling pieces
of
space debris (which do in fact accompany the Apollo in the vacuum
of
space on the way to the moon), the crew accepted this and began
discussing how far away they would be. When asked how fast the pieces
had
broken off the rocket the previous day, the astronauts replied that
when
they had turned their Apollo around some pieces were flying off
at a very
fast velocity. That had been the day before! The flashing lights
out the
window didn't go anywhere but gradually faded out as the day went
by.
What happened was that UFO researchers ( I use the term loosely)
had
simply misunderstood the space jargon and had completely missed
the gist
of the conversation from Apollo, and had then (probably quite honestly,
with good intentions and closed minds) reworded the phrases to make
them
"clearer" to the general public. In fact they had totally altered
the
meaning.
In this incident it should be trivial to get to the root of the matter.
All we need is the tape of the actual conversation or the true unaltered
transcript. We could then see if Olberg is right on the money or
not.
Apollo 13 May 1969 (Thomas P. Stafford, John W. Young,
Eugene E.
Cernan)
There has been a lot of speculation that the ill fated Apollo 13
Mission
was carrying a small nuclear explosive device for the purpose of
seismic
testing of the moon. The story goes that the aliens fearing damage
to
their lunar bases caused the accident that ultimately caused the
aborting
of the mission.
Apollo 17 December 7-19, 1972 (Cernan, Evans, Schmitt)
Reported to have seen UFO's near earth, on route and around the moon.
SPACE SHUTTLE DISCOVERY March 1989
03/14/89 6:42 EST
"Uh Houston, this is Discovery. We still have the alien spacecraft
under
(observance)????" (note last word difficult to make out on
tape)
The previous statement was recorded by Baltimore resident Donald
Ratsch
(MUFON member) from a HAM radio rebroadcast between the space shuttle
Discovery and Houston ground control. The HAM broadcast was direct
from
the shuttle without going through the delayed filter used on the
officail
NASA public feed. The NASA select audio channel did not contain
this one
way broadcast from the shuttle to ground control. The HAM station
making
the rebroadcast was WA3NAN Goddard Amatuer Radio Club in Greenbelt,
MD
transmitting on 147.450 MHZ. Preliminary analysis shows that the
voice
could be either Michael Coats (Commander) or John E. Blaha (pilot).
The
recording was sent for further expert voice analysis the results
of which
are unknown at this time to the author.
Gordon Cooper
Gordon Cooper was one of the best trained US astronauts having flown
on
Mercury 9 and Gemini 5. Yet he was not selected to fly an Apollo
mission.
It is speculated that Cooper did not play the game correctly when
it
comes to the UFO situation. It is interesting that Cooper has developed
an interest in ancient civilizations and in fact participated in
an
expedition to South American that discovered the remnants of a very
old
and advanced civilization dating back over 5000 years. One is tempted
to
ask why the sudden interest on the part of a former astronaut in
"ancient
astronaut" type endevours.
A fellow officer once said of Cooper. "We all knew where Gordon was
going
to end up in ten years. He was going to be Chairman of The Joint
Chiefs
of Staff. (what happened that he didn't?)
In July 1960 Cooper was interviewed by Yvonne S. Durfield and had
this to
say about UFO's. "I don't take UFO's seriously. I would be very
skeptical." In March 1978 Cooper stated to the National Enquirer
"UFO's
are definately real" It is interesting that his two flights into
space
occurred between the dates of the two interviews. Cooper went on
to make
a written statement to the United Nations supporting Grenada's Prime
Minister Eric Gairy proposal that the UN establish a UFO agency.(1979?)
In his book MJ12 & THE RIDDLE OF HANGER 18 Beckley quotes Cooper
as
saying "UFO's are, I believe, very likely travellers from some other
planet; visitors from some other world that is hundreds of thousands
of
years more advanced than we are, and they certainly have a far more
efficient sytem of propulsion than we have."
During an interview on the Merv Griffin Show, Merv asked the following
of
Gordon Cooper. "There is a story going around, Gordon, that a spaceship
did land in middle America and there were occupants, and members
of our
government were able to keep one of the occupants alive for some
period
of time. They've seen the metal of the aircraft and know what the
people
look like -- is that a credible story? To everyones surprise Cooper
answers with a straight face "I think it's fairly credible. I would
like
to see the time when all qualified people could really work together
to
properly investigate these stories and either refute or prove them."
Later the next morning Lee Spiegel a UFO researcher and aquaintance
of
Cooper talked to Cooper on the phone. During this conversation Cooper
admitted that he could have revealed further information on the
Merv
Griffin Show but did not because he did not want to raise too many
official eyebrows.
Why Did it End So Quicky ?
The solar system held no limits, we were bound for the stars. The
plaque
read "HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH SET FOOT UPON THE MOON ......
WE
CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND" We said that this was "One small
step for
a man....one giant leap for mankind" Then shortly thereafter it
all came
to a screeching halt. What had been a burning ambition was now just
a
smoldering ember. Had we shot the whole wad on one quick try. Why
did not
only the US but also the Soviet Union cancel its ambitious moon
plans.
Why did both nations suddenly limit themselves to relatively low
orbit
missions. Did Apollo find something totally unexpected out there
that
made us change our grand plans ?
SOURCES
Aldrin, Edwin RETURN TO EARTH,
Random House, 1973
Beckley, Timothy MJ-12 AND THE RIDDLE OF HAMGER
18,Inner Light, 1989
Chatelaine, Maurice OUR ANCESTORS CAME FROM OUTER SPACE, Dell, 1979
Collins, Michael CARRYING THE FIRE, Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 1974
Edward's, Frank FLYING SAUCERS SERIOUS BUSINESS,
Bantam Books, 1966
Emenegger, Robert UFO'S PAST PRESENT & FUTURE, Ballantine
Books, 1974
Leonard, George SOMEBODY ELSE IS ON THE
MOON, Pocket Books, 1977
Steckling, Fred WE DISCOVERED ALIEN BASES
ON THE MOON,G.A.F, 1989
Good,Timothy ABOVE TOP
SECRET, Sidgwick & Jackson Limited, 1987
Moore, William THE ROSWELL INCIDENT,
Berkley Books, 1980
Story, Ronald D. THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF UFO'S, Doubleday,
1979
MUFON UFO JOURNAL #252 April 1989
MUFON UFO JOURNAL #256 August 1989
SAGA UFO SPECIAL #3
TRUE FS & UFO QUARTERLY #6 Summer 1977
IDEALS UFO MAGAZINE #4 December 1978
IDEALS UFO MAGAZINE #6 June 1979
