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Bigelow Aerospace Had a Secret DoD UFO Study Contract (Update)

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
December 19, 2017
Filed under
Bigelow Aerospace Had a Secret DoD UFO Study Contract (Update)

Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program, New York Times
“Contracts obtained by The Times show a congressional appropriation of just under $22 million beginning in late 2008 through 2011. The money was used for management of the program, research and assessments of the threat posed by the objects. The funding went to Mr. Bigelow’s company, Bigelow Aerospace, which hired subcontractors and solicited research for the program. Under Mr. Bigelow’s direction, the company modified buildings in Las Vegas for the storage of metal alloys and other materials that Mr. Elizondo and program contractors said had been recovered from unidentified aerial phenomena. Researchers also studied people who said they had experienced physical effects from encounters with the objects and examined them for any physiological changes. In addition, researchers spoke to military service members who had reported sightings of strange aircraft.”
https://media2.spaceref.com/news/2017/green.alien.jpg
Keith’s note: As is usually the case when a story like this appears one part or another of the BBC calls to ask me what is going on. I thought I’d invite an expert to appear on the Skype interview with me so my little green alien pal I bought at Ron Jons in Cocoa Beach made his first international Tee Vee appearance tonight to help me through the interview. Beam me up.

The government admits it studies UFOs. So about those Area 51 conspiracy theories …, Washington Post
“For decades, Americans were told that Area 51 didn’t really exist and that the U.S. government had no official interest in aliens or UFOs. Statements to the contrary, official-sounding people cautioned, were probably the musings of crackpots in tinfoil hats. Well, score one for the crackpots. The Pentagon has officially confirmed that there was, in fact, a $22 million government program to collect and analyze “anomalous aerospace threats” — government-speak for UFOs.”
On the Trail of a Secret Pentagon U.F.O. Program, NY Times
“Leslie interviewed the aerospace magnate Robert Bigelow, who also confirmed his participation, saying Americans were being held back from serious research into U.F.O.’s by “a juvenile taboo.”
Alien Hunter Reveals the Most Disturbing Part of the Pentagon’s UFO Program, Inverse
“For [Seth] Shostak, what’s “a little disturbing” about the ordeal is that Bigelow, who has collaborated with NASA despite having no scientific background, has received so much money from the project. “[Bigelow] doesn’t need more money,” he explains. “He’s a very likeable guy, but he’s been convinced all along that we’re being ‘visited.’ And it doesn’t mean [aliens are visiting us] just because a person of note thinks it’s true. The thing that’s a little disturbing about this is that it seems a lot of the money for this study went to Bob Bigelow. I think that if you really wanted to investigate this stuff, the thing to do is to give this to scientists or experts in the field that don’t have a dog in the fight.”
UFO IPO-182 – Take me to your dealer: the Pentagon UFO story, crowdfunding, and Blink-182, Boing Boing
“The New York Times has an article about “Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program.” $22 million spent on the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, there are 2 declassified released videos that the reader is left to assume is proof of alien visitors (one of the authors of the articles is promoting a UFO book at this time). It has a lot of facts the NYTimes left out like the CEO of the newly formed crowdfunded company via the CROWDFUND ACT, Tom DeLonge. If you’re wondering if it’s that Tom DeLonge, yes! DeLonge was the guitarist and co-lead vocalist of the band Blink-182. It was reported that DeLonge allegedly left Blink-182 in 2015 because of aliens and national security.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

13 responses to “Bigelow Aerospace Had a Secret DoD UFO Study Contract (Update)”

  1. ThomasLMatula says:
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    Belief in Washington in UFO’s is bipartisan. It was Democrat Senator Harry Reid that pushed for funding the research discussed here when he was the Senate Majority Leader. And it’s Hillary Clinton’s former campaign chief that believes the government is keeping secret about them.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/new

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      A little clarity here: surely the word ‘belief’ isn’t relevant?

      The Air Force, like the Navy, takes defense issues very seriously, as they should. When they detect something not understood they have a duty to examine and define it. This is pretty straightforward.

      At first I was dismayed by the NYT’s report. But it’s an important step, I think, sort of a trial ballon in the effort to remove the stigma surrounding the issue. The reader reactions, currently more than 600 letters, are generally positive, though many take issue with the secrecy, as I do.

      And thanks to the looney William Proxmire we have lost decades in this effort.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        The USAF did study it for 20 years, until the Condon committee determined there were no security risk in the 1960’s. Has anything really changed in the last 50 years? It is still just sightings, fuzzy photos and questionable radar reports.

        • mfwright says:
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          but the CGI and photoshopped images are much better! sound effects too. Actually the UFO is a great cover and distraction including Area 51. Back in the days when a 2-star general died while flying a MiG-23, there was questions why a general officer is flying “experimental” aircraft. Very few wondered what are we doing flying Soviet fighters in Nevada, no it was confirming freeze dried space aliens in Hanger 18.

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          Has anything really changed in the last 50 years?

          That’s the point, actually.

          On the issue of US seeing Them: what would we expect to see? “Them” operating in stealth mode is to be expected, meaning that any sort of images or radar returns or whatever are going to be grainy at best as presumably we are dealing with superior technology.

          I am ever mindful of just how little we know about this Universe we find ourselves inhabiting. We’ve even invented the preposterous name ‘dark energy’ or ‘dark matter’ just so we can conveniently talk about what we don’t know.

          We don’t know. We know stunningly little about the Universe. There are entire bodies of knowledge as yet unnamed and undefined.

          It seems to me that the cosmologists are right at the apex of this problem, that of attempting some sort of grand understanding of this place we live. And it stands to reason that at some point we will learn all sorts of things about it— not the least of which would be some sort of handle on gravity.

          But that’s just a start.

          Allowing that our future contains untold knowledge riches, it follows that someone out there has already done it. And it follows that current sensing will see nothing but blurry, inexplicable images.

          • fcrary says:
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            I’m not going to go quite as far as you when it comes to alien visitors. But I do agree about cosmology. I once came across a quote on the subject:

            “The history of cosmology is not the easy story of the rejection of absurd ideas in favour of what (perhaps after a little thought) is seen to be patently true, but the heroic saga of the hard-won rejection of the patently true in favour of the absurd.”
            Michael Hoskin, 1997, The Cambridge Illustrated History of Astronomy

            I’ll also note that the common attitude towards UFO reports has been an obstacle to some good science. Sprites (very short duration above-the-cloud-top lightning strikes) were observed for decades before 1989, when someone caught one on a high-speed camera. The reports were dismissed as UFO stories.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            What I always found very interesting was how their performance was just a bit better then current technology at the time. For example in the 1890’s their performances was like airships, then in the 1950’shigh performance fighters, now drones and stealth aircraft.You would think if they were really advanced their craft would be the size of insects and all but invisible. Maybe that is the next wave as there are insect size drones available now…

            https://www.roboticstomorro

            Of course it could be like the novel “Amanda” by Ernest Cline and they are really testing our hostility levels…

  2. fcrary says:
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    Since it’s come up, I’ll share the UFO I saw a few years ago. Yes, it’s real. It’s a public art or decoration thing, not the Dutch railway company’s head office being invaded by little green men. And I was told by a student that I should call it an ILO (identified, landed object.)

    https://uploads.disquscdn.c

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      Are you sure? Maybe they want you to think its art when its actually a real spaceship, like the NY Pavilion towers at the NY World’s Fair (MIB). 🙂

  3. jackalope66 says:
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    UFO stories are a great distraction.

  4. Zen Puck says:
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    If you were an Alien being,,,what in the world would you want by coming here?

  5. VoiceOfWisdomAndReason says:
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    Count me as a long time skeptic on this topic. But the one thing that caught my eye on this story was that I recognized the name of the Navy Squadron Commander who was part of the USS Nimitz incident off the SD coast. CMDR David Fravor was prominently featured in a PBS 8-Part Documentary called “Carrier” which was a behind the scenes look at the crew of the Nimitz during a 2005 deployment to the Persian Gulf (no UFOs mentioned in that show).

    Fravor was the squadron commander of VFA-41 and came off as an able commander, even headed, and caring about the safety of the aviators and sailors under his command. IOW: Not a nut case.