ALIENS
EL SEGUNDO, CA—A few months ago I spoke with an engineer from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, and he told me about his most recent alien encounter. His name is Dr. Bob Jones, and you can see a picture of him here. He was giving a presentation to a crowded room of military and civilians who were new to LA Air Force Base. His twenty or so minutes were part of a larger program called “Space Enterprise” designed to acquaint new hires at the Space and Missile Systems Center (where I now work) with the space industry and its key players.
Space is a huge business. From the massive government contractors that build the satellites and software to run them (Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon) to the new kids on the block like SpaceX and Blue Origin who are revolutionizing the acquisition process. There is a virtual rolodex of government alphabet organizations, both military and intelligence, that use those services to spy and make war (NSA, CIA, FBI, Air Force, Army, Navy, the list goes on…). Then there are the scientists and engineers like NASA and JPL who are building telescopes to reveal the secrets of the cosmos and working on how to get humans to Mars.
What made Dr. Jones’s comments so interesting in this context is that, as a representative of NASA, they were so freely given. All it took was me to drop my ego, raise my hand and ask, “What do you think about aliens?”
Now a lot of people in the room laughed at this, but he answered anyhow. He dove headfirst into the story of JPL’s test launch in the desert of the American Southwest about 4 years ago. He said that when this new rocket was in mid-flight and still within eyeshot, a disc-shaped craft materialized in thin air, matching the rocket’s speed and trajectory, and shot a beam of white light into it.
Everyone on the ground could see this thing, but it wasn’t showing up on radar. They called their bosses who called their bosses’ bosses, but nobody knew what this thing was. After several tense and bewildering minutes, as suddenly as it came, the UFO shot off and up into the atmosphere, leaving this rocket quite literally in the dust.
“Whoosh,” Dr. Jones said, his eyes gleaming in the memory as he motioned with his arm toward the sky.
Where the story gets more interesting is what happened in the minutes following this. Dr. Jones just so happened to also be the designated POC (point of contact) for UFO encounters in his unit. Yes, you read that right: JPL missions go through the trouble of assigning a person to handle these things when they come up because–spoiler alert–they do come up.
When Dr. Jones returned to the trailer housing the equipment that was recording hard copies of the launch, all the discs had been removed. This happened in the span of about 5 minutes after the craft disappeared. Gone was the evidence, but a truth remained.
There seems to be a secret about space that’s hiding in plain sight. Those who lose sleep at night over compelling documentaries like Sirius or Thrive know this well. The secret and the truth is this: aliens exist. Just look at this tiny being that was found in the Atacama desert in Chile a few years ago. Tested by geneticists at Harvard and confirmed to be a kind of human, it has 10 ribs and lived between 6 and 8 years.
Aliens might be closely related to, or in fact other versions of, us humans. Aliens might come from other planets or other dimensions. There’s so much we don’t know and can’t understand. But we’re starting to ask the questions. And it helps when guys like Dr. Jones give the answers.