Image (Credit): NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and New York Times columnist Ross Douthat speaking on the Interesting Times program. (New York Times)
New York Times columnist Ross Douthat sat down with NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman recently to discuss the future of NASA and more. You can listen to the interview, titled ‘The New Space Race,” via the New York Times‘ Interesting Times podcast or watch it on YouTube.
I was a little skeptical about what I would learn from NASA’s new administrator, a billionaire space tourist until recently, but Jared Isaacman was well spoken during the interview. He seemed both candid with his answers as well as well comfortable with everything Ross tossed his way. His only stumble in my opinion was when he was trying to cover for the proposed draconian cuts to NASA by the White House in 2025. Fortunately, Congress saved the agency and his butt, though you would not know that from his answer.
I particularly liked his openness about his own space travels as well as the return mission to the Moon. In terms of himself, he compared his own gravity-free experience in space as the equivalent of being an upside down chipmunk. He also did not appear overwhelmed by his privileged view of the Earth from low Earth orbit. He said the high-definition images from the International Space Station (ISS) over the years has given everyone a great view of the Earth.
As far as establishing an early settlement on the Moon, he did not try to oversell it. He stated:
For the first maybe, I don’t know, 10 years, it’s going to look like a pretty cool futuristic junkyard with lots of landers and rovers around.
Mr. Isaacman also restated his critique of NASA’s handing of the Boeing Starliner mission to the ISS, did not exaggerate the profits to be made in space at the moment, expressed his opinions on intelligent life elsewhere as well as the public’s interest in UFOs, and stated he expected a manned mission to land on Mars within about 10 years.
Check it out for yourself if you want to learn a little more about the man running NASA. The interview runs for about an hour.
Not to be outdone by former president Obama, who let it slip that he believes in UFOs, President Trump is now promising to release all of those hidden UFO files. Of course, this is likely just another distraction from the Epstein files, which are currently causing the defenestration of top political and corporate officials.
Someone may want to tell the president that the federal government is already releasing this type of UFO, or should I say Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), information for years. The office doing this work is called the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office.
If this UFO release is anything like the release of the Epstein files, it will involve years of false promises, followed by a horrendous battle with Congress over the actual release of this information to the public, and finally the slow dribble of incomplete files that only further enrage the public.
This should be a mess, just like everything in Washington these days.
You might find it comforting that more Americans believe in aliens than Bigfoot. Or maybe not.
A recent YouGov poll found some interesting facts about Americans when it comes to aliens, including:
56% of Americans believe aliens definitely or probably exist;
47% of Americans believe aliens have definitely or probably visited Earth at some point.;
29% of Americans an alien visit would have a negative effect on human civilization (see below);
21% of Americans have seen something they thought was a UFO; and
Only 13% of Americans think the government would tell the public if it had evidence supporting the existence UFOs.
These negative feeling towards both aliens and the government seem to be reflected in most of the recent television series and movies. The new TV series Alien: Earth may be the most representative of this feeling, where the corporate tech geeks are the government and also believe they can control alien species. As with all things Alien, the mess is spectacular.
If you have questions about UFOs, now fashionable called Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) to presumably add some seriousness and move it away from the kooky crowd, you might want to check out the upcoming film The Age of Disclosure. It will be available on November 21 on Amazon Prime as well as at select theaters.
Here is the trailer, which might entice you. It has the draw of many entertainment thrillers, and reminds me of the endless videos on YouTube and even Netflix describing secrets only a few know. It comes across as an updated version of the search for Bigfoot and the Arch of the Covenant rolled into one.
The film description states:
The Age of Disclosure is an unprecedented and revelatory film –featuring 34 senior members of the U.S. Government, military, and intelligence community– revealing a cover-up of the existence of non-human intelligent life and a secret war to reverse engineer technology of non-human origin.
The film exposes the profound impact the situation has on the future of humanity, while providing a look behind-the-scenes with those at the forefront of the bi-partisan disclosure effort.
An explosive documentary that reveals an 80-year global cover-up of non-human intelligent life and a secret war among major nations to reverse-engineer advanced technology of non-human origin. Featuring testimony from 34 U.S. Government, military, and intelligence community insiders, the film exposes the profound stakes for the future of humanity.
One of the officials in the trailer is Senator Marco Rubio, now Secretary of State Rubio. If there is any bit of truth to all of this, we should be asking for these UAP files instead of the Epstein files.
The films creator, Dan Farah, was on Real Time with Bill Maher last week discussing the film. You can find the podcast here. Mr. Farah discusses how these non-human actors live in the sea and seem to have appeared right around the time the nuclear age started. Of course, this is also after World War II when new forms of flight and related spying was underway, but why mess up the story.
Mr. Farah also seems surprised they are seen around our military facilities, as if this would not be a prime target for any outside party, human or otherwise. He then states:
…there’s been a few events where UAP activity over nuclear weapon sites has activated the missiles in some case and then turned them off in some cases. And it’s obviously a display of power of some sort. You know, your guess is as good as mine of what the intention is, but it’s concerning.
All of this sounds pretty amazing, yet I think it is more an amazing paste job of various quotes that are then repurposed to create a more dramatic story. For that reason, it may be better for the uninitiated, or just the regular newspaper readers who do not get their news from social media, to first go through the material from the very group set up to study all of this, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, as well as various congressional hearings on this matter. Then you can make up your own mind.
Here are a few congressional hearings to get you started on your search:
We already have too many conspiracies upsetting the public and breeding mistrust of all government entities. Its time to breath and read up on this material yourself.
Science arouses a soaring sense of wonder. But so does pseudoscience. Sparse and poor popularizations of science abandon ecological niches that pseudoscience promptly fills. If it were widely understood that claims to knowledge require adequate evidence before they can be accepted, there would be no room for pseudoscience. But a kind of Gresham’s Law prevails in popular culture by which bad science drives out good.
Image (Credit): Orion’s Belt. (Davide De Martin & the ESA/ESO/NASA Photoshop FITS Liberator)
The ongoing panic related to drones it getting pretty silly. I am just glad we are not shooting down small airplanes or trying to take out a star system.
For example, Maryland’s former Governor Larry Hogan recently claimed to have “personally witnessed” drones outside his house. However, he was actually looking at Orion’s Belt.
Maybe he should check with employees at the University of Maryland’s observatory to learn about upcoming stargazing events for the public. Oh wait, the observatory is currently closed due to budget cuts.
Our Awesome Universe 