NASA Moonwalker claims alien cover-up

[n122vu]

It seems everyone wants to jump on the "there has been a cover-up and I was involved" bandwagon.

From news.com.au:
FORMER NASA astronaut and moon-walker Dr Edgar Mitchell - a veteran of the Apollo 14 mission - has stunningly claimed aliens exist.


Thoughts?

 

[Kyle]

Edgar Mitchell has always been saying this kind of Crazy stuff.

 

[bujin]

Indeed.

Lots of respect for Edgar Mitchell for his achievements on Apollo 14, but he does have some very, very strange ideas!

Surely as a man with a postgraduate science degree, he should know that anecdotal evidence is pretty much worthless, and the only thing that could convince anyone is something solid and tangible!

 

[ar81]

I saw a UFO last year that challenges what I have learned about aerodynamics and physics. I can't tell if it was alien or not. I just know that I saw something that can't be explained using our conventional knowledge.

I used to be very skeptic about UFOs until I saw one.
But it does not imply that I will believe in fantasy tales.
I will believe when I see. I will believe they can go to alien planets when they take me there and can have evidence that I was there.

 

[Missioncmdr]

Ah! I was just about to post something about this. Maybe old age is starting to get to him? But seriously, are we to believe this or pass it off as the usual UFO mumbo-jumbo? Mitchell seems like one of the more crazy astronauts even before Apollo 14.

 

[joeybigO]

I thought I saw me an alien once....

Turns out it was my brother...

 

[ryan]

That's pretty far fetched saying someone like Mr Mitchell as a lunatic. He spent years doing UFO, ET stuff maybe right after his mission, some of his studies are really interested. This news was on page 2 on my paper, i cut it out and smacked it right on the my wall, im lucky enough to have some newspaper clippings my father kept of Freedom 7 launch, Friendship, Apollo 1, Apollo 11, Apollo 12, STS-1, STS- 51L and STS-107, its quiet a prestigious wall.

 

[StarLost]

Ed Mitchell is not the only astronaut who has made these claims.

Mind you, the crux of the argument is what would constitute acceptable evidence. As an apparent eye witness, this does not constitute anecdotal evidence but falls more in the line of expert witness. Considering that only ten men have stepped foot on the moon, and more than one of them has made a similar claim, this speaks more for his credibility than someone dismissing him as "lunatic".

So, I reiterate ... what would constitute acceptable evidence?

 

[spcefrk]

So, I reiterate ... what would constitute acceptable evidence?

So far every bit of "expert witness" testimony has come from people who either feel strongly there is a coverup or in extremely rare cases, that they were told to cover it up. No one in control of a situation has come forward to say "I made the call to cover it up. Here's the physical evidence. Test it."

That's the sort of minimal evidence I expect.

Only the person who made the call that "This is an alien lifeform" will have an acceptable amount of physical evidence to prove it. Only the person who made the call to cover it up has the accountability necessary to do anything about it.

Again Dr. Mitchell, ought to understand that the anecdotal evidence he presented (having met with an unnamed person who claims to have encountered aliens firsthand or been asked to cover it up) is at best secondhand information. The fact that it comes from a former Astronaut is just as much a fallacy as believing that light you saw was from an alien -- it's argument from authority not evidence. Worthless and twice as worthless is still worthless.

 

[simonpro]

He was always a little weird, to be honest I'm surprised they ever let him anywhere near an Apollo spacecraft.

 

[ryan]

Ed Mitchell is not the only astronaut who has made these claims.

Mind you, the crux of the argument is what would constitute acceptable evidence. As an apparent eye witness, this does not constitute anecdotal evidence but falls more in the line of expert witness. Considering that only ten men have stepped foot on the moon, and more than one of them has made a similar claim, this speaks more for his credibility than someone dismissing him as "lunatic".

So, I reiterate ... what would constitute acceptable evidence?

Actually 12 people have walked there including himself.

 

[bujin]

Again Dr. Mitchell, ought to understand that the anecdotal evidence he presented (having met with an unnamed person who claims to have encountered aliens firsthand or been asked to cover it up) is at best secondhand information. The fact that it comes from a former Astronaut is just as much a fallacy as believing that light you saw was from an alien -- it's argument from authority not evidence. Worthless and twice as worthless is still worthless.

Cheers, matey! Saved me a post! :lol:

 

[Moonwalker]

Well, even Buzz Aldrin often talked about that the Apollo 11 crew saw something through one of the command modules window (as well as the telescope) about three days after trans lunar injection. There was even communication between the crew and mission control Houston regarding the postion of the S-IVB booster. The crew asked Houston for the position of the S-IVB because they thought the bright thing they saw might be the booster. But it was too far away already at that time. The question what they saw remains unanswered until today.

But seriously, only because people (no matter if it's an astronaut or not) claim they saw something doesn't mean anything. It's personal beliefs and claims primarily.

UFO sightings are not unusal in manned space flight by the way. Even earlier crews before Apollo reported sightings they could not assign. The universe isB I G. There is a lot which flies through space. An object only has to consist of some special matter to shine bright and to be far away which makes it unidentifiable for us and so an UFO which is not basically related to aliens. Until today it never was.

I don't take Edgar Mitchell seriously on all the alien stuff. Of course I respect his career and what he did for Apollo. But he seems to be rather confused. I met some people who are very well educated and rather intelligent but 'believe' in crazy theories and conspiracies. Don't think that even all NASA workers think rational all the time. You'll meet a few crazy people almost everywhere...

 

[Tschachim]

The question what they saw remains unanswered until today.

Not really, we don't know it for sure, but most problably it was a SLA panel.

Cheers
Tschachim

 

[Moonwalker]

Not really, we don't know it for sure, but most problably it was a SLA panel.

Dr. David Baker (Apollo 11 Senior Scientist):

NASA knew very little about the object reported by the Apollo 11 crew. It was obviously an unidentified flying object. But such objects were not uncommon.

Description of the object by Buzz Aldrin:

Mike decided he thought he could see it in the telescope and he was able to do that and when it was in one position it had series of ellipses. But when you made it real sharp it was sort of L-shaped. That didn't tell us very much.

Doesn't really sound like an SLA panel or the S-IVB.

Some time after the position request of the S-IVB by the Apollo 11 crew they got a call from MCC Houston:

Apollo 11, Houston. The S-IVB is about 6.000 nautical miles from you now, over.

Buzz Aldrin in a rather new interview:

We really didn't think we were looking at something that far away.

 

[Tschachim]

Not the S-IVB, just one of the SLA panels. They have only little dV w.r.t. the CSM/LM stack and don't manoeuver after CSM/LV separation like the S-IVB does. Of course it's not sure as they didn't see it clearly, but depending on the lighting a SLA panel can look like this. Someone at CollectSpace claims that Neil Amstrong stated that in his biography, too: http://www.collectspace.com/ubb/Forum29/HTML/000629.html

But again, no proof, just the best guess.

Cheers
Tschachim

 

[Moonwalker]

I also thought it was something like the S-IVB or one of the SLA panels until I saw a video which was filmed on a previous mission but showing the same thing. It really looked like Buzz explained it (several ellipses). It was hard to figure out what it is. Didn't look like a S-IVB booster or a SLA panel at all. So it's really hard to get any idea of what it could be if you look at it. Not even the crews or NASA could figure it out.

But I guess it was nothing special. Maybe the S-IVB or a SLA panel although it didn't look like it at all (or maybe something else out of the universe).

The next question would be why the SLA panels or the S-IVB booster would look that much strange...

 

[Urwumpe]

I also thought it was something like the S-IVB or one of the SLA panels until I saw a video which was filmed on a previous mission but showing the same thing. It really looked like Buzz explained it (several ellipses). It was hard to figure out what it is. Didn't look like a S-IVB booster or a SLA panel at all. So it's really hard to get any idea of what it could be if you look at it. Not even the crews or NASA could figure it out.

It is simple: because NASA was not able to make 100% sure, that it is a SLA panel in the first instant. It took a while until this theory got validated. Other than the S-IVB, the SLA panels can't do a collision avoidance maneuver. They will only slowly move away - and at one point even come back to vincinity the CSM (though a collision is unlikely as the second intersection would happen about 90° away from the TLI burn).

The next question would be why the SLA panels or the S-IVB booster would look that much strange...

You have to remember some differences in space: The lack of an atmosphere makes it impossible to estimate distances correctly. You are used to see distant things turn blue/gray over long distances, in space, it doesn't. That's why you also can't reliable estimate relative velocities in space, unless you have aids to remind you how large the object you see really is.

So, for a astronaut, who does not use the sextant to measure the distance, the object can be anywhere from 150m to infinity.

Next problem is the lack of ambient lighting. Objects have much more contrast in deep space, as you experience on the ground or even close to a planet. At some angles, the SLA can indeed look roughly L-shaped - when only two contact surfaces are fully illuminated and the rest reflects away from the CSM or is completely dark.

You have similar effects from ISAR radar images - because your radar is the only direct source and atmosphere does only slightly scatter it, objects can look extremely different to what you would expect from visual knowledge.

 

[Tschachim]

I also thought it was something like the S-IVB or one of the SLA panels until I saw a video which was filmed on a previous missiout showing the same thing. It really looked like Buzz explained it (several ellipses).

That's interesting, I didn't know that. Any reference?

Cheers
Tschachim

 

[Lunar_Lander]

Didn't Mitchell get sued by NASA because he performed an unauthorized "telepathic" experiment with a friend on the ground during TEC on Apollo 14?

About 11: In several books I read claims that there is a bit of communication between Neil and Houston which had been deleted from the public recordings. According to the books, Neil spoke his famous first words and then said something in the sense of: "Oh my god, there are other spacecraft. They are sitting on the surface in a great circle around us."

Furthermore, during the EVA a bright light shall have shown up and hovered above the two. Buzz then filmed it with a video camera. From the description it sounded like he was using a camcorder. Hm. The crazy thing is, that a camcorder was not part of the EVA gear (at least I don't know of any carried by any landing crew).

So I don't believe that there is any "censored" communication or classified footage from the Apollo 11 moonwalk.

As for Mitchell: He's a dedicated scientist, for sure. But in the miniseries FTETTM, Al Bean says, that the LMP's role was always in the background (because the CDR had main control of the landing process). Maybe Mitchell fears to be forgotten behind Shepard?