Roswell’s Memory Metal: The Secret Experiments in Space

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By Anthony Bragalia
The UFO Chronicles
2-5-14

     Are highly classified experiments on “memory metal” that was inspired by the UFO crash debris found at Roswell being conducted in space? Is there an off-Earth effort to learn more about morphing materials? Could the advantages of such technology now be seen in space vehicles developed by the very Air Force base where the crash material was taken in 1947? Decades after the famous UFO crash, are they returning the material to whence in came –outer space- to learn more about it and to use it in our own spacecraft?

Investigation indicates that the answer to these questions is yes.

NASA has long conducted government, private and academic sponsored experiments that take advantage of the microgravity or reduced-gravity environments of outer space. Things behave differently in space and such basic research could yield untold technical advances in the future. Experiments are conducted on space shuttles, space stations, rockets, payload satellites and specially modified jets. They include experiments involving biology and biotechnology, physics and physical sciences. Through investigation into the possibility that “black experiments” have been conducted on Roswell-like material much is learned:

• A senior-level NASA scientist specializing in Morphing Metal studies admits that such Shape Memory Alloys (similar to those reported as UFO debris at Roswell in 1947) were probably taken into space for testing. This scientist also agreed that such tests could likely be classified secret.

• The very base where the memory metal from Roswell was flown (Wright Patterson) has developed and deployed space arrays and spacecraft control mechanisms that are based on Roswell-inspired “smart structure” materials technology.

• Although the crash material was composed of elements found on Earth, it was impossible to fabricate such material on Earth. In space, without the burden of gravity, metals with remarkable properties can be made.

• NASA’s history of lying about UFOs and space experiments that are deemed “sensitive” is documented here. It also explains why the answers to what tests they have conducted in space on memory metal may never be fully known.

“Memory Metal” or a moving metal is the shape of things to come. Material that remembers its original form (technically Shape Memory Alloy) was first reported by witnesses to debris from a crashed UFO near Roswell, NM in 1947. No one in the general public had ever before described such a thing. Shape-recovery metal like Nitinol is a distinctly post-Roswellian concept. Never before Roswell had anyone talked of material that instantly undergoes such a change in form and character. In prior articles this author has described how the crash material was flown to Wright Patterson/Field and how that base began to let contracts for memory metal research to organizations like Battelle Memorial Institute. The characteristics of this intermetallic material from space showed that it had to have been made in space. And only NASA could take the composite to the cosmos.

Why Take It To Space?

I do not believe the Roswell debris material itself was ever taken to space for experimentation, as this would present significant risk. But it is possible that alloys that represent our best efforts at replicating the material (i.e. Nitinol) may have been. The reasons why such materials would be taken up into the zero-g/ reduced gravity environment of space using NASA’s microgravity chambers are multiple. The “miscibility” (or ability for two different metals to “mix” to create an alloy) is likely greatly enhanced. There could be desirable changes in the microstructures of such “super-alloys made in space” that would yield greater material strength, hardness or purity. Such new fabrication-in-space possibilities could provide advances in “adaptive” materials that are “intelligent.”

A Clue From NASA's Manager for Morphing

Anna McGowan, NASA former Morphing Project Manager

Anna McGowan is the former Morphing Project Manager for NASA. She is a long-time NASA employee and aerospace scientist. A Purdue grad, she led two efforts in Morphing Projects for NASA Langley’s Aeronautics Research Directorate. She served as the NASA lead on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Morphing Aircraft Systems Program which plans to test fly two advanced morphing concepts. She also led a visionary $35 million per year project that involved over 90 researchers in developing and assessing advanced technologies to enable efficient, multi-point, adaptability (morphing) in future flight vehicles. Reached by phone by this author on January 18, McGowan was asked:

AB: “Do know if Shape Memory Alloys such as Nitinol have ever been taken into space by NASA for testing in micro-gravity chambers?”

AM: “I would think so, yes. I can’t be certain though. Let me give you the name of a Langley media information officer that may be able to help.”

When McGowan was asked,

AB: “Do you think that any of the testing on morphing metals in space could or would be classified experiments?”

McGowan replied coyly:

AM: “Well, if we talk about it, it wouldn’t be classified would it?”

Although range of materials testing in space occurs on NASA vehicles, one would think that the person who led Morphing Projects for NASA would know if such space tests occurred on memory metal.

When I queried the Langley Information Officer Kathy Barstorff that McGowan had referred me to, I asked of her the same question I asked of McGowan:

“Do you think that any of the testing on morphing metals in space could or would be classified experiments?”

She replied precisely with the words that McGowan herself had used. The Langley media officer said,

“Well, if we talk about it, it wouldn’t be classified would it?”

I told her that what she said are the exact words used by McGowan to me when I asked her the same question. I said that this sounded like a rehearsed line that you had both been trained to say. She did not disagree.

Weeks-long inquiries have been made of NASA by this author on whether such memory metal tests were ever conducted. Despite contacting multiple branches of the agency and reaching out to those who should know, nobody from NASA has been able to definitively tell me. FOIA are now being filed by this author compelling an answer. But as detailed below, NASA is an agency that has deliberately lied and obfuscated when it comes to any probe of the agency’s involvement in certain sensitive subject areas.

An NSA Letter and Two Generals Speak of Roswell Metals ‘Special Processsing’

According to Greg Bishop, author of the book Project Beta, the National Security Agency confided by letter to the late Paul Bennewitz (a physicist, founder of a scientific instrumentation company and controversial UFO investigator) that early Space Shuttle experiments tested Titanium alloys in efforts to replicate the debris found at Roswell. {The Bennewitz story is long and complex, but it does appear that he happened on extremely sensitive aerial and atmospheric black budget R&D projects at Kirtland Air Force Base. His company is located at the border of the base. It also appears that both Air Force Intelligence and the NSA viewed this as a national security threat – and both agencies played “games” with Bennewitz, ultimately comprising his mental health.}

Bishop quotes from a letter to Bennewitz by his unnamed “NSA handler” dated December 11, 1985 about a Titanium super alloy and secret experiments on UFO debris in space on the Space Shuttle:

“The special alloy was forwarded to Wright Patterson AFB for analysis. With the then (1947) technology, the composition was known (an aluminum/Titanium composite of unknown fabrication techniques) but the method of achieving the alloy was a complete mystery. The advent of the electron microscope heralded a new wave of discovery. This alloy was porous and differed from any known metallic alloy to date. It was impossible to fabricate on Earth. But here it was. It was theorized that this new “super alloy” might be fabricated in a zero-g environment. With no gravitational influence, elements of grossly differing atomic masses might possibly be alloyed for the first time. Early Space Shuttle experiments proved this theory, and the resultant alloy was unbelievably tough and porous. Absorbing radar and other electronic emissions to an amazing degree.”

There is a theme of thought that the UFO debris was comprised of known metals or elements, but made by unknown fabrication methods or unusual processing.

The late General Arthur Exon, former Base Commander of Wright Patterson Air Force Base in the 1960s, confided on tape in the 1990s to researcher Kevin Randle information about the Roswell debris. He told Randle that he understood that some of the UFO debris was comprised “of Titanium and another metal that they knew about and the processing was somehow different.” Titanium is the key metal upon which shape memory alloys such as Nitinol are based.

Another General, George Schulgen (who led Air Force Intelligence at the time of the Roswell incident) authored a secret draft memo four months after the crash. In the section to his officers about UFOs entitled “Materials of Construction” Shulgen too notes such UFO material would be made by “unusual fabrication method.”

Is this “special materials fabrication” and “unusual processing” that the Roswell-involved General’s speak of one that is space-based?

Wright Patterson Takes the Memory Metal Back to Space

The Roswell crash material was shown by testimony and documentation (including an FBI memo) to have been transported to Wright Field. This author has demonstrated in a series of six prior articles that in the months following the crash, Wright contracted Battelle Memorial Institute to study memory metal and develop unique Titanium alloy phase diagrams (or “recipes” to make alloys.) For the next 20 years, Wright sponsored memory metal research with other organizations.

It has also been learned that Wright Patterson Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) has developed spacecraft components comprised of memory metal (Nitinol) and has launched these unique morphing systems into space. For decades Wright Patterson’s AFRL has been engaged in developing memory-metal based spacecraft systems. The very base that took in the memory metal from Roswell has used the technology to its advantage at least three demonstrable times with three little-discussed launched spacecraft:

• The MIghtSat /FalconSat is a small spacecraft satellite vehicle developed by AFRL to test advanced technologies in imaging, communications and spacecraft “bus components” in space. Launched in 2000 with a two year mission, a deep technical literature search reveals reference to the MightSat being released in space by memory metal. The device is referred to as the “AFRL Shape Memory Release Device” and its acronym is revealed as SMARD (or Shape Memory Alloy Release Device.)

•In July, 1997 Wright’s AFRL-developed Lightweight Flexible Solar Array (LFSA) was launched into space. Technical reference is found of a “Shape Memory Alloy Hinge” design and AFRL’s creation of the memory metal device in concert with NASA, DARPA and Lockheed Martin. It incorporated very thin pieces of Nitinol. These strips served as ultra-flexible devices on which the craft’s attached parts could turn, pivot, swing or interlock.

•A current Wright memory metal mission in space is the Rosetta Landing Craft. Wright’s research labs worked with the European Space Agency on a spacecraft whose mission is to be the first to orbit and land on a comet. The comet-chasing craft, it has been found cited in the literature, is equipped with a “Shape Memory Gas Release Mechanism,” a specialized memory metal valve.

NASA’s History of Lies About UFOs and Space Experiments

Two very disturbing documents have been uncovered by this author that confirm that the subject of UFO’s and secret experiments in space conducted by NASA were never to be discussed by its personnel.

Larry Ross, Former Director of NASA Lewis Research Center

In 1992, Howard Wolpe (D-Mich.) said congressional investigators looking at a program to develop the SP-100 nuclear space reactor, found a two-page set of instructions on how to deal with Freedom of Information Act requests. Volpe had somehow found a document about sensitive NASA experiments in space which likely explains why NASA is reluctant to answer me directly about memory metal testing on board their spacecraft. Prepared by Larry Ross, NASA’s former director of the agency’s Lewis Space Center, the document reads in part:

This NASA document instructs government employees to:

1. Rewrite and even destroy documents 'to minimize adverse impact.'

2. Mix up documents and camouflage handwriting so that the documents’ significance would be 'less meaningful.'

3. Take steps to 'enhance the utility' of various FOIA exemptions."

Wolpe wrote to NASA Administrator Richard H. Truly about his find. Truly would only indicate that he had “concerns” about this document.

Paul Hill, NASA Flight Director

Paul Hill was a NASA aerospace engineer and former Flight Director at the Johnson Space Center. In 1995 Hill, retired, wrote a little-discussed book entitled “Unconventional Flying Objects: A Scientific Analysis.” Hill indicated that he had conducted a series of “UFO maneuver simulations” while at the agency, including studies of the materials of construction, propulsion possibilities and navigational dynamics. In the book, Hill makes a very startling confession:

“I was prevented from making any pronouncements about the application of my UFO work by NASA officials. I had been instructed by superiors in official channels that my name could not be used in connection in any way that would implicate NASA with these objects.”

He continued,

“Clearly, I was destined to remain as unidentified as the flying objects.”

The Geller Information

Feel what one might about the reported psychic Uri Geller but one thing is historic truth:

In the early 1970s Geller was tested by the US government for his psychic abilities. In an email exchange with this author four years ago Geller indicated to me that he was made to try to “bend” the memory metal Nitinol (in the shape of a wire, placed in a vacuum) with the projection of psychic energy. Present at this experiment was Dr. Frederick Wang (the “co-inventor” of Nitinol) and scientists from NASA. Specifically, Geller told me, that it was NASA Goddard personnel in attendance. It turns out that Goddard operates a little-mentioned laboratory in Greenbelt, MD called the “Materials Engineering Branch.” This Goddard lab is linked to work in microgravity space experimentation and has developed advanced materials such as nano-tubes and high performance composites.

The Hidden Meaning of Morphing

Morphing metal is the key to the UFO mystery. Morphing metal may well be the stuff from which today's often-seen "morphing UFOs" are made. Such materials of construction may help to explain the "shape-shifting" craft. And it is likely that similar material accounts for some of the debris that was found at the crash at Roswell.

But there is an even deeper meaning to memory metal. It is found within the Morph. It represents "the potential for change." Such material reflects the value of adaptation. Without it, life ceases. The best material adapts itself to best suit its environment. The shape-memory qualities of the Roswell debris speak to the metal's "remembrance" of a malleable and ever-changing Universe.

See Also:

Roswell’s Memory Metal: The Air Force Comments; NASA Gets Involved & New Clues Are Found

Roswell 'Memory Metal' Back Engineered?

THE FINAL SECRETS OF ROSWELL'S MEMORY METAL REVEALED

Roswell and Nitinol, the Memory-Metal: A Rejoinder by Nick Redfern

ROSWELL METAL SCIENTIST: THE CURIOUS DR. CROSS

SCIENTIST ADMITS TO STUDY
OF ROSWELL CRASH DEBRIS!
(Confirmed by FOIA Document)

ROSWELL DEBRIS CONFIRMED AS EXTRATERRESTRIAL:
Lab Located, Scientists Named!

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