 | By Stanton Friedman
www.stantonfriedman.com/
11-1-13 |
"The definition for balderdash is senseless prate,
a jargon of words, noisy nonsense.”
Every so often I find a UFO debunking piece that illustrates the irrationality of the debunkers’ arguments despite the educational background of the debunker. For example, Dr. Isaac Asimov who wrote more than 300 books, mostly on scientific topics and many Science Fiction tomes made the following claim, “If aliens were visiting Earth, they would either land and make themselves known, or keep hidden. If they do neither, they are not visiting.” How extraordinary that a world class sci-fi writer can’t think of other scenarios, some place in between the noted extremes. He certainly gives no rationale. He has not claimed to be himself in touch with ETs or to have studied the evidence presented by witnesses to actual ET behavior. One might say it illustrates arrogance combined with ignorance.
My nephew Paul Kimball has a law degree and has spent a lot of time “studying UFOs”; in mid August he penned a piece about which one can only shake one’s head and ask where that nonsense came from. He starts by saying “here are the reasons why I am completely convinced there was no ET Crash.
If aliens had sufficiently advanced technology of the kind that would permit travel to the stars (and I have talked to enough scientists to know just how mind blowingly advanced this would have to be, Stan Friedman and his nuclear rockets balderdash not withstanding) then it beggars belief that they would crash in spaceships that looked like something out of a 1950s sci-fi B movie once they got here (much less crash multiple times, as some posit, including Stan).” As noted in the book “
"Science Was Wrong"” by myself and Kathleen Marden, there were loads of scientists who were totally negative about flight in the air and then flight in space. I don’t know how Paul knows what the Roswell crashed saucer looked like . . . lots of reports of small light weight pieces of wreckage . . . not like a spaceship at all.
Notice the assumption that the same small vehicle that crashed at
Roswell, or
Aztec, or the Plains of San Agustin came to earth directly from another star system. Is he really unaware that flight in the atmosphere of a planet is a very different business than flight in deep space between stars? Wow! Lift, drag, heating, gravity etc., are very different for airborne vehicles than for deep space rockets. We have many reports of huge mother ships into and out of which the small earth excursion modules fly.
The Lunar excursion modules which landed on the moon were extraordinarily different from the huge Saturn V rockets which were launched from Earth with the LEMs on Board. Surely he (with a very strong background in history) is aware that even as far back as the epic battles of World War II, there were huge aircraft carriers which carried a bunch of small airplanes to the locations from which these aircraft flew. The carriers didn’t fly, and the aircraft didn’t float on the water. The carriers carried fuel for the airplanes and provided housing, food, ammunition for the pilots, etc. The aircraft are far more maneuverable than are the carriers. Despite all the aircraft in a huge variety of sizes, speeds, etc., there are loads of crashes. Two huge and expensive space shuttles crashed.
Paul has another sword which he wields, ”However, allowing for the equally infinitesimal [based on what?] possibility that Murphy’s Law applies to super advanced aliens, It beggars belief that they would just leave the remains of the ship and their dead comrades to be found by beings, who, as Stan puts it, were here to observe us because we might be dangerous someday soon.” In actuality, I have suggested more than 20 reasons for coming here. Furthermore we are already dangerous. We killed 50 Million of our own kind in WWII. We destroyed 1700 cities. We have exploded 2000 nuclear (there is that word again) warheads. Not dangerous?
Additionally, there certainly were later sightings near the Roswell crash site that might well have been aliens looking for their fallen comrades. I doubt if they worried much about our duplicating their technology. Christopher Columbus could not have duplicated a nuclear submarine or a radio or computer chip. After all we Earthlings have left many of our dead behind. Check out
"By Any Means Necessary: America's Secret Air War in the Cold War" by William Burrows. 166 US military men were in planes “tickling” radar sets in North Korea, China, and Russia just after World War II . . . and being shot down. We didn’t go after them (starting WW III) and their families weren’t told about what happened to them until 50 years later in 2001. We didn’t attack Russia when they downed Gary Powers U-2.
Yet Paul asks “How can we be asked to believe that they would let we warlike creatures have their technology? “ Why does he think we would have been able to duplicate it? Has he no concept of how difficult it would be? Moreover, he pontificates as a supposed expert on alien behavior and technology, “if they had the ability to get here from another star system, then they would certainly have had the ability to collect or vaporize the wreckage.” One might note that we earthlings have had the ability with nuclear (that word again) weapons to vaporize all the civilizations. Yet we have exploded 2000 nuclear warheads, but only 2 on people; funny how countries agree not to use poison gas.
Paul also pontificates about keeping secrets, “It beggars belief again that the United States government could have maintained what must be [why?] such a vast conspiracy to this day to keep it all quiet. History tells us that the reason they are kept for a very long time successfully is that they are always confined to only a few people. As soon as they start expanding the circle of knowledge, then the wheels fall off.” Now that is real balderdash! The definition for balderdash is “senseless prate, a jargon of words, noisy nonsense.” Yes, Paul you hit it on the head. There were 12000 people at Bletchley Park in the UK secretly working on intercepting, decoding, translating and carefully distributing German military communications in the early 1940s. Not one word in public until 25 years after the war was over. The Lockheed Stealth aircraft was developed at a cost of $10 Billion over 10 years in secret utilizing thousands of people. At one time the Manhattan Project involved 60,000 people in secret. The
National Reconnaissance Organization contracted with Boeing on new spy satellite architecture and then cancelled the program. That involved thousands of people in secret at a cost of $13 Billion. The development of the first successful US spy satellite in the “Corona” program was kept secret for more than 30 years. The first one (after 12 expensive failures), obtained more information about Soviet military installations than all the U-2 spy planes that preceded it. Many more than a few people were involved.
Now let us look at “Stan Friedman’s nuclear rockets balderdash.” It is quite clear that when engineers and scientists want to control large amounts of energy, they go nuclear. When it comes to bombs, a big bomb in WWII released the energy of 10 tons of dynamite in 1944. In July 1945 the first nuclear fission bomb released the energy of 16 thousand tons of dynamite; by 1952 the first nuclear fusion weapon (Mike) released the energy of 10 million tons of TNT. The Russians later set off a fusion (H-Bomb) one releasing the energy of more than 50 million tons of TNT.
The US Navy, admittedly a bit larger than our Canadian navy, built their first NUCLEAR submarine in 1956; able to sail around the planet underwater. Submarines in WWII could stay underwater for all of 24 hours. Years later the first NUCLEAR fission powered aircraft carriers operate for 18 years without refueling. Three different organizations successfully operated NUCLEAR fission rockets at the NUCLEAR test site in Nevada. They were Westinghouse Astronuclear Laboratory (I worked on their NRX A-6 at a power level of 1100 megawatts); Aerojet General operated the XE-1 at a power level of 1000 megawatts. Los Alamos operated the Phoebus 2B at a power level of 4400 megawatts or twice the power of Grand Coulee Dam, less than 8’ in diameter. There are no fission nuclear reactors in Nova Scotia where Paul lives. We here in the neighboring province of New Brunswick have the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station, a fission power- plant producing 2200 megawatts. I and many others worked on studies of fusion rockets able to eject charged particles having ten million times as much energy per particle as in a dumb old chemical rocket. Many papers have been published but I suppose Paul hasn’t seen any.
It should be noted that almost all the energy in the universe comes from nuclear fusion in the stars. Why Paul is in denial about nuclear rockets I don’t know, though I suppose lawyers don’t dig into such matters. I should note that my book “Flying Saucers and Science” has pictures of several real nuclear rocket engines
The real balderdash is that one should theorize for ever about alien activities and motivation, but avoid the facts; however—it is the evidence that matters. Of course there might be advanced propulsion systems that can outdo nuclear fusion. They are not needed to get us out there and certainly not needed to get aliens here. Let us not forget that nearby stars are already within reach, if we want to spend the money. We didn’t even find out that there was such a process as nuclear fusion until 1938—a very short time ago indeed. We now know that there are planets all over the place many of them have to be much older than earth.
Paul may think “nuclear rockets are balderdash” and only small groups can keep secrets. He probably is aware that many nuclear facilities had UFO sightings back in the 1940s. These included reports near Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the Hanford Atomic works up in eastern Washington state. Furthermore as delineated by Robert Hastings and Robert Salas, there have been UFO observations where missiles on which were mounted nuclear weapons had been shut down by the aliens. The notion that that only small groups can keep a secret is put to rest by the fact that this year the US black budget is about fifty billion.
.jpg "Professional Skeptic Debunks UFOs (and More)")
I was glad to see you mention the Betty and Barney Hill case. Too bad you didn’t mention the 2007 book 
MUFON has had over 40 annual Symposia with Proceedings published every year. Most of the papers are prepared by engineers and scientists who, unlike you, have studied the relevant evidence.
As you will recall, I, with your permission ,sent you my 2008 book 
