Space aliens an invention of the US government?

[Questor]

I've often wondered why there was such a mania with UFOs and space aliens during the 1950s and early 1960s when the cold war was at its peak. It seems that having the public focused on impossible enemies would have been better in some ways than having them focused on real enemies like the Russians and the Chinese. Do you think that UFO-logy was just a public relations scam to keep people from getting too upset about the Russians?

The world needs more conspiracy theories, and I'm just doing my part.

[Swampman]

I believe UFOs are real.  I don't believe they are from another planet.

[Questor]

I thought the idea was that UFOs had to be from someplace other than earth, otherwise they're just stuff in the air that somebody can't recognize. If it's just stuff I can't identify, then I see a UFO about every two weeks (but I haven't been abducted by creatures from a mammatus cloud or a distant balloon yet.

[TribReady]

I totally believe that the US gov't added to the UFO hype back in the day. Whether all of it was fully orchastrated by the gov't is hard to tell I'd guess.

My take: All UFO's originate from a single advanced planet out there somewhere. They fly continually from their capital city----------Gizmo       

[Swampman]

Like all supernatural/spiritual phenomena they come from other dimensions.

[blind ear]

We unidentify flying objects at my hunting camp every night, then we go out and hunt for Bin Laden the next day! eddie

[MGMorden]

I don't think the US Government had anything to do with it (at least not promoting it). People LOVE conspiracy theories.   Take some people to a regular little league game and they'll start looking for the "real truth" and before long they think Elvis is alive and coaching the other team.

In reality, I'd wager that UFO's as reported, are LARGELY simply made up claims, hoaxes, or simply regular aircraft (in which case it WAS unidentified to the original observer, just not anyone with any sense ).  The remainder of the cases are quite possibly test aircraft by the government, but while they always have some "top secret" projects - it's not as far fetched as people would imagine.  Technology advances in very small increments.  Anything they're testing likely isn't all that more advanced than what we have now.  

What happened is a lot of people just take that stuff and run with it because to them it's exciting.  No government involvement needed.

Personally, given the sheer, unimaginably immense size of the universe I most wholeheartedly believe that there is other life other there - I just don't think we're seeing it in our skies .  Put it this way - there are at least 3,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the universe - 100 billion galaxies an average of 30 billion stars per galaxy - some have more, some less, but that's a good ballpark - around half likely have a planetary system.  Now, the odds of a planetary system containing a planet that can support life is likely pretty rare.  I'd wager extremely rare.  When you roll the dice not just billions of times though, but billions of billions of times, then you're bound to hit jackpot a lot even with bad odds .  However, with that immense size, also comes immense DISTANCE.  The laws of physics come into play.  Physically visiting other civilizations will be unlikely - ever.  I don't see them visiting us, nor us visiting them.  The best we could likely hope for would be radio contact, but even that is unlikely in my opinion.  

[blind ear]

Possibly when sound damping came for helicopters and the B2 Stealth bomber appeared experiments were done to determine if local or foriegn governments might be able to detect them and flashes of the systems with defenses down were given to peak interest?

I grew up on a farm in the western edge of the Colombus Air force Base flight training area. We would often find the silver plastic radar jamming strips in our fields in the late 50s and early 60s. If the sonic booms got more than the usual activity it wouldn't be long before there would be some military activity that the US would be involved in somewhere in the world.

Jets would fly over low to the east of us, they would be flying omni under radar. They would pull up and climb to radar level for check then drop back down below radar level. Real low.

The most fun to watch was a C130 prop flying the oil pipe line through the place, hare and hound. The pipeline was regularly checked for leaks, and farmers with backhoes, by small prop planes with detectors. It was a clear path without towers. The C130 would get below radar on the pipeline, low and hauling fanny! It would shake the shop buildings when it came by. A few minutes later 2 fighter jets would come tearing through, they had to make a slight swerve at our place for some reason and it would make the hair stand up on my neck.

 When they passed the sonic boom laws we lost our military air show.  
eddie

[Elijah Gunn]

Like all supernatural/spiritual phenomena they come from other dimensions.

You got it swampy.

[bearmgc]

That was quite a weird episode. Loved it. As to UFO's, I think the government has many aircraft that are unknown to the public, that have probably been sighted.

[Graybeard]

In warm weather we spend a good deal of time sitting out on the front porch both day and night. We've seen a few unexplainable things but nothing I believe to be extra terrestrial in origin so far.

One evening after dark I was sitting out there alone with something definitely unkown to me came flying over and did pass almost directly over me. I was not able to hear any sound at all from the craft. Had it been most any sort of plane whether fixed or rotary wing I should have heard sound.

It looked proportionaly several times the size of the planes we routinely see which could mean it was far larger or that it was much closer to the ground than they normally are. BUT if closer then I can't account for the total lack of sound from it. It moved way too fast to be a blimp or air ship.

There were to the best of my current recollection four lights in a diamond shape pattern more or less. I did make a post with specific details the night I saw it. The lights on it were all I could see, I was not able to make out any outline of the object only the lights. All were white no colored lights and no blinking lights on it. The spacing or distance the lights were apart was at a minimum 4 to 5 times that of lights on the jets that routinely pass over us. What it was I have no clue.

I do however believe whatever it was it is earth based and I'd about bet owned by the government not some private entity here. I'd sure liked to have seen it in day time to see the outline of the actual craft. It had to be truly huge and the total lack of sound is something I cannot account for.

[Redtail1949]

just look at pelosie and reid ....no doubt about it they are aliens.

[powderman]

About 10 or 12 years ago the whole family watched as many as 5 objects at a time in the sky. They flew all different directions and when they would leave it was only a blur they were so fast, but never a sound. The last time we saw them there were 5 of them and 2 jets, one from the North, other from the South went after them. They disappeared straight up in a split second. The one jet turned and both flew back to the NE, towards Lou. Never did know what we really saw, yes, we used binocs every evening. They would come in early, about dusk. POWDERMAN.