InSight lander arrives on Mars

Photo from NASA.

We have a new robot on Mars.

After a multi-month voyage through space, NASA's InSight lander arrived safely on the Red Planet on Monday afternoon, Chicago time. There was the customary and nail-biting span of silence as the lander dropped through the thin atmosphere, but all turned out just fine. Soon after landing, InSight transmitted its first photo from Mars, showing a shot through a lens speckled with dust from the landing. This prompted someone online to cry, "See? Life on Mars! Flies!"

Heh. He was kidding. I think.

Not much more than a day later, we got far clearer photos. The one posted above is example of such.

InSight, short for "Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport," will eventually drill 16 feet into the surface of Mars. Over a two year period, it will complete the first 3D scan of the planet's interior. That, to me, is fascinating. Why, do you ask? Well, there are several reasons.

-If nothing else, appreciate the achievement of engineering that this is. Many smart people worked hard, used their minds to solve problems creatively, and made an astounding technical triumph. This, I believe, is an example of humanity at its best.

-Don't care about Mars or space science? Well, I might not be able to understand you, but I respect the opinion. Rest assured however, the efforts undertaken and the lessons learned in the InSight achievement will in time filter down to you, the consumer. It inevitably does with space technology,

-The more we understand Mars, the more we have to work with in terms of colonization. Yes, yes, I am aware of the difficulties and the innumerable naysayers. That's cool. I'm used to naysayers. I still believe that technological progress will one day allow for us to establish settlements on Mars. Knowledge gleaned from the InSight mission may help us better understand how to use the natural resources already available on the planet to create a sustainable community.

Hey. Elon Musk is hellbent on it.

-I'm curious what, if any, findings there may be as to large bodies of water beneath the surface of Mars. And life? Maybe? Would they tell us if they found it?

Ahhh were I a younger, free-wheelin' man, I might wonder if they'd like a writer on Mars.

Oh who am I kidding? I'd be in wonder for about ten minutes, and then writerly bitterness would no doubt settle back in.

A guy sitting in a cardigan with a laptop in one hand and a martini in the other probably wouldn't be of much help in the colony. Might even inspire a little resentment. 


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Why UFOs? Part 5: The mystery airships

This is Part 5 in a 6-Part series wherein I examine my fascination with UFO Phenomena through the lens of narrative and rhetoric. Much of the information found in this post comes from Solving the 1897 Airship Mystery by Michael Busby and "Close Encounters of the Earliest Kind."

As I wrote of my childhood in Part 1, science fiction was my gateway drug to ufology. The idea that actual aliens could be visiting Earth in flying saucers was just too enticing to resist.

Imagine my surprise when I learned UFO sightings were nothing new. In fact, these unknown aerial phenomena have been seen for a very long time. I'm not even talking about the "ancient aliens" crowd. No, I mean something far less known, at least in pop culture circles.

I'm talking about the Great Airship Mystery of the late 1800s.

During the waning years of the 19th century, particularly between 1896 and 1897, a "flap" of sightings occurred of propeller-driven airships. While dirigibles were nothing new at the time and indeed were used during the Civil War, these airships were bigger, faster, and more advanced than anything else in the air at the time. These sightings stretched from the midsection of the United States to the West Coast. San Francisco and Sacramento, California had particularly significant sightings of these craft with multiple witnesses quoted in newspaper accounts. These balloon/propeller craft even had lights stationed about them, much as with their contemporary counterparts.

There were even accounts of these craft landing and witnesses meeting the occupants. Rather than the alien beings described in previous posts, witnesses reported these occupants as being fully human in appearance, wearing brown leather jackets, scarves, and goggles. Friendly and jocular, they often asked witnesses to perform menial favors, such as mailing letters. When asked who they were or where they came from, the crewmen responded that they worked for a genius inventor who was not yet ready to take his advanced airships public. This later fueled speculation that Nikola Tesla was behind the airships, but then what advanced development wasn't he supposedly responsible for? 

In researching Dulce and UFO occurrences in New Mexico, I found that New Mexico had its own Mystery Airship sighting in 1880. This sighting was of a "fish-shaped" balloon, propelled and directed by fan. Occupants could be heard singing and speaking in a foreign language. That combined with the artistic design of the airship led many to speculate it came from Asia.

"Moreover, allegedly, people on board the balloon’s car tossed out stuff that was picked up by the alleged witnesses. Apparently, the stuff was a beautiful flower with some silk-like paper with characters which reminded the witnesses of designs they had seen on Japanese tea chests."

When I read these accounts now, several thoughts strike me:

-While they come off as "old timey", they hold true to the discourse and genre constraints of a UFO narrative. The craft are spectacular and unbelievable...but not incomprehensible. They could outfly anything in the sky at that time, but the idea of an airship was far from radical.

-The rhetorical tone, just as mentioned in previous posts, matches the science fiction of the time. These airships could have flown straight out of Jules Verne, who had been publishing books and short stories for decades before the time of the sightings.

-Related, the rhetorical stance, or the argument presented by the occupants, is waggish, one of wonder...almost whimsy. These "mystery men in their flying machines" are said to work for a brilliant inventor, but they can't say any more than that. Who is this inventor? What is his plan for his magnificent machines? Whatever it is, there appears to be no malice involved. The airship crewmen only want to mail letters.

Looking at these narratives from a modern perspective, they appear simple and quaint. That's not meant as an insult. In fact, I could go for simple and quaint right about now. What fun it would be to meet jolly adventurers riding about in a steampunk contraption, ready to whisk you away to a land that resembles something out of Sgt. Pepper's. Still, the incidences are recognizable as following the UFO paradigm, as if staying true to a writer's template or outline. This tends to make me believe that UFOs are quite human in origin. Or perhaps, "just perhaps" as Robert Stack would say, it is something responding to our own expectations and perceptions. If that is so, just how weird could it get?

More on that in a future post. 


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Why UFOs? Part 4: They Know That We Know That They Know

This is Part 4 of a series of blog posts called "Why UFOs?" intended to examine through the combined lens of narrative and rhetoric, just why I've always been fascinated with the UFO phenomenon despite any conclusive evidence.

"They're here! And they love strawberry ice cream!"

So Brad told me early on a Saturday morning in 1988. We were boarding a school bus to head for a marching band contest. The night before, NBC aired a...unique documentary. For reasons likely related to our house only having one TV, I had to tape (on a VCR!!) the program, but Brad caught it live.

It was called UFO Cover Up-Live! The "documentary" was a live panel discussion of UFO witnesses and investigators, discussing sighting flaps such as the (at the time) recent Gulf Breeze encounters, as well as the abduction phenomenon (both of which you may read more about in Part 3). The whole thing was hosted by Mike Farrell. Yes, that guy from M*A*S*H. In fact, his emcee demeanor was most reminiscent of his dry-witted signature role, B.J. Hunnicutt.

That alone is remarkable (I can just imagine Farrell's agent pitching this thing to him. "Look, things have been dry since M*A*S*H and this has been the best gig in a while.") What is most germane to this series though, is that it marked yet another change in my perception of the UFO narrative. Note the "cover up" in UFO Cover Up-Live!

Blacked out in silhouette and voices altered electronically, two men appeared via remote on the program. They were referred to only by the code-names, "Falcon" and "Condor." They were purported to be operatives deep with the intelligence community. And they dropped a whole lot of plot twists for me in the UFO narrative. Such as:

-For (what I believe, anyway) the first time, I learned that just after World War II, a UFO was said to have crashed outside a town named Roswell in New Mexico. The U.S. military recovered the wreckage of this spacecraft as well as aliens, both living and dead.

-In the wake of this incident, President Truman convened an intra-governmental group that would make policy regarding extraterrestrials. It would be called Majestic-12 and be headquartered out of the U.S. Naval Observatory.

Image from: https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/818083/Majestic-12-scientists-experiment-aliens-Roswell-UFO-DIA-leaked-document

-Project Blue Book, discussed in the first post in this series, was basically a PR effort by the Air Force, meant to dismiss UFO activity. Any truly interesting sightings were filtered to Majestic-12.

-Eventually, the aliens met with representatives of Majestic-12 and brokered a deal in four parts: 1) We won't interfere with anything the aliens do on Earth. 2) The aliens won't interfere with how our society runs. 3) The aliens may abduct people. 4) In return, the aliens must give us technology.

-Alien operations on Earth are based out of a secret location called Area 51 in the Nevada desert.

-Our military sometimes test flies alien craft for our own purposes. Sometimes that goes wrong, such as with the Cash-Landrum Incident.

-Three alien beings have been guests of the U.S. government over time. In 1988, "Condor" stated that one being was visiting.

-We have learned much about these aliens. They come from a planet in the Zeta Reticulai star system. While their minds are beyond ours, their bodies are much simpler. They are vegetarians and enjoy strawberry ice cream as a snack. Their favorite music is ancient Tibetan chant.

-The alien visiting in 1988 had a crystal. Through this crystal, the being could show images not only of its home planet, but of various eras of Earth history. There was an artist's rendition of this alien standing with this crystal in what (kinda) looked the White House. The alien was wearing a suit and tie (!)

-Not only were aliens guests of our government, but a few of our own people went to Zeta Reticulai as part of an exchange program. 


Wow. There is just so much going on here. Not only did this single, and admittedly quite cheesy, live program change how I saw the UFO narrative, it included so much of what are now considered fixtures of UFO lore in popular culture. Most of those points named by "Falcon" and "Condor" found their way into The X-Files and any number of other media. Brad and I also decided that the program provided an evaluation tool for one determine whether or not they are being abducted by aliens. Just by a carton of Neapolitan ice cream. Check the freezer. If one morning you find the strawberry section has been scooped out, you may be in trouble.

In all seriousness, this (at the time) newfound dimension to the alien narrative just added another layer of mystery. By "mystery", I mean more in the "spy thriller" sense. As the story goes, our government is fully aware of all the extraterrestrial goings on. All that fear I felt at the prospect of an alien abduction? Yeah, our government, our ostensible guardians, knows all about these occurrences and just doesn't care. Worse than that perhaps, they're profiting off of it.

A rhetorical tone that had already turned dark just got a few shades darker. Who can one trust? As one of my favorite shows would say five years after 1988: "Trust No One."

Scholars have been studying conspiracy theory for quite a while now. I noticed that while working on research for my Dulce book, which I will eventually get to after my Saint Joe book is done (believe me, after reliving the trauma of my college closing, getting back to fake alien conspiracies will be most welcome.) What these researchers have learned is that despite the hyperbolic rhetoric from conspiracy proponents, calling them "crazy" is both insulting and inaccurate. In truth, these are people who feel socially and politically marginalized. They have been made to feel, through various experiences, that they don't matter. A conspiracy, formulated and maintained by a shadowy and powerful group of individuals, is easier to get one's head around than the complete randomness of life if you're looking for reasons why things aren't working out for you. That's where notions such as "the Federal Reserve is keeping you poor" and other, more dangerous rhetoric comes from.

Thinking back, I am also struck by the heuristic element of this alteration in UFO rhetoric. Earlier, I used the phrase "spy thriller." The introduction of the conspiracy changes the exigency of the UFO "text." It's no longer a mystery of "what are they?" It is an urgency of "they are all in it against us." Always check your back. Keep your tinfoil hat on tight. Only through "awareness" will we defeat the conspiracy against us. Yes, so much of that still, sadly, present today.

Is it any wonder that 1988 and onward sees a change in the shape UFOs sighted? In 1988, the government announces it had been clandestinely testing black, batwing-shaped aircraft that would be invisible to radar. Conspiracy theorists had conjectured about these aircraft for years and lo and behold, there they were. Later, the "black triangles" become common in Ufology. Observations of more secret aircraft or a shit in perception?

Image from: https://www.theherald.com.au/story/5061734/big-black-triangle-ufo-above-munibung-hill/


Obviously, there isn't a shred of truly verifiable evidence for anything "Condor" or "Falcon" said on the documentary. In fact, I believe Falcon was later identified as Richard Doty, an operative for Air Force Office of Special Investigations. Doty has a long history of spreading UFO disinformation and even destroying a life (see Greg Bishop's Project Beta.) Then again, a conspiracy theory need not have truth in order to flourish...or rather, it needs just enough truth. That, at the time, made UFOs all the more fascinating...and scary...to me.

Next time, we'll take a look at when I realized that the notion of "UFO" has been around for a very very long time...


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