Astronaut Edgar Mitchell on ufos

[Magical Realist]

"The sixth man to walk on the surface of the moon has made the astonishing claim that aliens came to Earth to stop a nuclear war between America and Russia.

Edgar Mitchell, a veteran of the Apollo 14 mission in 1971, told Mirror Online that top-ranking military sources spotted UFOs during weapons tests.

The astronaut has been outspoken about his belief in aliens ever since he landed on the surface of the moon, becoming one of the most prominent figures in the worldwide UFO community.

He told us military insiders had seen strange crafts flying over missile bases and the famous White Sands facility, where the world's first ever nuclear bomb was detonated in 1945.

Mitchell grew up in New Mexico near both the bomb testing zone and Roswell, where believers think one of the world's most famous UFO encounters took place.

"You don't know the area like I do," he said in an interview with Mirror Online.

"White Sands was a testing ground for atomic weapons - and that's what the extraterrestrials were interested in.

"They wanted to know about our military capabilities.

"My own experience talking to people has made it clear the ETs had been attempting to keep us from going to war and help create peace on Earth."

Mitchell also suggested he had heard similar stories from people who manned missile bases during the most tense parts of the 20th century.

"I have spoken to many Air Force officers who worked at these silos during the Cold War," he continued.

"They told me UFOs were frequently seen overhead and often disabled their missiles.

"Other officers from bases on the Pacific coast told me their [test] missiles were frequently shot down by alien spacecraft.

"There was a lot of activity in those days." "====http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-...ve-6235113

[C C]

"The sixth man to walk on the surface of the moon has made the astonishing claim that aliens came to Earth to stop a nuclear war between America and Russia.

Mitchell's slightly less than religious-sounding attempt to mimic the L Ron Hubbard school of enterprises is still around: "Institute of Noetic Sciences". He once had his own forum on the web that he seemed to have either personally created or giving his blessing to (in that he visited it regularly). As opposed to others out there that simply use his name as an attracting pheromonal agent. Perhaps since then he has narrowed to facebook or is just content to twitter these days.

James Randi has tried in the past to peg Mitchell with being the one who was originally responsible for unleashing "exposed fraud with nine lives" Uri Geller on the world:

Agreed, Mitchell is an all-time American hero, but as I reminded Phil [Plait], he’s also been one of the major purveyors and supporters of top-level woo-woo. It was Mitchell who “discovered” spoon-bender Uri Geller when Geller was only a cabaret performer doing his run-of-the-mill “psychic” tricks for teeny-boppers in Israel, assisted by Hannah Shtrang – who later became his wife – and Shipi Shtrang, her brother, who still works as his assistant. Mitchell actually travelled to Israel and arranged for Geller to come to the USA and be studied at the Stanford Research Institute – later to be re-named SRI International. Two physicists there, apparently awed by meeting a genuine Lunar Astronaut, chose to believe that such a hero couldn’t be wrong, that Geller was therefore the real thing, and Geller’s career took off. It’s safe to say that without Edgar Mitchell’s naivety, we’d have been spared the advent of the Geller Delusion.

Wow. So much for physicists being so hip-deep in natural methodology and existing scientific paradigms and above the frailties of ordinary human reasoning and emotion that celebrities bounce off them like the lead suit protecting Superman from kryptonite.

[Yazata]

"The sixth man to walk on the surface of the moon has made the astonishing claim that aliens came to Earth to stop a nuclear war between America and Russia.

That claim isn't astonishing. It was a routine part of the "flying saucer" myth in the 1950's. It kind of contradicts the Jacques Vallee school of UFOlogy though, which points out that UFOs have been reported all over the world, thoughout history. (Vallee's French. French UFOlogists were probably less quick to imagine UFOs being so fascinated with the Americans.)

What seems to have happened was that the late 1940's -1950's wave of UFO sightings, the ones that received so much press attention at the time when the phrase "flying saucer" was coined, hit at the same time that the public was electrified (and a little appalled) by the sudden appearance of nuclear weapons. It was also the period when lots of captured German V-2s were being fired off at White Sands and dreams of space travel were rising like a rocket among the general public. Only a few years after that plans to launch satellites were first announced. (I still remember the excitement about that in the 50's.)

So UFOs, space travel and nuclear weapons all mixed together in the public mind. The idea arose here and there that the inhabitants of the heavens, the scientistic analogues of angels, were concerned about human weapons developments and our ambition to invade their peaceful and pristine cosmic realm.

Edgar Mitchell, a veteran of the Apollo 14 mission in 1971, told Mirror Online that top-ranking military sources spotted UFOs during weapons tests.

Well sure. Almost certainly, part of the protocol for setting off an atmospheric nuclear test was to ensure that the sky overhead was clear of civilian aircraft (and any stray foreign intelligence gatherer). So they scanned the skies and no doubt observed a few things they couldn't immediately identify. That's to be expected.

The astronaut has been outspoken about his belief in aliens ever since he landed on the surface of the moon, becoming one of the most prominent figures in the worldwide UFO community.

Apparently something about traveling to the moon resonated with Mitchell's sense of transcendence, so he's been seeking hints of transcendence elsewhere in life. I kind of like that about him, even though I don't consider most of his claims plausible and think of him as being something of a crank.