The Other Side of Stan

I've been questioning a couple of Stan Friedman's ufological "babies" as of late (MJ-12 and Wilbert Smith). However, away from Roswell, and MJ-12, there is another side of Stan, one that I wish we'd see more of, and that's Stan the scientist, and Stan the visionary.

One of the most interesting parts of the recent ABC Special Seeing is Believing was the part with Michio Kaku discussing wormholes and the concept of space travel. As Kaku did his neat little demonstration with the paper, showing how, if you "bend" space (in essence), you can cut the distance between two places to a fraction of what they would otherwise be, I immediately recalled the moment in my film Do You Believe in Majic where one sees Stan making the same demonstration at the 2003 Aztec UFO Symposium.

As much as MJ-12, and Roswell, and Wilbert Smith fascinate me, and as much as I like discussing these things with Stan (which we did today, in a very amiable phone conversation where we agreed to disagree), I really get wide-eyed when the talk turns to the "how" of space travel, and the "why." This is the other side of Stan, away from the Cosmic Watergate stuff, that he did back before Roswell became such a central focus of his work.

A paper that everyone should order (from his website, www.stantonfriedman.com) is "Flying Saucers and Physics", written by Stan way back in 1974, and delivered at the 1974 MUFON Symposium. There's no talk about Kaku-esque wormholes in there, but rather a discussion of technologies that are available to us, and which could take us to the stars if we really wanted to go (and, presumably, if used by others, could bring "them" here).

My understanding is that Stan is plugging away on a book about this subject. I've pitched - with no success yet - a couple of networks the idea of a "Flying Saucers and Physics" documentary, to be hosted by Stan. I hope someday it goes forward, either through my company or someone else's.

For my money, when Stan is gone to that great UFO Conference in the Sky (25 + years from now, I hope!), he will be best remembered for the scientific writings he did about flying saucers, and physics, and his exhortations to us all to think of ourselves as "earthlings" and not Canadians, or Americans, or whatever.

Not Roswell. Not the Cosmic Watergate. Not MJ-12.

None of those things. Real or not, they are transitory; they are of the moment.

No, his legacy will be the clarion call that he sounded 31 years ago, long before Exopolitics types like Michael Salla and Steven Greer muddied the waters with their nonsense, and long after they have been forgotten:

"What UFOlogy really needs most is a mobilization of people and resources. I am firmly convinced that we Earthlings have the technology and knowledge to learn a great deal about our ET visitors IF we only had the will... Stop being so overwhelmed by what you know and be much more impressed with both what we don't know and with the ridiculousness of past pronouncements from on-high about the impossibility of this or that technical achievement. Essentially, everything everybody has ever proved impossible has turned out to be feasible because there were those gutsy enough to think independently."

Paul Kimball