Sunday, June 22, 2008

Why the "Roswell Incident" was not a crashed ET spacecraft

As the 61st anniversary of the "Roswell Incident" approaches, I thought I would look at some of the most obvious reasons why whatever happened back in 1947 was not the crash of a "nuts-and-bolts" alien spacecraft (or two, as Stanton Friedman and a couple of others assert).

The first reason, and the one that makes the most sense (which means you will never hear Stan discuss it), is what I call the "U.S. Marine" factor, namely that you never leave a man on the field... or, in this case, a crashed spacecraft with highly advanced technology that, were I an alien concerned about these pesky humans (as Friedman suggests is likely), I would not want to fall into their hands, under any circumstances.

Friedman often describes the supposed alien spacecraft as excursion modules, that are sent out from a "mothership", which is what the aliens would have travelled between the stars in (he makes this observation in my film Best Evidence, for example). This is a sensible observation if one is to credit the ETH with any degree of plausibility.

However, Friedman ignores the implications of this scenario when he deals with Roswell, or any other crashed alien spacecraft case that he favours (which would have to include the supposed El Indio crash that is referenced in the MJ-12 documents that he promotes).

If there was a mothership, surely they would have moved to recover any crashed excursion module as quickly as possible, a process which, considering the advanced technology that the aliens must possess in order to get "here" from "there" is something that they would have accomplished before Mack Brazel discovered the debris field and then alerted the military, even if that involved simply disintegrating the debris field so as to leave no trace behind of the crash.

The alternative is that the aliens were willing to leave their advanced technology in the hands of a species that Friedman claims was beginning to pose a potential threat to them (A-bombs, advanced radar, rockets, and so forth). That is patently ridiculous.

Friedman's reasoning when it comes to Roswell is internally inconsistent, and contradictory. He wants to have it it both ways:

- the aliens are advanced enough to get here, but are then highly accident prone, to the point, in Friedman's scenario about Roswell, that they crashed two spacecraft at roughly the same time (the other being on the Plains of San Agustin, in western New Mexico).

- the aliens are concerned about we humans, and the prospect of our taking our brand of "friendship" out there (i.e. militarism), but they are willing to leave highly advanced alien technology in our hands, with the concomitant risk that it may be reverse-engineered and someday used against them.

- the aliens travel from other star systems in large, aircraft-carrier like motherships, and use excursions modules to explore the Earth, but when an excursion module crashes, they don't have a procedure to immediately recover it or destroy the evidence.

Does any of this make any logical sense?

No.

Will Friedman ever provide an answer to these questions?

No, because he can't... at least not in a way that makes sense in terms of the explanation for the 1947 Roswell event that he favours, and has spent the last three decades promoting, to the detriment of serious scientific research into the nature of the UFO phenomenon.

Paul Kimball

14 comments:

Mac said...

Huh?

There are any number of reasons an alien intelligence might leave hardware in the desert.

For instance, maybe Roswell (if alien, and there's certainly a good case that it wasn't) was a deliberate plant. (I know Friedman and Randle aren't keen on the idea, but that doesn't invalidate it.)

The "military"/"aerospace" terminology in which so much of contemporary ufology is couched needs to go. It's symptomatic of the Keyhoe-ism you rightly deride.

Paul Kimball said...

Mac,

One has to go with the most logical and plausible answers, not the ones that contain the most "mights" - particularly when one wants to employ a consistent line of reasoning. If the aliens are here to monitor our development, and are concerned about our technological progress, as Friedman and others suggest, then it makes no sense that they would just leave advanced hardware in the desert to be discovered by us. If, as you imply, "they" wanted to leave a deliberate plant, then there were easier ways to do besides crashing a spacecraft in the desert, along with a couple of dead crewmen.

That's not Keyhoe-ian thinking. That's common sense... human, and alien! ;-)

Paul

Don Maor said...

Paul,

Good questions indeed. Let's try them.

First: The existence of the Roswell incident does not mean that ETs are "highly prone" to accident. They just had an accident. I estimate that we humans have a number on the order of the hundred of aeronautical accidents per year, if not more. May be the two ET ships crashed in the air one against other, or may be simply there was only one ship, not two. Eisenhower Briefing Document does not mention San Agustin crash, for instance.

Second: May be when the ship crashed, the technological positioning element used to find the location of the craft from the mothership, was destroyed during the crash, or malfunctioned due to high energies produced during the crash.

Third and most important: The fact that there may be some strange things in the Roswell story, and the fact that Friedman, or others, have not yielded an answer for them, does not mean that Roswell did not happen. In science, the presence of a paradoxical finding does not mean that the finding is useless, on the contrary, it is the beggining of a new branch of scientific work.

Best
Don Maor

Paul Kimball said...

Don,

In science, you do not base your conclusions on "maybe" - Friedman asserts that an ET spacecraft crashed at Corona, and that another crashed at San Agustin. That's two. He also supports the contention that one crashed at El Indio, because he supports the MJ-12 docs, and that crash is mentioned there - but not, as you pointed out, the San Agustin crash, which should be another one of those red flags, and is certainly one of those contradictions that Friedman routinely dodges.

Of course, none of this means that an alien spacecraft didn't crash near Roswell... but the burden of proof is on the proponents of that contention, and they are nowhere near meeting that burden, despite their claims to the contrary. Indeed, when one points out the contradictions in their position, it can be seen that the much more likely answer is that whatever happened at Roswell had nothing to do with ET.

Paul

Mac said...

Paul--

One has to go with the most logical and plausible answers, not the ones that contain the most "mights" - particularly when one wants to employ a consistent line of reasoning. If the aliens are here to monitor our development

Whoah -- stop! You're already jumping the gun with the whole "monitoring our development" thing. Why is a B-movie cliche necessarily more "logical and plausible" than other possibilities?

If, as you imply, "they" wanted to leave a deliberate plant, then there were easier ways to do besides crashing a spacecraft in the desert, along with a couple of dead crewmen.

Unless you're one of the aliens, I'm inclined to disagree. For sake of argument, let's say Roswell was a plant. First of all, why leave "real" alien bodies? Some fabricated ones would do just fine.

For that matter, why bother ditching state-of-the-art technology, assuming ufonauts even use "technology" in our sense of the word? The main purpose might be to announce their reality in a context that suggests they're fallible and empirically understandable . . . even if they're not.

That's not Keyhoe-ian thinking. That's common sense...

It may not be hard-core Keyhoe-ism, but it's not far off. At the very least it's emphatically ETH.

Paul Kimball said...

Mac,

As I noted at your blog, I think you missed my point. I'm not adopting that reasoning myself... I was pointing out that if you do adopt that line of reasoning, like Friedman, then you have to deal with all of the possible angles, and in the case of Roswell, if you adopt the nuts-and-bolts alien crash line, then you're stuck with all of the contradictions and inconsitencies in logic that point to a different conclusion as being more plausible.

Paul

NickJones said...

Some random comments...

"...'Mac' Brazel discovered the debris field and then altered the military..."

(sigh) If only that were true...

"If, as you imply, "they" wanted to leave a deliberate plant, then there were easier ways to do besides crashing a spacecraft in the desert, along with a couple of dead crewmen."

Operation Mincemeat, UFOnaut style?

Greg said...

Paul:

I do believe Nick was pointing out a typo on the article. (Altered/Alerted).

Paul Kimball said...

Greg,

D'oh! ;-)

Ray Palm (Ray X) said...

On the topic of Roswell, I have to agree with Supreme Commander Jim Moseley:

"You'll never find out the truth about Roswell; it's buried under too much bullshit."

Ray

The Secret Sun said...

This is an interesting debate. I have a question though: why are you assigning human motivations to aliens? How do even begin to speculate on what their behavior might be?

There are a lot of interesting researchers who I think tend to weigh down their research with speculation. I had the pleasure of meeting Jacques Vallee and listening to two talks he gave to a small group at a symposium and he said he makes no assumptions about the UFO phenomenon at all anymore. He seemed to think that the more he's researched on the subject the less he understands. Which makes sense if this is alien phenomena and not some sort of military chicanery or whatever.

NickJones said...

I second the Supreme Commander.

Anonymous said...

Maybe it was a one way trip. Maybe they didn't have the tech to get back fast enough to retreive the wreck. maybe they couldn't communicate or knew where it crashed. We have no idea how advanced they were. Maybe not enough funding to get back.

Anonymous said...

If it was aliens how do know they are emotional beings. Maybe they just leave there commrades and continue their mission.
Bob