ZUBRIN CLAIMS OBAMA IS ENDING UNMANNED MARS MISSIONS

Cutting Through the Bunk. There appears to be a deliberate effort made by a number of people with access to Mars photos to portray items that pertain to life or standing water that can be debunked with relative ease. It is not unreasonable to think that the same authorities that hide the truth about the Roswell UFO are also out there sowing disinformation about Mars that makes it easy to debunk claims about life there. As such, again, each claim must be examined based on its own merits. Our Government has a long history of trying to get people to throw the baby (UFOs) out with the bathwater (weather balloons). This process appears to be at work with respect to Mars. And at the focus of this attempt today, sadly, is the same guy that's killing America's space program, President Obama. On April 30, 2011, at the White House Correspondent's Dinner, Obama mocked Donald Trump for bringing up the issue of which country Obama was born in. What was scary was that in describing Trump's legitimate concern, Obama linked it with the Roswell UFO. The specific joke made at 10:10 into the video was as follows:

“Donald Trump is here tonight. And I know that he’s taken some flak lately. But no one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than ‘The Donald’. And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter. Like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell?"

       There remains reason to believe that Obama's birth certificate was photo-shopped. Even Obama's grandmother says she was in the delivery room with Obama when he was born in Kenya. Obama linking his birth with the Roswell UFO, which generals (like General Thomas Dubose - see video) and astronauts have said was real, appears his way to be mocking Americans for having been fooled so easily. So what can we do? Those with the talent to do so must take on each part of the puzzle one piece at a time. In this family that piece is Martian air pressure. We know that the Mars Society has a standing policy to prohibit UFO talk, but they do allow presentations about science fiction at their conventions. They need to rethink their priorities, but ensure that anything UFO-related gets the scrutiny that I showed in this article about some of the Mars photos out there. We will never get to the truth by promoting blanket censorship of these issues. There may be justifiable reason to keep the truth from the public (like  Dr. Brandenburg's nuclear explosions on Mars and the fear this knowledge may cause). But in the end, if there are aliens out there running around with nukes, and deals are being cut between our Government and them, we have a right to know the cost of those deals.

       Why do I distrust our Government on the issue of what I know about Mars? Why did I encourage my son to look very closely at the data we have from the Red Planet? The answer goes beyond the obvious problems with Martian weather forming at near vacuum pressures. It lies in part with a UFO that I saw with my own eyes on my 10^th birthday in May, 1957. But it also lies with what people in key positions have told me since then. The first of these people is a distant relative who is now deceased – Stan Gross, a NASA Test/Launch Conductor. I first met Stan on December 24, 1997 at an uncle’s apartment. My Uncle (let's just call him Uncle E. here) is also deceased now. He was the man that I had the most respect and love for throughout the bulk of my life. He lived across the street from my house when I was a child.

Moving Beyond Statistics to People - The Roswell Incident.  Stan Gross was one of the pioneer test launch conductors listed at an annual fall gathering at Patrick Air Force Base in 2004. When I first met him back in 1997, he was already ready retired. Most of the evening we discussed how my older son (then an MIT geophysics major in Air Force ROTC) might be accepted into the astronaut program. But about 10 PM that night I asked a question that would alter my perception of reality. I wanted to know what Stan thought about Roswell and the alleged UFO crash there. His answer, without any hesitation, was "It happened."

        I asked him, "What do you mean?" And he repeated, "it happened?"

        I asked, "Are you saying that an alien ship crashed at Roswell?"  He shook his head to indicate that "yes" was the answer.

        I pushed for more.  "How would you know?"

        His answer was, "I saw it." 

        "When?" I asked? 1964 was his answer.

        "Where?" I wanted to know. "Too classified, I can't tell you," he replied.

        "Why were you shown it?"

        Stan said he had "a need to know." He seemed to imply that if there was a UFO near a launch, he would have to cancel the launch because we did not know the intentions of its occupants. Bad weather downrange would serve as a good excuse. At this point I called a cousin and my older son into the kitchen where Stan had just made his revelation. I asked him to repeat to them what he told me. He did.

       I asked him, "Was this a unique encounter, or does our Government have other such events that it's covering up.  He told me that there was "an ongoing relationship between our Government and these beings.

       "Are they friendly or hostile? I asked. His answer was, "You don't know what your neighbor is thinking." It reminded me of a neighbor that I once had in Hypoluxo, Florida. We each smiled and said hello to each other every day. But he was often seen picking through everyone's garbage cans looking for credit card numbers, and even trying to see in through a balcony to figure out whether he could rob our apartment; and we were often in the office trying to get the guy evicted (which happened after he broke into a boat at the property).

       "Did you ever tell your wife about the Roswell event?" I asked. "No, I didn't want to upset her," was his response. If this guy was Joe the bartender, his claims would not have affected me or my family at all. But Stan was a man in the position to know what he was talking about, and he risked a good bit by telling us about it. He wanted to tell us more, but he was afraid to do so. The full list of Test/Launch directors linked to above is as follows:

J. Adamoli, R. Adcock, S. Albrecht, Max Applegate, Harry Armer, Sy Baker, Ernie Baldini, John Baldwin, Jack Balter, Glen Baxter, Ron Benetti, Greg Billman, Bob Bourne, Roy Bridges, Willie Brown, F. Carey, Norm Carlson, J. Carpenter, Ed Chandler, Skip Chauvin, Dewey Childs, Tom Chitty, Ed Christiansen, John Churchwell, C. Cicchetti, Bud Conti, John Conway, John Copeland, J. Coryell, Art Crosswell, Bob Danner, frank Dassi, K. DeFazio, Clay Dennis, Bill Dickenson, E. Dillon, Paul Donnelly, Chris Fairey, Cal Fowler, Pete Gannon, N. Geso, Arnie Gilmore, Larry Gooch, M. Goodkind, Bert Grenville, Stan Gross, Willie Gray, Wade Guest, J. Gurr, Jim Harrington, J. Harris, D. Harris, F. Hays, Jim Hazelton, Hap Headlough, Dick Henry, Bobby Hillbert, John Hilliard, Bob Hinson, Lyle Holloway, Tim Holt, Dale Holzen, John Hovis*, John Hungerford*, R. Hunter, Tom Honeywill, Mike Jacobs, Ken Jenizek, Jerry Johnson, Walt Kapryan, Jim Kelley Elliot Kicklighter, Tom Kitchens, Chuck Kuhlman, Adrian Laffitte, J. Lewis, John Lundy, M. Lynch, John Mansur, Dom Martinelli*, Charley Mars, John Martin, Don Martin, Tom Martin, Billy Melton, Frank Merlino, J. Milby, Gary Miller, Jack Moline, Bob Moser, E. Munnell, Tom Munro, Darrel New, John Neilon, Ed O’Connor, Digger O'Dell, Al O'Hara, Rod Olson, Richard (Dick) Olson, T.J. O'malley, Max Peacock, Wayne Penley, Ron Phelps, Don Phillips, Andy Pickett, G. Pierce, Bob Pound, Gary Powers, D. Poye, Jim Pugh, J. Ralph, Orion Reed, Ernie Reyes, Ike Rigell, Ray Roberts, Dan Sarokan, Art Sawyer, Bill Schick, Dan Schmidt, Jim Schofield, Bob Seick, Gene Sestile, Ron Shane, Ken Shipe, Jim Shotwell, John Simms, Mac Slocum, Ed Stephenson, Ken Stewart, J. Storms, D. Striby, Angelo Taiani, Tip Talone, R. Terhune, Roy Tharpe, Dennis Tharpe*, Gene Thomas, Dick Thornberg, Jim Towe, John Twigg, Frank Watkins, Tal Webb, Fritz Widick, Walt Yager, and Randy Youmans.

Besides Stan, one other name is particularly important in my research, Bob Seick. One of the people that I have interviewed extensively over the past few years is Clark McClelland. Clark was a Space Craft Operator at the Kennedy Space Center. He was qualified to be a backup astronaut for the Space Shuttle in an emergency, but he was fired for too much interest in UFOs, after he claims he viewed a closed circuit TV view of an alien in the Space Shuttle cargo bay on Department of Defense mission. Who fired Clark? On October 16, 2011, Clark told me that it was Bob Seick, who like Stan Gross, was a Test/Launch Conductor.

       But the story does not stop here. It gets really interesting when we go back to how Stan's confession affected my family. I found Stan's remarks to be extremely distressing. For two weeks I could not get his words out of my mind. Finally I decided to call my uncle. When I did, my first question was about whether Stan was playing with a full deck."

        "Why do you ask me that?" Uncle E. asked.

        "Stan said some pretty odds things," I answered.

        "He's a great kidder," my uncle said. "

        "Oh," I said, you know what he said?

     "No," he replied. "What did he say?" So I told him. Now, before telling you his response, I need to tell you that in 50 years of my life until that night, I never once heard him curse before, nor did I ever hear him curse again. But his response then was, "You're a G-damn liar!"

        I was stunned. But my answer to him was immediate.  "If you don't believe me, call your son. He was in the kitchen when Stan said what he did. So was my son." With that, Uncle E. hung up and called his son. About ten minutes later I got a call back from my uncle. This time he was even less like his normal self. "Listen to me carefully," he said. "You heard nothing.  And if you think you heard something, you could wind up dead."  I called my cousin and asked him about what had just happened.

       "You heard Stan say what I heard, didn't you?"

       "Yes," my cousin said, "but I'm going to forget that I heard it." For two years after that, my uncle wouldn't speak with me.

       The next part of the story I cannot be certain of with respect to cause and effect, but here is what happened. At about the time that I heard the warning from my uncle, my older son decided that he didn't want to continue in his major in geophysics at MIT. At my insistence, he did finish his degree, but he shifted his goal away from space and science to the chaplaincy. My son was always very close to me before the kitchen incident revelation by Stan, but our relationship died at about the time I was hearing from my uncle. I have no idea if my uncle ever issued a similar warning to my boy, I only know that after the revelation my son wanted nothing to do with me (or anyone else in our family).

       Now, before going any further, you need to know that like Stan, my Uncle E. was no slouchier. He was the Chief of the Electronics Branch at a major U.S. Arsenal. Just before he died at about age 91 he let me know that he was very much in on the whole Roswell event. He let me know things that he never dared to tell his more immediate family. I won't reveal all of what he told me for reasons related to national security, but I will include some important details below. Before his sister (my Aunt Betty) died at the age of 93, she told me that not only did she know about what her brother did, but he even called her once (in New York) from Philadelphia to tell her that if she went outside right away, she would see a UFO. She went out and did indeed see it, she claimed.

       So what did my uncle tell me? Let me set the stage first. The last time I ever saw him, I had just retired from the Coast Guard at the age of 60. With my wife and younger son, I took my second trip around the world. Then we headed for Florida, and a visit with Aunt Betty first, and to Uncle E. later that day. At each visit I pulled out my photo album to show them where we had been over the last four years since I had seen last them. After showing my uncle the photos, he dragged out his photo album, but it turned out that he didn't want to show me any photos in it. Instead, he wanted me to see one thing and one thing only - Proceedings of the Third International Conference of Nondestructive Testing in Tokyo and Osaka, Japan in March, 1960. At first I had no idea of what his point was at all. But he was insistent that I look very carefully at both the names of participants, (which didn't have any meaning to me) and where they came.

       Who was there from the U.S. Defense Department or U.S. military?  At least 13 men. Edgar Dugger was a Supervisory Materials Engineer from Wright Patterson where the Roswell craft and bodies were allegedly taken. From Los Alamos Dr. Gerald H. Tenney (Groupleader of Nondestructive Testing) and John D. Steely (who was only listed as a staff member). From where atomic and hydrogen bombs were made there was John W. Allen (Groupleader of Nondestructive Testing at Oak Ridge National Lab), Robert B. Oliver (a Research Engineer from Livermore), and Dr. Ronald S. Paul (Manager, Instrument Research and Development Physics and Instrument Development) from Hanford Laboratories. But their presence is not of greatest interest.

       What caught my eye was that there were also Russians and a Polish scientist at the meeting. In fact, there were three  Russians there – Professor Dr. Mikhael N. Mikheev, Director of the Physics Metal Institute in Moscow; Pavel G. Mikhnevitch, Engineer, All-Union Material Institute, Moscow;  Dr. Alexander D. Ivanov, Engineer, Radio Research Institute, Leningrad;  plus a man from Communist Poland -  Professor Dr. Ignacy Malecki, Director, Institute of Basic Technical Problems, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw. This was 1960, at the height of the Cold War. The Warsaw Pact folks were our enemies.  How could our top scientists, men who were devoted to taking apart captured Soviet equipment, be at a conference with their counterparts from the Warsaw Pact to learn how to do the same thing?

      Still waiting to see my uncle's photos (which he never showed me), I asked what his point was. His response, "You're a smart guy.  You'll figure it out." And then it hit me.

       I asked him, "Are you trying to tell me that our scientists and Russian scientists were working together, then, to back-engineer something made by a common threat... like UFOs?"  He didn't say a word at first.  He just smiled and said again as we parted, "You're a smart guy." My wife and younger son heard it all. There were apparently many people like my uncle, folks who wanted the truth to come out before they died. General Thomas Dubose was one such officer. The video link to his comments here has Greek subtitles.

        By the way, of 16 nations that are official International Space Station (ISS) partners, 13 of them had representatives at the conference in Japan (The U.S., Russia, Germany, the U.K. Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Netherlands, Canada, Japan, France, Italy and Switzerland). Only ISS partners Norway, Spain and Brazil were not at the conference in 1960.

SO WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT BOB? First of all, I want to commend Dr. Zubrin for his unparalleled effort to get humanity to Mars. For many years while I taught high school Earth-Space, I not only showed films about him to my classes, but I even tested students about Zubrin's Mars Direct ideas, or at least about the relevent chemistry involved. The problem with the good doctor is that despite his political satire, he needs a lot more political savvy  to get the job done. In reading three of his books, I have the impression that he loves to insult too many people who might otherwise want to help him more. For sure, he knows that there is a deliberate Government plan to keep us from Mars, but I'm not sure that he either knows why or even wants to know why. There is only so much that a person can do. Zubrin has probably learned by now that he can't attract NASA and Jet propulsion Laboratory speakers if he mingles his conventions with material that incurs their wrath. But there does come a point when reasonable people will realize that they are being used, and this I fear is the case with Dr. Zubrin.

       There is an incredible frustration sweeping our nation now. Almost everyone seems to be against the banks and the Government that has brought so many people to financial ruin. Some of the news media try to point out the difference between the Tea Party at one extreme, and the Wall Street protestors at the other extreme. But are they as different as we are told, or do they all suffer from the same malaise, though seeking different means to express it? 

       I had a sinus operation in May last year. For the first time in my life I could breathe easily, thanks to a superb surgeon, Dr. Joseph Mirante in Ormond Beach, Florida. But about two months after the operation I started to notice that I can smell far better than I ever could before. Some of the smells were not so great, like my wife's Korean kimche, or the rotting sea weed on our beach.  Other smells I couldn't localize. I knew that something stunk really bad, but I couldn't identify it be it bacterial, fungal, the chlorinated water, or something wrong with my pancreas that showed up on an MRI (but by trial and error, a probiotic seems to help). The financial and political problems with America today are like that. People know that it stinks, but they're not sure why. My young son and I know that our Mars program (or lack thereof) stinks. We came to Dallas last summer with a diagnosis in hand. We know that at a minimum, the pressure transducers on the Mars Vikings, Pathfinder, and Phoenix landers all jammed with dust while those craft were in the first seconds of their lives on the Red Planet. We knew that there was an established cadre of scientists who had staked their reputations on very low pressures. But what we didn't know was whether the bad data from Mars was by accident, or design. We have challenged the key men to a public debate, but at least one of them was insulted by the challenge. We have placed our data into the hands of JPL via Dr. Ashwin Vasavada at the Dallas Convention, and I have called him to point out that the upcoming Mars Science Laboratory has exactly the same pressure transducer as was used on the Phoenix lander. He sounded like he understood the problem, but never got back to us about it.

      To Dr. Zubrin, Dr. Vasavada, NASA, JPL, and all other involved parties, we are big boys here. We can take your critiques of our report, and we will publish them. But if you cannot or will not address the issues we have raised, then something stinks. For the last two Mars Society Conventions, only one undergraduate student (my son) presented a research paper. Where were all the MIT and Cal Tech students, those at Stanford or UC Berkeley? Why was my son so alone? The answer is, in part, that something stinks. It is the rotting corpse of the American space program. Dr. Zubrin, you have worked too long and too hard to let this go unaddressed. You cannot fight the fight alone. My son graduated with his space physics degree in December, 2011. As there was no change in our nation's policy, he didn't choose to stay in his field. Thus this month he will start on his PhD in theoretical particle physics. In physics there is now a glut of people who cannot find work (see the article entitled Don't Be A Scientist! by University of Washington physics professor Jonathan I. Katz). We think that nothing could be more exciting than the truth about Mars. But until NASA, JPL, and Dr. Zubrin start to examine all the facts and they let us know about their honest analyses, it seems likely that we will continue down the path of putting real space exploration onto the scrapheap of history.