"The UFO topic has gone from the hinterlands of cuckooville to the mainstream with astonishing speed."
I'll come across as cynical here, but it feels like a cycle. Somebody will make a case to take UFOs seriously that breaches mainstream interest for a bit, but then dies down again back to where anyone looking at it is considered in cuckooville. As an adult I think the first big one for me was when someone as serious as Peter Jennings did a big network documentary on UFOs in 2005, but that didn't last. Leslie Kean's book "UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record" was a pretty big deal in 2011, but that was a dozen years ago too.
Sometimes there's some sort of higher-up response, but it either leads nowhere or comes back with information that just makes a story seem even messier, like when in the 90s the military decided that NOW they could claim that everything about the supposed Roswell incident was top secret balloons and dummies.
"but the fact that we’ve got a dedicated agency creating data, testing the science, and reporting to Congress on their findings can only be a good thing, right?"
Maybe? Depends on who's in ultimate control of how things are run and doing the reporting. You can end up with something like the old Condon report, which ended with a vast number of things unexplained but was still summarized as "Nothing to see here!" and so became part of the reason for going back to officially ignoring the topic for decades.
Agree a Condon Report type outcome is a serious possibility. On the other hand, with today's Debriefer article and the subsequent media shitstorm that is likely (?) to follow, I think we're in new territory here. There are a handful of congresspeople who are taking this extremely seriously, from both sides of the aisle. We also know there have been multiple whistleblowers who have testified to AARO and Congressional staff on this stuff. This guy is only the first to go public in what I expect will be a series. Also, for the first time, mainstream, non-governmental science is getting involved (the aforementioned Galileo Project, among others) so if they find compelling data it will be almost impossible to squelch. Finally, because the Pentagon has already admitted these things are real and unexplained, it's going to be very hard to stuff the genie back into the bottle. I guess we'll see.
"The UFO topic has gone from the hinterlands of cuckooville to the mainstream with astonishing speed."
I'll come across as cynical here, but it feels like a cycle. Somebody will make a case to take UFOs seriously that breaches mainstream interest for a bit, but then dies down again back to where anyone looking at it is considered in cuckooville. As an adult I think the first big one for me was when someone as serious as Peter Jennings did a big network documentary on UFOs in 2005, but that didn't last. Leslie Kean's book "UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record" was a pretty big deal in 2011, but that was a dozen years ago too.
Sometimes there's some sort of higher-up response, but it either leads nowhere or comes back with information that just makes a story seem even messier, like when in the 90s the military decided that NOW they could claim that everything about the supposed Roswell incident was top secret balloons and dummies.
"but the fact that we’ve got a dedicated agency creating data, testing the science, and reporting to Congress on their findings can only be a good thing, right?"
Maybe? Depends on who's in ultimate control of how things are run and doing the reporting. You can end up with something like the old Condon report, which ended with a vast number of things unexplained but was still summarized as "Nothing to see here!" and so became part of the reason for going back to officially ignoring the topic for decades.
Agree a Condon Report type outcome is a serious possibility. On the other hand, with today's Debriefer article and the subsequent media shitstorm that is likely (?) to follow, I think we're in new territory here. There are a handful of congresspeople who are taking this extremely seriously, from both sides of the aisle. We also know there have been multiple whistleblowers who have testified to AARO and Congressional staff on this stuff. This guy is only the first to go public in what I expect will be a series. Also, for the first time, mainstream, non-governmental science is getting involved (the aforementioned Galileo Project, among others) so if they find compelling data it will be almost impossible to squelch. Finally, because the Pentagon has already admitted these things are real and unexplained, it's going to be very hard to stuff the genie back into the bottle. I guess we'll see.
Goddamnit I know what orbital means, Charlotte!
*pushes glasses up nose*
I think "orbital" means a trajectory and "spherical" would describe the shape, but I'm too lazy to look it up and confirm.
Fascinating and well-written piece!