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How Elon Musk and the US Could Establish a Martian Government

January 2, 2021
ExoNews Editor

Article by Adam Smith December 24, 2020 (independent.co.uk)

• NASA has announced plans for the Artemis Moon mission to establish a lunar base in 2024, followed shortly thereafter by actual inhabitants. And NASA anticipates a manned mission to Mars by 2033. On the other hand, Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, plans to send the first SpaceX craft to Mars by 2022, with humans following within the next four to six years. Musk envisions people living in glass domes as they terraform Mars to support life.

• Musk and SpaceX are already laying the groundwork for a Mars colony. A section of the company’s ‘Starlink’ satellite internet service user agreement states: “For services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via Starship or other colonization spacecraft, the parties recognize Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities. …Accordingly, disputes will be settled through self-governing principles, established in good faith, at the time of Martian settlement.”

• Is this a joke, or is it the beginning of a Mars constitution based on existing legislation? Current law resides in the 2020 Artemis Accords and the 1957 Outer Space Treaty. A section that reads: “Outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means,” is meant to prevent outright “land grabs” by Earth nations. Lawyer Randy Segal points out that, “The whole of space law contemplates that those of us on this planet share the rights and responsibility to make space something we can all share together.” Segal suggests that Musk could be trying to lay some groundwork for offering up an independent constitution, just like he did for electric cars and reusable launch vehicles. Does it have any legal precedent or enforceability? No. But it could start a conversation about how legislators should go about planning for a Mars constitution.

• In 2016, Musk said his intentions for a Martian government would be a direct democracy, where people vote on the issues themselves rather than through politicians. “[I]t would be people voting directly on issues,” said Musk. “[T]he potential for corruption is substantially diminished in a direct versus a representative democracy.”

• Noting that SpaceX’s goal is to send hundreds of thousands of people to Mars until they have established a truly sustainable colony, SpaceX General Council, David Anderman, expects to “impose our own legal regime” on Mars within our lifetime and “faster than you think.” But it will be “interesting to see how it plays out with terrestrial governments exerting control,” says Anderman.

• Legally, Musk has more of a chance of creating a community rather than an independent colony. A ‘community’ would operate under the governance of the United States. It could be that, in the future, legislators will see the need for a constitution that governs the entirety of Mars, rather than having laws split into geographical jurisdictions. Experts suggest that that the most beneficial Martian government will be one that is eventually decided on Mars itself.

• Professor Von der Dunk, a space law expert at Nebraska College of Law, thinks that it is prudent to determine how legal conflicts should be addressed in space. But companies such as Space X and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin can only go so far. While companies may set the agenda, it will ultimately be up to governments to decide whether to adopt it.

• Bezos envisions millions of people in living in bucolic Martian cities with farms and rivers and universities. But Bezos is taking an intentionally slower approach to space than Musk, and has no opinions on Martian constitutions or legislation.

• An example of how to fashion Martian laws could come from Earth’s mining communities, where Congress was happy to sanction local mining laws as long as they did not conflict with those of the United States, says space lawyer Scot Anderson. There is a human impulse to create stability through the law. An early legal framework could be applied to the entirety of Mars in a way that could not be done on Earth. Legal experts say it is likely that once the first community is established on Mars, it would seek to self-regulate fairly quickly due to the difficulties of interplanetary communication.

The moment when the first human sets foot on Mars is becoming ever-closer. The 140 million mile

distance between Earth and the Red Planet is set to be breached within the next two decades, Nasa predicts.

Just recently, the space agency announced its plans for its Artemis moon missions – aiming to take place in 2024 – which could establish a lunar base on the Moon as a stepping-stone before the first planetary spacewalk.

For some, however, simply taking the first step on an alien planet is not looking far enough into the future. Once a community is set up on Mars, discussions will need to be had about exactly how it is governed and functions. Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, is one of those people planning for such a future, and seems to already be setting the groundwork in the terms of service of the company’s current products.

In the user agreement for the company’s satellite internet service Starlink, one particular paragraph stands out: “For services provided on Mars, or in transit to Mars via Starship or other colonisation spacecraft, the parties recognise Mars as a free planet and that no Earth-based government has authority or sovereignty over Martian activities,” the governing law section states.”

“Accordingly, disputes will be settled through self-governing principles, established in good faith, at the time of Martian settlement.”

SpaceX did not respond to multiple attempts for more information from The Independent, but experts suggest that the addition of this segment could actually have two purposes: the first is that it is a joke; the second is that it is laying groundwork for a Mars constitution – based on how permissive the existing legislation for space exploration actually is.

The section Musk has added is “a bit of tongue in cheek with his contracts… referring to this Martian constitution he’s going to be drafting,” according to Randy Segal, of the law firm Hogan Lovells. “He’s trying to include in his commercial terms… how you’re going to comply with applicable law.”

The applicable law here are the 2020 Artemis accords and the 1957 Outer Space Treaty (by which signatories of the Artemis Accords say they will abide). Amongst that legislation includes the line: “Outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.” As a result, these treaties stop space exploration becoming a “land grab”, as Segal describes it.

However, the regulations are, in general, “motherhood and apple pie” Segal says – an American phrase to mean something that no reasonable person could disagree with, such as the provisions of transparency, interoperability, and emergency assistance with regards to space exploration.

“The whole of space law contemplates that those of us on this planet share the rights and responsibility to make space something we can all share together,” Segal says.

“Generally, if a clause is unlawful you would read the rest of the contract to be enforceable and standing alone. He has added a section relating to Mars services (which is not being provided today, so has no effect),” but in five or 10 years “he can revise his contract.

“I don’t know that a provision like this other than being humorous and anecdotally noteworthy is something that does anything to the rest of the contract at all. He could be trying to lay some groundwork for offering up an independent constitution… just like he did for electric cars and reusable launch vehicles. Does it have any precedent or enforceability? The answer I’d say is clearly no; but if you say something enough, people might come around.”

While Musk’s contracts might not be legally potent (or“gibberish”, as one professor deemed them), they are likely to start a conversation about how legislators should go about planning for a Mars constitution. This is something that SpaceX’s General council, David Anderman, is seemingly already looking into.
“Our goal is to be able to send 1,000 starships with 100 people in them every two years,” Anderman said, according to Business Insider.

“We’ll start with 100, then a couple hundred, then 100,000, then a million until we have a truly sustainable colony. It will happen in my lifetime. Faster than you think.”

He also said he expected SpaceX to “impose our own legal regime,” but that it would be “interesting to see how it plays out with terrestrial governments exerting control.” Anderman did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Independent before publication.

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Fargo’s Famous UFO in the Skies Above a Football Game in 1948

January 2, 2021
ExoNews Editor

Article by Tracy Briggs December 20, 2020 (brainerddispatch.com)

• In the early evening hours of October 1, 1948, George Gorman (pictured above), a 25 year old WWII veteran and flight instructor from Fargo, North Dakota was flying his P-51 Mustang along with a squadron of other pilots in the North Dakota Air National Guard. Part of their flight path took them over the North Dakota Agricultural College football field where the NDHC Bison were playing the Augustana Vikings. Kickoff was 8 pm.

• About a half hour later, most of the pilots flying decided to call it a night, but second lieutenant Gorman wanted to get in more flying time. Gorman was flying about two and a half miles from the football field when an air traffic controller told him about a small Piper Cub in the area. He acknowledged the smaller plane about 500 feet below, but a few minutes later, he spotted something else. Gorman said it was a “flying disk,” round with well-defined edges, brilliantly lit and circling slowly over Fargo. He called it on to the airfield tower, but their radar was not picking it up.

• When Gorman decided to get closer to the object, it suddenly got brighter and shot away. He estimated it was flying around 250 miles an hour, but accelerated to 600 miles an hour. Gorman’s plane could only fly about 400 miles an hour, so he lost the object. But it came back and flew right at him. “When the object was coming head on, I held my plane pointed right at it,” Gorman said. “The object came so close that I involuntarily ducked my head because I thought a crash was inevitable. But the object zoomed over my head.” The aerial encounter lasted 27 minutes.

• With the clear weather conditions, the fans at the football game might have seen flashes of light, not unlike heat lightning. They also might have heard the sounds of Gorman’s plane and the object. But researchers haven’t been able to track down any fans or players who were there that night, even though the Bison did break a nine-game losing streak.

• Recently declassified US Air Force documents include a diagram Gorman drew of what went on in the air that night. (see below) UFO historian Richard Dolan says the detailed drawing tells us a lot. “It shows you’ve got an experienced, seasoned World War II fighter pilot who is dealing with a ‘light phenomenon’ that is clearly outperforming his aircraft.” Gorman was so shaken after the incident that he had trouble landing the plane. He told The Fargo Forum it was “the weirdest experience I’ve had in my life.”

• Gorman told his commanding officer what happened. The incident was referred to Air Force intelligence. USAF investigators arrived in Fargo on October 4th and interviewed the two air traffic controllers in the tower that night as well as the pilot of the Piper Cub, a local physician. All of them corroborated Gorman’s account. In Gorman’s written statement, he wrote that he was convinced there was “definitive thought” behind the object’s maneuvers and that the UFO could go faster, turn tighter and climb steeper than his aircraft. The Air Force concluded the UFO was a combination of the planet Jupiter and a weather balloon. When Gorman insisted it wasn’t a weather balloon, the Air Material Command warned him not to divulge any further information or he would be subject to a court martial.

• For the rest of his military career, Gorman refrained from talking about what came to be known as the “Gorman dogfight”, one of the most infamous and credible UFO sightings on record. The incident was even featured on the History Channel show, “Project Blue Book” in 2019. Gorman’s military career took him to bases in Italy and throughout the US. He retired as a lieutenant colonel and died in the early 1980s in Texas at the age of 59.

FARGO — It’s almost as though Fargo Forum Sports Editor Eugene Fitzgerald had a tiny crystal ball sitting

beside his typewriter in the smoke-filled newsroom that day in the fall of 1948 when he wrote his headline for Oct. 1: “Aerial Display Likely in Bison-Augustana Game Tonight.” Of course, in this case, “aerial display” referred to Fitzgerald’s prediction that the game would feature more passing than rushing.

NDSU won that night 14-6, hardly a show of aerial dominance. Nonetheless, Fitzgerald’s headline turned out to be strangely prophetic as there was a pretty spectacular aerial display in the sky that night. It became the subject of a U.S. government investigation, the files of which have only recently been declassified and open for the public to see.

It’s come to be known as the “Gorman dogfight” and is one of the most well-known 20th century UFO stories. It’s also one of the most credible, considering the man who claimed to see the flying saucer was an accomplished World War II pilot and at least three other witnesses were experienced aviators.

For years, reports of what happened that night came from the eyewitnesses and Gorman himself. But now that the files have been declassified, more details have emerged. The incident was featured on a History Channel show called “Project Blue Book” in 2019.
Who was George Gorman?

According to columnist Curt Eriksmoen, who wrote about Gorman in The Forum in 2011, Gorman was born July 7, 1923, to Norbert and Roberta Gorman. He grew up in Fargo, where his father was a Cass County agent. During World War II, Gorman became a B-25 instructor for French aviation students. When the war was over, he returned to Fargo and was employed as the manager of a construction company.

When the North Dakota Air National Guard formed at Fargo’s Hector Airport on Jan. 16, 1947, Gorman joined the squadron as a second lieutenant.

What exactly happened Oct. 1, 1948?

Gorman was flying his P-51 Mustang with other guard pilots in the early evening hours of Oct. 1, 1948. Part of their flight path was over the old Dacotah Field where the North Dakota Agricultural College Bison football team played its games. According to North Dakota State University Assistant Athletic Director Ryan Perreault, the field was slightly south of the current Dacotah Field.

“Dacotah Field at that time was located adjacent to Churchill Hall in the center of campus where the Memorial Union and A. Glenn Hill Center now sit,” Perreault said.

He said kickoff was 8 p.m. that Friday night.

About a half hour later, most of the pilots flying decided to call it a night, but Gorman wanted to get in more flying time. According to a story in The Fargo Forum dated Oct. 3, 1948, Gorman was flying near Hector Field, about two and a half miles from the football field, when an air traffic controller told him about a small Piper Cub in the area.

He acknowledged the smaller plane about 500 feet below, but a few minutes later, he spotted something else.

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Colorado Springs UFO Group Attempts to Contact ETs

January 1, 2021
ExoNews Editor

Article by Heidi Beedle December 23, 2020 (csindy.com)

• When Mike Waskosky was 21 years old, he believed that there wasn’t anything to the UFO phenomenon. Then he came across Steven Greer’s Disclosure Project’s May 9, 2001, press club event on YouTube. The 2001 Disclosure Project press conference featured testimony from a number of former and retired military personnel, serious men who claimed to have witnessed undeniable proof that an advanced, non-human intelligence had visited the planet and at times even interfered with military equipment. Seeing sober-faced career military men describe unexplainable phenomena set Waskosky on a mission. “I completely did a 180 with my life after I realized I had no way of explaining all of this incredible testimony,” says Waskosky. “After I watched that two-hour presentation, I realized …I have to research everything to get to the bottom of it.”

• Waskosky’s dive into UFO research led him to Dr. Steven Greer, a medical doctor turned UFO researcher who founded CSETI (the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence), and Greer’s ‘CE-5 protocols’ to initiate contact with aliens and summon UFOs through meditation. In 2006, Waskosky attended Greer’s ‘Cosmic Consciousness’ training in Joshua Tree National Park, California. This weeklong training session focused on meditation practices, remote viewing training, and fieldwork at a cost ranging from $2,500 to $3,500. Although Waskosky admits to not actually seeing any ‘lights in the sky’ that week, he did hear strange tones in the desert. His fellow students claimed to have seen mysterious beings suddenly appearing and disappearing.

• When Waskosky returned home to Irvine, California, he kept up with the meditation training under the stars. “I was strongly desirous of having contact and not getting anything,” he says. But when he allowed himself to project forgiveness towards someone with whom he had been having a ‘personal situation’, he suddenly felt a feeling of love. “[W]hen I felt that forgiveness, I saw this massive flash and then (I saw) this light appear and quickly move across the sky,” says Waskosky. “I don’t hear many people with CE-5 experiences describing this level of interaction, but this has been very consistent for me now.” “When I’m in a really positive state… they will appear as either a stationary bright flash of light… or they’ll appear as what you could call a shooting star, but they move in different directions and turn.”

• Waskosky moved to Colorado Springs where he connected with other CE-5 enthusiasts. They would go out to a field and practice the protocols together. The closest they came to a contact phenomenon was a light appearing on the ground, in the distance, behind trees. “In my opinion it’s like they’re trying not to scare anyone,” he says. “I think people might be freaked out by too much contact.” This year, Waskosky’s monthly meetings were held on Zoom. They discuss things like ayahuasca experiences, past-life regression, childhood abduction experiences, the true nature of objective reality, and traditional UFO conspiracies.

• The principles behind the CE-5 protocols tapping into human consciousness has its roots in research conducted by the Stanford Research Institute and the US Army. Remote viewing is the practice of sensing unknown or distant targets with the mind, and recording those impressions for a variety of applications. During the Cold War, the DIA and the Army recognized the potential intelligence value of “psychic spies,” and conducted research into the phenomenon, building on the work started at the Stanford Research Institute in 1972 by Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff. The DIA/CIA closed the ‘Project Stargate’ program in 1995, claiming the work of remote viewers was “vague” and “general,” despite some prominent operational successes such as the 1976 locating of a downed Soviet spy plane.

• Debra Katz is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of West Georgia, and a remote viewer herself. Katz studied with remote viewer Michael Van Atta and has done research with the International Remote Viewing Association, a group founded by Targ, Puthoff and other veterans of Project Stargate. Katz says remote viewing is a skill that can be honed with time, patience and practice, and she teaches a 12-week, $1,200 course on remote viewing.

• “It’s a lot of work to do remote viewing,” says Katz. “Even with the people who aren’t showing great results, if they hang in there and really practice a lot and push themselves, I’ve had students that have blown me away.” But remote viewing isn’t an exact science, and a lot of the information she gets is vague and general. “Let’s say a target was a pyramid. You might just see one corner of the pyramid, or you might just see a triangle, but you’re not even sure. It could be a whole complete image, or a part of an image.” “[I]t doesn’t always seem to be consistent.”

• For devoted UFOlogists, such vague conclusions are the norm. It’s a “science” with enough credible evidence to spark intense curiosity, but often with frustratingly bizarre “answers” that are easily dismissed by skeptics. Still, says Waskosky, “It’s a life-changing thing to have an experience you know absolutely, one hundred percent, this is something paranormal.”

UFOs are back in the news after Haim Eshed, the former head of Israel’s Defense Ministry’s space directorate, told

**2001 Disclosure Project press conference**

Israel’s Yediot Aharonot newspaper that UFOs belong to a “galactic federation” and that President Donald Trump was on the verge of revealing their existence to the public.

Here in Colorado Springs a group claims to be able to make contact with extraterrestrial intelligences using meditation and thought projection. While such claims might seem far-fetched to lay people, the principles behind the practice — the untapped potential of human consciousness — has its roots in research conducted by the Stanford Research Institute and the U.S. Army.

CE-5, or close encounters of the fifth kind, named after famed UFO researcher J. Allen Hynek’s classification scale, is a set of meditation protocols developed by Dr. Steven Greer, a medical doctor turned UFO researcher, that he claims allows humans to initiate contact with aliens — to essentially summon a UFO. Every month a group of Colorado Springs residents, led by Mike Waskosky, meets to discuss all things UFO, meditate, and potentially bear witness to strange lights in the sky.

Waskosky’s trip down the UFO rabbit hole began after he was presented with what he saw as credible evidence for the existence of UFOs.

“When I was 21 years old I had no belief in UFOs. I was in the mindset there wasn’t anything to it,” he says. “The documentaries I had watched weren’t really convincing. I randomly came across Steven Greer’s Disclosure Project’s May 9, 2001, press club event on YouTube. I completely did a 180 with my life after I realized I had no way of explaining all of this incredible testimony. It was so shocking to me that there was so much out there that wasn’t on TV, that there was so much documentation. After I watched that two-hour presentation, I realized if that’s true, if this isn’t just a big hoax, I have to research everything to get to the bottom of it.”

The 2001 event Waskosky watched on YouTube featured testimony from a number of former and retired military personnel, serious men who were trained to fly cutting-edge aircraft or to operate nuclear weapons, who claimed to have witnessed, to them, undeniable proof that an advanced, non-human intelligence had visited the planet and at times even interfered with military equipment. Seeing sober-faced career military men describe unexplainable phenomena set Waskosky on a mission.

“I listened to 15 hours of audio from the Disclosure Project testimonies,” he recalls. “I started downloading everything I could from conspiracy websites, and I just did tons and tons of research. That led me to the point where I believed there’s definitely something to it, so maybe I should see what else Steven Greer is into. That led me to discovering his organization, CSETI [Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence], and then five months later I attended their ‘Cosmic Consciousness’ weeklong training in November 2006. That was in Palm Springs and Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California.”

Greer’s weeklong training sessions, which range from $2,500 to $3,500 depending on facility costs, focused on meditation practices, remote viewing training and fieldwork, or actually trying to summon alien beings through meditation.

1:40:36 Corey Goode and Mike Waskosky 12-28-20 (‘SphereBeing Alliance’ YouTube)

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Former Senator Harry Reid Says US Government is Covering Up UFOs

January 1, 2021
ExoNews Editor

Article by John Vibes December 19, 2020 (anewspost.com)

• Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (pictured above) is the Congressman credited with initiating the $22 million pentagon UFO research program, the ‘Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program’ in 2007. So he’s had an interest in the UFO topic for a long time. In the documentary titled “The Phenomenon,” Reid said that UFOs and potential alien activity have been covered up by the government for years. “Why the federal government all these years has covered up, put brake pads on everything, stopped it, I think it’s very, very bad for our country,” Reid says.

• When asked again about UFOs in a recent interview, Reid said, “Do we have all the answers? Absolutely not. But at least we know that thousands of people have reported these unusual occurrences over the decades. And as I have said, we cannot ignore what’s going on. Russia, China and France are all working on this. And I hope that we will pick up the ball and continue to work on this.”

• Regarding video footage taken of UFOs engaging with US Navy aircraft pilots, flying around 30,000 feet in the air at hypersonic speeds and showing no visible engines or exhaust plumes, Reid said, “I’m happy that the Pentagon now allows its pilots to report these unusual occurrences. In the past, pilots have been afraid to acknowledge them because it could hurt their promotions. So I think the federal government is doing better at recognizing it’s something we have to stay on top of. And we have better cameras now with the aircraft, and we’ve got pictures we didn’t have before.”

• Earlier this year, the Pentagon announced the formation of a new UAP Task Force to study UFOs after the military acknowledged that pilots were encountering aircraft that might not have been made by humans. Leaked photos recently posted by The Debrief, showing a metallic object hovering 35,000 over the Atlantic Ocean, off the eastern coast of the United States in 2018 were reportedly studied by the task force. The aircraft was an “unidentified silver cube-shaped object”. They suggested that the craft could be “non-human,” “alien” or other “intelligences of unknown origin.”

• As reported in December, retired Israeli general Haim Eshed claimed that the United States and Israeli governments have been in contact with extraterrestrials for many years, but have not revealed this information to the public because they feel that the average citizen is not ready to know.

In a new documentary titled “The Phenomenon,” Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said that UFOs and

potential alien activity have been covered up by the government for years.

“Why the federal government all these years has covered up, put brake pads on everything, stopped it, I think it’s very, very bad for our country,” Reid said in the documentary.

The former Senate majority leader has taken an interest in the topic for a long time and even obtained $22 million in taxpayer dollars to study UFOs through the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program while he was in office.

In a recent interview responding to questions about his belief in UFOs, Reid said, “Do we have all the answers? Absolutely not. But at least we know that thousands of people have reported these unusual occurrences over the decades. And as I have said, we cannot ignore what’s going on. Russia, China and France are all working on this. And I hope that we will pick up the ball and continue to work on this.”

He also commented on the footage that was taken of UFOs engaging with US Navy aircraft pilots.

In the footage, the objects are flying around 30,000 feet in the air at hypersonic speeds and showing no visible engines or exhaust plumes typical of any known aircraft currently on Earth.

“I’m happy that the Pentagon now allows its pilots to report these unusual occurrences. In the past, pilots have been afraid to acknowledge them because it could hurt their promotions. So I think the federal government is doing better at recognizing it’s something we have to stay on top of. And we have better cameras now with the aircraft, and we’ve got pictures we didn’t have before,” Reid said.

1:07 minute video of Harry Reid on UFOs from ‘The Phenomenon’ (‘1091 Pictures’ YouTube)

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Ohio Man Shares UFO Experience

January 1, 2021
ExoNews Editor

Article by Stacy Turner December 23, 2020 (weeklyvillager.com)

• In 2017, an Ohio man referred to only as “Joe” was on his way home from the 3rd shift at his job in Garrettsville when he noticed strange lights above a field. He stopped to try and take a few photos on his flip phone to show his wife. Joe captured lights from what he identified as two distinct aircraft (pictured above). He recalls being mesmerized as the two craft seemed to signal to each other by the use of the lights which blinked alternately to each other, as if communicating. When a third larger craft appeared between the two, Joe felt the need to leave. “I wanted to get out of there — it was getting too crowded,” he joked.

• About a year later, driving through the same area, Joe noticed some intense lights in a wooded area in distance. “They appeared to be looking for something,” he said. He stopped his truck to get a better look. From the distance, he thought he spotted figures. Once again, he tried to capture photos on his flip phone. A bright light illuminated the inside of his truck, and made him cover his eyes. But he managed to fire off a series of photos on his phone (to be revealed in part two of Joe’s story). The photos show the intense movement of a charm that hung from the rear view mirror, even though his truck was parked. But Joe noted that he wasn’t afraid, and didn’t feel like he was in danger. He showed the photos to his friends and family on the tiny screen of his flip phone, but after a time, he forgot about them.

• It wasn’t until he began the task of deleting old photos and contacts from his trusty flip phone about a year ago that he came across those photos again. When he and his wife downloaded the photos to a computer to get a closer look, they were astonished at what they saw in the background… to be continued.

• According to the Mutual UFO Network, or ‘MUFON’, UFOs have been investigated over the years by governments, independent groups, and scientists. The mystery surrounding UFOs has historical roots in the early 19th century when unexplained “ghost fliers” were spotted in Europe and North America. During the 1930s, numerous “ghost rockets” were reported in Scandinavia.

• During the Second World War, airmen reported seeing “mystery airships” or “foo fighters” while in flight. After the war in 1947, aviator Kenneth Arnold reported spotting a “flying saucer” near Mt. Rainier, Washington, bringing the concept of flying saucers to the public forefront during late 1940s and early 1950s. During the Cold War, US, British, Canadian, Danish, Italian, and Swedish governments all collected reports of UFO sightings. Although the US government says it officially shut down its $22 million UFO study program, the ‘Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program’, in 2012, the Pentagon recently announced launching a new ‘UAP Task Force’.

• Organizations around the world continue to collect information from amateur astronomers and regular folks who happened to be in the right place at the right time to view an unexplained event in the sky. The National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), documented nearly 3,000 sightings reported in Ohio in 2020 alone. In fact, the organization listed Ohio in the top five states for reported UFO sightings, after California, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Florida.

At the close of this year, even the most positive among us has had trouble dealing with 2020. With a global pandemic changing the way we live, political upheaval, racial divides, and an election fraught with venom and strife, even the threat of murder hornets don’t faze us after all that 2020 has dumped on our doorsteps. So learning about how a local man’s experiences point to the fact that we’re not alone in the universe may just be the icing on the cake of the year that made us question every other area of our lives.

You may be surprised to learn that the subject has a name — UFOlogy, which is noted as the array of subject matter and activities associated with an interest in unidentified flying objects (UFOs). According to the Mutual UFO Network (mufon.com), UFOs have been subject to various investigations over the years by governments, independent groups, and scientists. The non-profit 501-C.3 organization that was founded in 1969 notes that the mystery surrounding UFOs has historical roots in the early 19th century when unexplained “ghost fliers” were spotted in Europe and North America and numerous “ghost rockets” were reported in Scandinavia during the 1930s.

**Kenneth Arnold and the flying ‘saucer’**

During the Second World War, Allied airmen reported seeing “mystery airships” or “foo fighters” while in flight. After the War ended, aviator Kenneth Arnold reported spotting a “flying saucer” near Mt. Rainier, Washington in 1947. Media hype following this report brought the concept of flying saucers to the forefront of the public eye during late 1940s and early 1950s as a result. During the Cold War, US, British, Canadian, Danish, Italian, and Swedish governments have each collected reports of UFO sightings, although most governmental programs have been officially reported to be shut down as recently as 2012, although US Defense Department allocated $22 million on the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program in 2017.

Organizations around the world continue to collect information from amateur astronomers and regular folks who happened to be in the right place at the right time to view an unexplained event in the sky. One such US organization, the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), documented that nearly 3,000 sightings were reported in Ohio in 2020 alone (nuforc.org). In fact, the organization’s information compiled in 2018 listed Ohio in the top five states for reported UFO sightings (after California, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Florida.)
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Year: 2021

How Elon Musk and the US Could Establish a Martian Government

Fargo’s Famous UFO in the Skies Above a Football Game in 1948

Colorado Springs UFO Group Attempts to Contact ETs

Former Senator Harry Reid Says US Government is Covering Up UFOs

Ohio Man Shares UFO Experience