The Demon-Haunted World_ Science as a Candle in the Dark - Carl Sagan [48]
Mystery Aircraft report,
Federation of American Scientists
20 August, 1992
Aurora is a high-altitude, extremely secret American reconnaissance aircraft, a successor to the U-2 and the SR-71 Blackbird. It either exists or it doesn’t. By 1993, there were reports by observers near California’s Edwards Air Force Base and Groom Lake, Nevada, and particularly a region of Groom Lake called Area 51 where experimental aircraft for the Department of Defense are tested, that seemed by and large mutually consistent. Confirming reports were filed from all over the world. Unlike its predecessors, the aircraft is said to be hypersonic, to travel much faster, perhaps six to eight times faster, than the speed of sound. It leaves an odd contrail described as ‘donuts-on-a-rope’. Perhaps it is also a means of launching small secret satellites into orbit, developed, it is speculated, after the Challenger disaster indicated the shuttle’s episodic unreliability for defence payloads. But the CIA ‘swears up and down there’s no such programme’, says US Senator and former astronaut John Glenn. The principal designer of some of the most secret US aircraft says the same thing. A Secretary of the Air Force has vehemently denied the existence of such an airplane, or any programme to build one, in the US Air Force or anywhere else. Would he lie? ‘We have looked into all such sightings, as we have for UFO reports,’ says an Air Force spokesman, in perhaps carefully chosen words, ‘and we cannot explain them.’ Meanwhile, in April 1995 the Air Force seized 4,000 more acres near Area 51. The area to which public access is denied is growing.
Consider then the two possibilities: that Aurora exists, and that it does not. If it exists, it’s striking that an official cover-up of its very existence has been attempted, that secrecy could be so effective, and that the aircraft could be tested or refuelled all over the world without a single photograph of it or any other hard evidence being published. On the other hand, if Aurora does not exist, it’s striking that a myth has been propagated so vigorously and gone so far. Why should insistent official denials have carried so little weight? Could the very existence of a designation - Aurora in this case - serve to pin a common label on a range of diverse phenomena? Either way, Aurora seems relevant to UFOs.
6
Hallucinations
[A]s children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things children in the dark hold in terror...
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things
(c. 60 BC)
Advertisers must know their audiences. It’s a simple matter of product and corporate survival. So we can learn how commercial, free-enterprise America views UFO buffs by examining the advertisements in magazines devoted to UFOs. Here are some (entirely typical) ad headlines from an issue of UFO Universe:
• Senior Research Scientist Discovers 2,000-Year-Old Secret to Wealth, Power, and Romantic Love.
• Classified! Above Top Secret. The Most Sensational Government Conspiracy of Our Time Is Finally Revealed to the World by a Retired Military Officer.
• What Is Your ‘Special Mission’ While on Earth? The Cosmic Awakening of Light Workers, Walk-Ins, All Star-Born Representatives Has Begun!
• This Is What You Have Been Waiting For. 24 Superb, Incredible Life-Improving UFO Seals of the Spirits.
• I Got a Girl. Do You? Stop Missing Out! Get Girls Now!
• Subscribe Today to the Most Amazing Magazine in the Universe.
• Bring Miraculous Good Luck, Love, and Money into Your Life! These Powers Have Worked for Centuries! They Can Work for You.
• Amazing Psychic Research Breakthrough. It Takes Only 5 Minutes to Prove that Psychic Magic Powers Really Work!
• Have You the Courage to Be Lucky, Loved and Rich? Guaranteed Good Fortune Will Come Your Way! Get Everything You Want with the Most Powerful Talismans in the World.
• Men in Black: Government Agents or Aliens?
• Increase the Power of Gemstones, Charms, Seals and Symbols.