Where would you put your money to further scientific study of the UFO phenomenon?

Hypothetical: You've acquired a very large amount of money over your lifetime, or you inherited a large sum and decided to invest most of it into the field of ufology. What would be the best way to spend it? For arguments sake, lets say a minimum of $100 million...


Would it be best spent spreading it around to the various legitimate researchers, or funding one extensively?

Or how about starting your own research company, and what would you do differently?

Could you buy off politicians to have them push for disclosure, or fund your own politician?

How about an extensive system of cameras, covering all the different spectrums and placed at known/supposed ufo hot spots. Have all the resulting info secretly funneled to some private collection location to avoid hijacking...

Would a strong documentary aired repeatedly over major networks in prime time be an asset, or would it hurt?


Curious as to what you all think. I'm really not sure what I'd do. Maybe a combination of a few different things...


[edit on 23-3-2010 by Toxicsurf]

[edit on 23-3-2010 by Toxicsurf]

I'm not sure the money would change anything, although I would start with dismantling the Special Operations Coordinating Committee. Money is one thing. Power is another. No amount of money would buy the kind of legislation required to disband current NSA and Military Industrial Complex protocols on keeping the ET technology under wraps...

..you would need brute force and strength in numbers...so I suppose I would channel the money into building an army...The United Technological and Truth Recovery Force!

[edit on 23-3-2010 by NightVision]

1) Hire lobbyists to get the government to fund UFO research, disclose any info, and support a reporting system that doesn't demonize eye-whitnesses.

2) Start a fund to promote exploration of mars and moon anomalies.

3) Create sensor outposts on earth, mostly in the ocean, with multiple cameras operating in multiple light spectrums, as well as radar, and laser range finders. Make them autonomous and have them take a close look at anything they see in the sky.

Simply put:

Expedited mission to mars.

I would invest in few mobile radar systems with GPS and state of the art full spectrum cameras.

Then id buy an old militray plane and turn it in to a reconaisance plane and have it stationed at the airport closest to where ever i was sweeping for that month. Ready to be deployed as soon as it gets the call.

Id also make a secret reciever so i could hear military chatter to try and get some clues that way. This would also help debunk any military craft.

reply to post by Toxicsurf


In my point of view, nothing you said would work or be reliable enough to spend such amount of money. When we do an investment we expect to have some return with this investment and fund an existing ufology research group or fund one of your own will bring you nothing new, just the same answers and evidences we always see. It will never get us to the point were we definetly discover what the UFOs may be, it will just bring, as I said, the same 'evidences', pictures, videos, noises, lights and maybe even more questions than answers.

The best bet, in my opinion, is to invest this money in some kind of space exploration program for the only purpose of search any traces of UFOs and try to discover if they are extraterrestrial spacecrafts and if who pilot these spacecrafts are some kind of inteligent extraterrestrial race. But in this case, it would be difficult to encounter someone crazy enough and with money enough prepared to take a BIG risk and shoot in the dark...

Also, I think you should change your thread title to "Where would you put your money to further scientific study of the UFO phenomenon?"

Thank you.

Originally posted by One Step Beyond...
reply to post by Toxicsurf

 

In my point of view, nothing you said would work or be reliable enough to spend such amount of money. When we do an investment we expect to have some return with this investment .....


Also, I think you should change your thread title to "Where would you put your money to further scientific study of the UFO phenomenon?"

Thank you.

Well, I just threw out a few ideas and was looking for more. I almost put in a disclaimer when I used the word "investment" for the exact reason you cited..

Good idea on the thread name change...

After I fugured out a way to get the show "UFO Hunters" off the air, I would put the money into debunking. Precise scientific investigation of a sighting using aknowledged proceedures. Start by using the term "UFO" correctly. The Cleveland incident is a good example. The people there saw an actual UFO. There was something flying in the sky that they couldn't identify. That is the literal meaning of UFO. Once it was investigated it was determined to be aircraft. If after an investigation a cause couldn't be determined then it would be an "unexplained event" or some other acceptable term. I watched the local news (Western Pennsylvania) and saw the eye rolls that the commentators gave when discussing the Cleveland event. Right now as soon as somebody says UFO people start thinking tin foil hats and Thorazine. As soon as somebody says UFO, credability goes right out the window. Do you think that somebody who watched the same news broadcast as I did, is going to tell somebody that they saw something? Until some credability is established anything else is wasted. All it takes is one moron to start yelling "little green men" and game over.

I'd try and grab as many researchers from Russia as possible.

I remember years ago reading about how the Russian philosophy differs from the West's. We tend to focus on proving that something is possible, they focus more on proving that it isn't.

It may not make alot of sense at first glance, but if you have the mindset that anything can be done until it's proven otherwise you are going to go alot further (and in different directions).

There are entire branches of science studied in Russia that no respected western scientist would even speak about let alone devote their life to.

I remember when the ISS was in the planning stages, the Russian Space Agency submitted their cosmonaut suit for testing along with the supporting paper work. The investigators openly stated two things about the Russian design after reviewing it:

1) The technical literature/specifications made absolutely no sense what-so-ever

2) The suit worked exactly the way the Russains said it did.

[edit on 23-3-2010 by [davinci]]

I'd put it into Anti-Gravity Drive research...

1) Assuming the development of nuclear technology attracted the aliens in the 40's, it seems probable the first activation of such a devise would likewise serve as a beacon for them to come and check it out...

2) Assuming a degree of success, I could get a return on the investment.

3) Might lead to other discoveries, such as a way to do interstellar communication. (for all we know, the universe uses such a communications network, so all the SETI scans in the world won't find it)....

Originally posted by JIMC5499
Start by using the term "UFO" correctly.......... something flying in the sky that they couldn't identify.

It would help to clarify this by separating unidentified flying object, from unidentifiable flying object. Whether it's unidentifiable due to not enough facts/info to ever make a determination (just a bad photo, lights in the sky, etc), or it couldn't possibly fit within known parameters of current flying craft...

Undentified meaning that the research hasn't started or isn't done yet on what is being investigated....

Precise scientific investigation of a sighting using acknowledged procedures.

That right there may be much of the problem, "acknowledged procedures". If we only look at the unknowns through our previous experiences we are not looking forward, but backwards. Time to look "outside the box", and that doesn't mean buying into all the outrageous and fringe theories, but re-frame our approach and try looking with a different set of glasses....

[edit on 23-3-2010 by Toxicsurf]

no offence - but i would not spend a peny on ` ufo research `

i would spend the money on social improvements in the UK [ CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME ]

why ? because the entire area of " ufo research " is utterly pointless [ in my opinion

it is not going to change anything

Originally posted by Toxicsurf
Hypothetical: You've acquired a very large amount of money over your lifetime, or you inherited a large sum and decided to invest most of it into the field of ufology. What would be the best way to spend it? For arguments sake, lets say a minimum of $100 million.

I'd buy out all the Chinese Lantern manufacturers worldwide and shut them down. I'd then ensure nobody else started such a business by making it worth their while not to.

TC

Well, i guess i would start by funding my own politician and getting him into an influential position.

Step 2 would be to vie for him to pull strings to start a government conspiracy, in order to make people believe that the government is responsible for carrying out the very ufo coverup that the conspiracy believers accuse them of.

Once i managed to make public suspicion fall on the heads of the politicians and military, i would track down and hire some COINTELPRO FBI old timers, and have them train some of the physicians that will no doubt be rendered jobless by Obama's healthcare reform, in Project MK-ULTRA techniques. Then, i would trade them to Iran in exchange for nuclear weapons.

Step 3 is smuggling the the warheads into Egypt and holding the world at ransom. Once the money has been transferred into my offshore accounts, i would proceed to purchase Microsoft and Google. Finally all i have to do is get rid of Bill Gates, Al Gore and Michael Jackson (he isnt really dead), and i should be home free to take over the World.

...

Wait, what was i supposed to do again?
Sorry, i get carried away sometimes.

Ok, jokes aside, i think the best way to invest those 100 million would be buying state of the art equipment (cameras, radar, ladar) and hiring a few experts (im thinking scientists and engineers) and sending them to several ufo hotspots; have some journalists tag along as well.
Also, try to keep it low profile, both from the eyes of humans and from the perspective of the hipotetical aliens.
Just get some relatively solid proof, then turn it into a viral publicity campaign.

Sorry for the double post.

Originally posted by Toxicsurf
Where would you put your money to further scientific study of the UFO phenomenon?

Well, I would probably invest in the pharmaceutical industry, any company working on a promising anti-psychotic medication. And, I would fund some study that would look for the cause why so many people will see mysterious lights in the sky which they can't identify, and then jump to possibility #742 on the list of possible explanations for those lights. (btw, #742 is "It MUST be ALIENS in a SPACESHIP from ANOTHER WORLD!" .. lol)

There must be a genetic malfunction in the human mind to cause its own logic processors to mess up like THAT. Medical science should be able to cure this UFO phenomenon. Maybe we can kill two phenomenon with one pill if the solution could also solve the ghost malfunctions too.

Q: Why don't we just pay the aliens to land here?

A: They only take Alien Express.


buh-dum-psssshhhhh

$100m in the hands of UFO researchers would result in a huge amount of anti-science, in my opinion. If I were going to fund a realistic effort to detect extraterrestrial presence, I'd send up more and better space-borne thermal imaging telescopes, so that a complete sky survey could be conducted with high resolution, and very rapidly. As some of you might know, stealth in space is impossible, so there is no way extraterrestrial space craft could slip by without being detected, if we were actually looking for them.

I might invest in the study of the psychological aspects of the ufo phenomena. I think the best approach would be to do statistical studies with existing UFO sighting databases. One question I'd like answered: What influences which details a UFO witness recalls, and/or decides to include in a sighting report.