Human Space Exploration: Broken Dreams or Secret Schemes?

"…… America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus–Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.”

On 14th December, 1972, Eugene Cernan, lifted himself back into the Apollo 17 lunar module and became the last human being to leave another world. Four decades have since passed.

Broken Dreams

Since the Apollo program was prematurely wrapped up in the early 1970s, humanity has played safe in space, launching nothing more than shuttles and small space stations into a near earth orbit, with human beings on board. The USA does not even possess a space shuttle in working order these days having de-commissioned the last in 2011.

Space Shuttle Endeavour makes it’s way through the streets of LA- Oct 2012


Europe, India, Russia and China also have space programs but man’s early dreams of visiting the solar system have been dashed by problems down on Earth, limited vision, restrictive budgets, shuttle disasters and the knowledge and fear of the danger that lies beyond the Earth’s atmosphere to our fragile bodies.

Whilst we may appear to have plans to go to the moon and beyond once again they are somewhat long term strategies with little commitment to acting in the present day. Kennedy’s objective to put a man on the moon within a decade seems totally beyond us in the teenage years of the 21st century. 50 years of rapid technological change have seemingly dampened our aspirations in space. If anything we’ve gone backwards.

The future didn’t always have to be this way …………

There are even some who say that a clandestine human program, involving alien technology means the present is not all it seems to be either. That’s for later though.

Bold Ambitions

John F.Kennedy addresses Congress 1961

More than 50 years ago on May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy declared his ambition to send an American to the moon and to return him safely to the earth by the close of the decade. Although, sadly, he never saw his dream come to fruition the project was arguably the crowning achievement of humankind.

During the 1960s the sky was not a limit by any means. Plans to land a man on the moon were seen as the beginning of a path that would take us out into the solar system before the end of the 1980s. There was already talk of building rotating interplanetary craft to simulate gravity, an orbital space station around the earth and plans for a permanent manned base on the moon were being requested from organisations like Boeing.

Early moonbase plans

In 1964 Werner Von Braun wrote a small piece for New Scientist magazine. He believed that by the 1980s lunar landings would be commonplace, manned flybys of Venus would have taken place, and that a trip to Mars would be feasible in the 1980s once advances in engines had developed sufficiently. Those predictions were frustratingly and totally wrong. In the same article Werner accurately predicted the growth of commercial satellite use for communications, weather forecasts and even GPS!

 

Other missions to the planets were envisioned by NASA. The satellites of Jupiter were seen as the ultimate goal to conquering the Solar System. The Space Odyssey of 2001, penned by Arthur C. Clarke and brought to life on the silver screen by the glorious cinematography of Stanley Kubrick was very much a realistic dream back in the 1960s.

What Might Have Been

No one recalls Apollo 20’s historic mission to the far side of the lunar surface, the manned flyby of Mercury during America’s Bi-centennial, and the historic walk on the Martian surface in 1989, 20 years after Armstrong left his footprint on the moon.

Manned Martian Landings – 1989 that might have been


No cosmonauts flew around Venus and there was no eventual Soviet/American co-operation on a large scale international lunar base during the Reagan and Gorbachev era.

All these are stories are nothing but a fictional alternative history now. But once upon a time they really might have happened.

Instead the free world got bored with Apollo missions to the moon in the 1970s. The war in Vietnam drained US resources, and, a soon to be disgraced; President Richard Nixon decided that future NASA budgets were to be concentrated on building space shuttles and unmanned probes instead.

The Soviet Union, having launched the first artificial satellite, put the first man, woman and dog into space also changed strategy in the 1970s. The moon race was over and so they too focused on their orbital Salyut and then Mir space stations and sent remote probes to Mars and Venus.

Whilst robot probes were sent out to the planets, discovery of exo-planets made and shots from the Hubble telescope have been fantastic, the 1980s, 1990s and the early 21st century were littered with a series of cancelled projects and fatal shuttle accidents. They became 3 decades of broken dreams for human exploration of space. The ISS was little more than a consolation.

However there are those who believe that the true story of human exploration of space has gone much faster and much further than our history books tell us.







>>>> continued in part 2

part 2 >>>>

Secret Schemes

There are a number of theories that the public space projects we know about are simply a front to hide a more advanced and clandestine program. A program ran by an elite human group that interacts with off-planet civilizations and aliens. The Cosmic Mafia if you like.

The “Breakaway Society” theory, a phrase coined by UFO historian Richard Dolan and others, has gained ground in recent years. But does it really have any substance to it?

Richard Dolan

Dolan believes that this breakaway began shortly after an extra-terrestrial craft crashed in the heat of the desert near Roswell in 1947. The United States military recovered alien bodies and technology. They then had to deal with the awkward issue of ‘others’ out there and an uncomfortable realisation that we really were not alone in the universe.

With tensions growing with the Soviet Union after World War II, and Orson Wells radio adaptation of War of the Worlds having caused mass panic less than a decade before, the one thing the US government decided very early on was to not let this secret out. A study group was formed outside of normal government committees. The secrets of recovered alien technology became buried within a concealed structure of national security agencies and a private military industrial complex.

He backs up his theory by stating that the US government operates almost totally in secret.

Consider. The Library of Congress adds roughly 60 million pages to its holdings each year, a huge cache of information for the public.However, also each year, the U.S. Government classifies nearly ten times that amount – an estimated 560 million pages of documents. For scholars engaged in political, historical, scientific, or any other archival work, the grim reality is that most of their government’s activities are secret.
www.keyholepublishing.com...

Some 65 years after Roswell, Dolan believes that this initial group is no ordinary military organisation. He says:

I believe that members of the breakaway civilization are recruited from the militaries of several nations. It appears that the U.S. Navy is a key provider of personnel. But wherever they come from, they work under deep cover, below many layers of deniability. Those of them who have families give no hint to their spouses and children what they really do, which is to monitor and somehow deal with the presence of these other beings. Obviously, these people are lifers. Even after they retire, they are never truly out.
www.keyholepublishing.com...

Ed Komarek

Another proponent of the theory, Ed Komarek says:

It really started around 1954 when the Eisenhower administration and its Generals first officially met with benevolent human ETs, but would not concede to their conditions of contact. Those conditions included the stopping of atomic testing and the getting rid of such weapons of mass destruction that threatened to destroy humanity on earth. Instead it was decided to get involved with less ethical ETs, the Greys, that did not have such conditions, and so the more advanced ETs backed off and let our leaders exercise their right to choose for better or worse.

This was a very bad mistake in my opinion for our leaders chose the path of darkness out of fear, setting us down a dangerous and painful path. The Bilderberg group was formed in 1954 and pretty much took over control of the official contact experience at the great expense of the general public.

www.examiner.com...

 



>>>> continued in part 3

it was a very interesting thread
until you mentioned richard dolan

part 3 >>>>

Through the 1950s it is alleged that various compartments of the United States government, military and security services, along with trusted American allies and perhaps even the Soviet Union were involved in creating the breakaway human civilization. Apparently the clues are out there, hidden in plain view, you just have to find them.

In 1958 Popular Science magazine published a short article suggesting that the US were intent on using the moon as a military base.



The following year Project Horizon was instigated with a hint that it should be kept as secret as the Manhattan Project. Preparation for a “War on Terra” perhaps?

There is a requirement for a manned military outpost on the moon. The lunar outpost is required to develop and protect potential United States interests on the moon; to develop techniques in moon-based surveillance of the earth and space, in communications relay, and in operations on the surface of the moon; to serve as a base for exploration of the moon, for further exploration into space and for military operations on the moon if required; and to support scientific investigations on the moon.
“….The establishment of the outpost should be a special project having authority and priority similar to the Manhattan Project in World War II”

www.astronautix.com...

 

Alternative 3

In the late 1970s Leslie Watkins took the theme further and wrote a whole novel based on the ideas of a TV programme.

He starts the book…

The frighteningly erratic behaviour of the climate over the past few years...Unidentified Flying Object activity at an all-time peak...the continuing pollution and despoliation of planet Earth by overpopulation and industry...the mounting incidence of unexplained disappearances of people in mysterious circumstances...horrendous new killing techniques including spontaneous combustion - used by government assassins against those who pose a threat to the security of an ultra-secret organization...terrifying advances in mind control by agencies like the CIA and their use in creating a class of mindless human-robot slaves...astounding revelations of clandestine collaboration in space between the USA and the USSR over a period of decades...bizarre features observed on the Moon and Mars - but for some reason barely mentioned in the media...
The transcript is now available free of charge in text form, and as a pdf here. archive.org...

Science Report : The ITV programme that launched a thousand conspiracies

The 1977 United Kingdom TV show Watkins used as his inspiration, “Science Report” was broadcast on Independent television investigating the issues of global warming. The conclusion was that the Earth faced terminal damage from mankind’s constant plundering and destruction of the environment and that this had been known since the 1950s. The only alternatives were to ;

1. Reduce the human population.

2. Build underground shelters for a select few.

3. “Alternative 3” was to move the best and brightest humans beings to the moon and then finally settle on Mars.

The show talked of a brain drain of scientists that were missing. It also showed ‘evidence’ of a joint USA/Soviet Union expedition to Mars back in the 1960s.

The one off edition was an entertaining spoof (intended for broadcast on April fools day), and Watkins novel a work of science fiction. But there were and still are many who believe that the concepts it highlighted were real. The book “Casebook on Alternative 3: Ufo's, Secret Societies and World Control” by Jim Keith claimed that many of the themes of the 1977 broadcast were in fact true.

Watkins even wrote to Nexus Magazine (Vol 6. No 4.) commenting on how a work of fiction had been totally misinterpreted. Conspiracy theorists claimed he’d uncovered the real truth and was backtracking after threats from the CIA.



Just as a number Roswell conspiracies began in the late 1970s I believe that Alternative 3 has become a major catalyst for the “Breakaway Civilization” theories despite being fiction. The mid 1970s were a period of economic recession, rising fuel prices, and fears over future fuel and food supplies in Britain. Much of this is being seen globally today and followed by similar conspiracy stories.

You can view the whole of the programme here and make up your own mind (if you have time):



>>>> continued in part 4

>>>> part 4

Did Ronald Reagan Know About A Secret Space Program?

By the 1980s abductions, huge black flying triangles, MJ12, Dulce, Bob Lazar, Area 51 and the misinformation and disinformation stories coming out of the US alphabet agencies were all beginning to merge into a variety of multiple conspiracy stories.

Ronald Reagan

In Sep 1987 President Ronald Reagan made a very public address to the United Nations and the world.

I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us? What could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our peoples than war and the threat of war?

Source : www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag44dRO8LEA

Reagan held an interest in the UFO topic and some think he knew a lot more about the “alien threat” as he made other references to it in less high profile circumstances. Researcher Jim Nichols even claims Reagan was briefed by “The Caretaker”, a secret operative who was long term custodian of UFO secrets. Reagan was allegedly told that there was a UFO cover up, partially to protect our own secret technology and partly to avoid mass panic. The President was informed we were being visited by various alien species, some of which were hostile.

The Internet Age

In the 1990s, the late Ben Rich, former chief of Lockheed Skunk Works (and creators of the Stealth Fighter) was being quoted by popular UFO researchers like Timothy Good.

Ben Rich
Here are a couple of things Rich had to say on humanity’s galactic transport capabilities back in the 1990s and shortly before he himself left this world.

We now have the technology to take ET home. No, it won’t take someone’s lifetime to do it. There is an error in the equations. We know what it is. We now have the capability to travel to the stars. First, you have to understand that we will not get to the stars using chemical propulsion. Second, we have to devise a new propulsion technology. What we have to do is find out where Einstein went wrong.

"We already have the means to travel among the stars, but these technologies are locked up in black projects and it would take an Act of God to ever get them out to benefit humanity...Anything you can imagine, we already know how to do."

xenophilius.wordpress.com...

How on Earth could any government fund such enterprises and keep them secret ? OK we know about the Manhattan Project but time has moved on since then.

Donald Rumsfeld - the $6 trillion man

The answer that always comes back is that somewhat suspiciously, a day before 9/11,at the National Press Club, US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld admitted to the media that:

"According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions."
www.youtube.com...

Gary Mckinnon – British hacker and inhaler of illicit herbal products

Then there is the controversial case of Gary McKinnon, a British citizen, who for more than a decade has been fighting against his extradition to the United States. Mckinnon hacked into Pentagon and NASA computers looking for hidden evidence of UFOs in 2001. In an interview with the Guardian Newspaper in 2005 Mckinnon said:

I found a list of 'fleet-to-fleet transfers', and a list of ship names. I looked them up. They weren't US navy ships. What I saw made me believe they have some kind of spaceship, off-planet………..That's what this trickle of evidence has led me to believe.
www.guardian.co.uk...

Unfortunately Mckinnon made no copies of what he alleges to have seen on screen and also admitted to frequent marijuana use during this time. However the relentless pursuit of his extradition by the United States Justice Department suggests that they consider the matter very seriously indeed and may even believe McKinnon knows a lot more than he has currently revealed.

>>>> continued

Failure to Launch

Human space exploration has often stalled and spluttered since the Apollo landings. Technological developments have led to safer, cheaper and smaller unmanned missions to the outer solar system and Mars but we still rely on the same propulsion technology we used decades ago. One day however, if our species is to survive, we will have to leave our cradle here on Earth or we will go the way of the dinosaurs.

To believers in the Secret Space Program - we are being denied cheap, clean energy, advances in life preserving medical techniques and our place in a galactic federation. Progress in propulsion methods have been made long ago with exotic ET technology and even alien assistance. Whilst a small band of elite humans live a life amongst the stars with unlimited wealth, most of the human population are slowly being bled dry in an Age of Corporate Neo-Feudalism.

There are many pointers to a Secret Space Program and Breakaway Society that I have omitted. Others may wish to pick up those topics for further discussion.

However a lot of its premise belongs in folklore and science fiction. In fact the 1980s movie “They Live” is very close to the ideas that people like Richard Dolan talk of. So it is quite easy to dismiss all of it as the musings of paranoid, conspiracy theorists who have watched too many movies and too much TV down the years. Contradictory to this theory are the many conspiratorial claims that we didn’t even reach the moon in 1969.

But is there just enough amongst these stories to make you think to yourself; “…is there a secret space program?”
 

Sources & References

www.keyholepublishing.com...

www.wired.com...

spaceflight.nasa.gov...

www.space.com...

www.hq.nasa.gov...

richardthomasblogger.blogspot.co.uk...

www.popsci.com...

jimnicholsufo.net...

www.astronautix.com...

www.whale.to...


www.airspacemag.com...

Originally posted by xszawe
it was a very interesting thread
until you mentioned richard dolan

You are perfectly entitled to air your dislike of Dolan's views on his Breakaway. I don't agree with most them either. But you could have waited until I'd finished the thread!!

wow

as for the title, i go with - secret schemes

Originally posted by mirageman

Originally posted by xszawe
it was a very interesting thread
until you mentioned richard dolan

You are perfectly entitled to air your dislike of Dolan's views on his Breakaway. I don't agree with most them either. But you could have waited until I'd finished the thread!!

very sorry about that
i was reading it but assumed you had finished
my apologies

I am more than intrigued! have you thought about condensing all this material into a youtube video?

reply to post by xszawe


No worries mate.


There are so many conflicting theories and I didn't even mention the likes of Bill Cooper, the strange shuttle/UFO incidents and of course the Nazi space program.

Personally I believe that there are some secret programs but that we don't have colonies on the moon or Mars.

I'd be interested to know what you think?

Originally posted by gaurdian2012
I am more than intrigued! have you thought about condensing all this material into a youtube video?

edit on 13-10-2012 by gaurdian2012 because: (no reason given)

It never crossed my mind and I am not really up to scratch creating video to be honest. I don't really know if enough people would watch. But it's an interesting thought that I will bear in mind.

Insightful post
S+F

Reagan held an interest in the UFO topic and some think he knew a lot more about the “alien threat”

And may have quit acting to go into Politics after an encounter with aliens

“the Gipper” never would have given up his acting career in Hollywood and run for political office if he did not have an encounter with an extraterrestrial being.

This happened when

he’d been on the way to a party with wife Nancy when a UFO landed and an alien emerged telling Ron to quit acting and take up politics,

www.wnd.com...
Will we ever know what is hidden from humanity

Cran

Originally posted by mirageman
reply to post by xszawe

 

Personally I believe that there are some secret programs but that we don't have colonies on the moon or Mars.

I'd be interested to know what you think?

I understand your question was not directed at me, but I just could not resist.....How do you know we don't have colonies on the moon, mars and beyond. you are pretty new around here check the archives look for naval space command. You need to go a little deeper down the rabbit hole

Originally posted by gaurdian2012

Originally posted by mirageman
reply to post by xszawe

 

Personally I believe that there are some secret programs but that we don't have colonies on the moon or Mars.

I'd be interested to know what you think?

I understand your question was not directed at me, but I just could not resist.....How do you know we don't have colonies on the moon, mars and beyond. you are pretty new around here check the archives look for naval space command. You need to go a little deeper down the rabbit hole

Fair question - It's just my opinion that we don't have colonies on the moon or Mars based on what I've so far seen and heard.

Nothing so far convinces me we have secretly colonized the moon. But I do have an open mind on these things and something may change that opinion one day. I am fairly new joining ATS - yes - but I have been a long time loiterer, reading many threads before I took the plunge and joined up.

There are some topics I know more about than others. I am also old enough to remember the days when there was no internet and you had to get a lot of this information from books, magazines and the occasional TV programme. I can even remember the days of Skylab and the end of the Vietnam war. Hence my frustration with the Space Program since Apollo finished.

This thread is just BS.

Dolan and Nexus magazine should ring alarm bells to those who have been around this subject for more than a few years.

Nexus magazine is just a snake-oil publication run by a scammer out of Queensland in Australia.....It's all about dollars to Duncan.

As for the topic .....do the morons who put this garbage forward actually research the subject?

Every time the space shuttle would have a mission....my wife (and sometimes the kids) and I would leave my scanner on to listen in to the SW transmissions of the shuttle missions. These transmissions are picked up by people like myself and rebroadcast in the UHF band for anyone with an appropriate receiver.

Let me repeat myself for clarity.......ALL NASA MISSIONS ARE BROADCAST IN SUCH A WAY THAT ANYONE CAN LISTEN IN ON THE CONVERSATION.......No encryption......just a nice analog signal that anyone can tune in to.

Seems rather counter-intuitive for an agency to be conducting "secret schemes"( ) to broadcast their communications on an open channel.

But I suppose logic gets thrown out the door when dealing with conspiracy theorists.

Star for you. Nice thread layout.

The main part that I feel that you have somewhat overlooked is the budget is approved by Congress, and we all know that congressmen are to worried about their monetary gain and not gains meant for all human kind.

This is why NASA has become the way that they are. It is not about us friend, it is about themselves.

Corporate Congress sucks, just ask NASA(off the record).

Originally posted by OccamAssassin
This thread is just BS.

Dolan and Nexus magazine should ring alarm bells to those who have been around this subject for more than a few years.

Nexus magazine is just a snake-oil publication run by a scammer out of Queensland in Australia.....It's all about dollars to Duncan.

As for the topic .....do the morons who put this garbage forward actually research the subject?

Every time the space shuttle would have a mission....my wife (and sometimes the kids) and I would leave my scanner on to listen in to the SW transmissions of the shuttle missions. These transmissions are picked up by people like myself and rebroadcast in the UHF band for anyone with an appropriate receiver.

Let me repeat myself for clarity.......ALL NASA MISSIONS ARE BROADCAST IN SUCH A WAY THAT ANYONE CAN LISTEN IN ON THE CONVERSATION.......No encryption......just a nice analog signal that anyone can tune in to.

Seems rather counter-intuitive for an agency to be conducting "secret schemes"(

) to broadcast their communications on an open channel.

But I suppose logic gets thrown out the door when dealing with conspiracy theorists.

I neither endorsed Nexus (I quoted a letter from it that heavily criticised some of the wackos that believed in Alternative 3) and threw doubt on Dolan's claims.

So before you call me a moron I'd invite you to spend a little more time reading the whole thread again as you seemed to have failed to grasp the point I made at the end of the thread.

reply to post by mirageman


Whether of not these theories have any merit, you've done a great job writing and putting together this thread my friend. I look forward to your next one.

reply to post by mirageman


I'm very sorry if you thought I was calling you a moron .......I was reserving that for the people that put these theories forward.

I want to state very clearly for you .....I don't think your a moron .... I have another label for people like yourself ...."Those gullible enough to listen to morons".