Philip J. Corso

Originally posted by plumranch
Don't you think that we are capable of back engineering "Lazar type" propulsion and going out to nearby stars? If we can do that then they could do the reverse and come here using similar technology. Technology of the simpler type that we could back engineer. I agree that there is probably plenty of stuff out there to complex for our present state of engineering. Also, couldn't simpler types be coming from our solar system?

It's all speculation but here's my take.

Technology needed to do interstellar travel (same galaxy) - 100,000 to 1,000,000 years in advance of our current knowledge (if ever).

Technology needed to have a Lazar-type saucer manipulating gravitrons - 1,000 years in advance of our current knowledge.

IOW a difference of 100x - 1000x in sophistication and evolution.

Now I just pulled those numbers out of the air, so don't be too worried about that specifically.

Then you have to use an 'alien factor' in there which means you're well beyond proposing smaller bipedal creatures who have the almost same kind of engineering that we have, only more advanced in the Lazar type of craft. I'm saying the 'alien factor' would likely be far stranger than that. Maybe hive-mind or something even more bizarre than 'insectoid'. (Remember we have some pretty bizarre animals right here on our same planet!)

I'm saying that the two factors together cause me to conclude that we probably should be talking a gap the size of ants trying to use semiconductor technology.

Even if you want to go back to Lazar type stuff, I don't think we could even dissect such a craft. It would just be like a closed system and we'd not be in position to access controls based on an alien mind nor would we even be able to gain access to the interior, let alone identify anything. If one had crashed and was broken then good luck trying to engineer a system since it would be like a broken circuit board - essentially junk.

Even taking the difference between the 1500s and now, imagine what one of the pilgrims would be able to do with a tiny wrist-watch sized TV. Since they don't have broadcasting studios and don't know what circuitry is, they wouldn't be able to even take it apart without breaking it. Once that happened then forget about 'reverse-engineering' something.

Now Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was well ahead of his time. It would be interesting to see what he would think if given an array of 21st Century gadgets and devices. I think given some progression of the gadgets he'd be able to give some good estimates. But he was a super-genius.

Anyway, that's my take. I think we're vastly underestimating what 'alien technology' would look like given that they were able to do interstellar travel. Uh, forget there being a current advanced ET race in our own solar system, man. Maybe Mars was once an advanced society, but I don't think there's anything to show any extra-terrestrial life besides maybe some bacteria on a moon of Jupiter.



[edit on 12-5-2007 by Badge01]

Originally by Badge01
Now Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was well ahead of his time. It would be interesting to see what he would think if given an array of 21st Century gadgets and devices.

My! You don't give mankind much credit! I think the geniuses of today are just as sharp as those of yesteryear. Yes we have our shortcomings but when smart, talented people concentrate on something they usually will eventually figure it out. The remarkable thing about our race is the spread between the average and the gifted.
As far as your time table, I think you are off by factors of 100. You apparently ignore the probability that we will get a little help from our superior friends especially if we behave ourselves!

Originally posted by plumranch

My! You don't give mankind much credit! I think the geniuses of today are just as sharp as those of yesteryear. Yes we have our shortcomings but when smart, talented people concentrate on something they usually will eventually figure it out. The remarkable thing about our race is the spread between the average and the gifted.

Huh? You're not following me, apparently. I do think that there have been a couple of 'brain drains' that occurred and, for instance, we don't have anyone as talented as Von Braun or Sergey Korolyov in the field of space science. In fact that's one thing that the NASA scientists are saying now that the new guys do not have the kind of skills and technical knowledge that their people had back in the 60s and 70s.

As far as your time table, I think you are off by factors of 100. You apparently ignore the probability that we will get a little help from our superior friends especially if we behave ourselves!

So rather than giving a rather kooky comment that's totally unsupported ("our superior friends"), why not give your own time table.

I don't have much patience with people who stand back and take pot shots and then claim some kind of mystical knowledge without some support.

I don't suppose you're channeling some alien from the Pleiades are you?

By Badge01

So rather than giving a rather kooky comment that's totally unsupported ("our superior friends"), why not give your own time table.

Now, did you give any support for your time table? These are guesses. And they are off topic a bit. To me it seems common knowledge (if not accepted fact) that more than one ET group is aiding the US government with various technologies. The EBE's at area 51, the grey's, reptilians or whomever at Dulce, NM and the Tall Whites at Indian Springs Nevada all guests of our government. All of that transfer of technology is supposedly conditional. We give them something, they give us something.
So to come up with my time table, if I overlooked direct transfer and back engineering of ET material I would probably agree with you somewhat. It would take hundreds if not thousands of years at the rate we are going. Mater of fact why would any scientific community suspect that the interference of light photons might produce gravity waves or that element 115 might release energy and gravity waves if properly bombarded?
However, based on thousands of sightings and photos, we probably already have triangles that operate on one of those technologies. And if they operate as well as they do according to people who have seen them then we could soon (if we already haven't) go to the moon using triangle craft rather than rockets. No channeling, just conjecture!

I do think that there have been a couple of 'brain drains' that occurred and, for instance,

You may be right about that. Althought to me it sounds like NASA is saying sour grapes and this may be the reason so many of our missions fizzle.

Sure the 'time table' is just speculation, but the relative time between the two events could be as much as 10^5 years, given how long it might take for such 'difficult' technology.

I think Star Trek is based on stuff that's mid 21st Century, and the New Gen series is a Century beyond that. But I think 200 years is -way- too short a time to have ST:NG type ships zipping around the Galaxy. Remember people thought w'd have flying cars by the 1990s.

Generally things are happening a lot faster than we've expected in many areas, but in reality, there are places in the US that look the same as they did in the 1950s but with different appliances and stuff.

I think it's possible that the thing which will speed up our evolution could be the arrival of the 'Singularity'. This is a concept based on the way computing power is doubling every 18 months (Moore's Law).

If you extrapolate that eventually you end up with a 'computer' that has equal to or greater than the power of the human mind (100 petabytes?) From there, we'll turn over computation and invention to computers which will start to soon become sentient.

Since the 'machine' will be super-smart and developing its own rapid advancement, things will start to accelerate and suddenly (or so it's predicted) human civilization will just 'wink out of sight'. IOW, they will suddenly reach a threshold and then evolve to a new level and reach a new dimension.

Since things doubling tend to rapidly accelerate (exponential growth), the 'super future' may arrive in under 50-100 years as long as nothing dire happens to prevent it before it 'happens'.

So you never know.

However if it did happen that way, then it wouldn't take long before an 'advanced' race experiencing the 'Singularity' would be billions and billions of 'years' beyond what we can do or conceive of doing now.

en.wikipedia.org...

Thus the 'difference' is still going to be exceedingly large between a Type I civilization and a Type II.

Basically that further supports the idea that it will be impossible to 'back engineer' a starship or a flying saucer using exotic methods of propulsion, and is one way to explain this large 'gap' in knowledge between an industrial society like ours and a transcendent society.

As far as 'knowing' the aliens of various types are helping us, are you saying you have direct knowledge? Because, yeah, I've heard those stories, and like reading about it, but there's nothing so far that gives it any 'concreteness', at least in my mind.

I'd be wary of buying into the stuff too much. People who relate those kinds of stories have always been around. (Witness the 'Space Brother' movement in the 50s, people claiming to be taken to Jupiter everynight by aliens who looked like bus drivers and flight attendents).

Anyway, my basic thought is that the 'gap' between advanced civilizations that can travel interstellar space and our current state will be just too great, even with 'help', haha.

by Badge 01

As far as 'knowing' the aliens of various types are helping us, are you saying you have direct knowledge? Because, yeah, I've heard those stories

I see a lot of wierd stuff, but no aliens! There is Bob Lazar's story where I think he mentions the EBE's at Groom Lake (they have been discussed by others). But the most compelling is Charles Hall who relates the story of his early years in the military as a weather observer out in the desert at a test range where there happens to be Tall Whites sponsored by the government who interact with him. Eventually he overcomes his fears and developes a close relation with at least a few and develops an overall view of them and their relationship with our government. Most interesting is that Mr. Hall goes on to become a theoretical physicist and works on theories involving properties of light. His claim is that his Tall White mentor told him (in person) that light is how they generate gravity waves to achieve interstellar travel. I have not heard any major debunking of Hall's claims or his book "Millennnial Hospitality" however, it has not been a hot seller!
Apparently his Tall White mentor all but tells Hall to check out light interference later on when he becomes a scientist. Kind of a cool twist I thought!

Anyway, my basic thought is that the 'gap' between advanced civilizations that can travel interstellar space and our current state will be just too great, even with 'help', haha.

Obviously I think the gap has already been filled although I haven't seen any interplanetary craft hanging around the neighborhood!

[edit on 13-5-2007 by plumranch]

For an explaination for why Mr. Hall has never been debunked go to Hall Interview
Hall says that our government made an agreement with the Tall Whites never to interfere with Hall. So the usual debunking never occured. Pretty heavy huh? Wish the government made more agreements like that so we could find out what the H is going on!

Originally posted by plumranch
For an explaination for why Mr. Hall has never been debunked go to Hall Interview
Hall says that our government made an agreement with the Tall Whites never to interfere with Hall. So the usual debunking never occured. Pretty heavy huh? Wish the government made more agreements like that so we could find out what the H is going on!

Well I don't think I believe Hall's story. I made a thread a while ago about him and the "Tall Whites" here: www.abovetopsecret.com...

Quote by Diplomat in his other thread:

I know it is foolish to judge people based on their appearance, but this Hall guy looks like the typical fat, lazy, slob-type guy that would make up ridiculous stories for a buck...

Nice that you are such a good judge of character based on a photo. Look at his military photo's when he was a young, good looking military type. Does he look like a a fat, lazy, slob-type to you in those photo's? I'm Hall's age and that comment really got my attention!

the story is just ridiculous and has a lot of holes

What's rediculous? Where are the holes? Have you been out there in the dessert observing this race so you know?

if he was repeatedly interacting with these "beings," then why the hell wouldn't he have tried to get a picture or something?

Hall seems like the serious, dedicated type to me, I doubt that he would go against military orders and sneak around gettin photos. He said that others did get photos while on "Range Four".

his stories were first created as works of fiction

Hall had reason to believe that if he didn't publish as fiction that he would get into some kind of trouble with the military. Turned out the military honored their agreement with the Tall White comanders and never harassed Hall. After Hall published he admitted that it was all true.
What I found most compelling about Hall is that he never accepted the high rank offers the military repeatedly offered him. But rather he became a research scientist as a profession, studied the properties of light (look up his published scientific articles!) thus validating his earlier experiences with the Whites when they told him to look into the properties of light.

Hall and his 'tall whites' have no credibility in my opinion.

Colonel Philip J. Corso on the other hand... There's just no way a career officer with such a record would deviate into smear and gossip. He produced a detailed book about ufos and reverse engineering. I take that just as seriously as when he exported thousands of Jews safely to Israel after WWII, or worked intelligence during the Korean War, or advised Eisenhower's NSC, or worked for Storm Thurmond (who praises him copiously) etc... When somebody like that speaks up about black military programs, you listen and learn.

Does the avatar to the left show a high level disinformer or an intelligence officer with a conscience?

Originally posted by Thodeph

Does the avatar to the left show a high level disinformer or an intelligence officer with a conscience?

Definitely looks like a dis-informer to me.

If he's so gung-ho, what better way to end his career than a big disinfo campaign? Take one for the team on the way out, that sort of thing.

Originally posted by Thodeph

Does the avatar to the left show a high level disinformer or an intelligence officer with a conscience?

Your particular comment reminds me so much of a comment my girlfrind made so many years ago. She was a converted Mormon and she was showing me a lavishly illustrated book on the LDS church done by the church itself. On the front piece was a painted picture of Joseph Smith, looking very divine, humble, and handsome. She said, "How could anyone looking like that be not telling the truth?"

That picture shows a diminuitive officer who could only make it to Lt. Colonel after an entire career in the army. That means he had been 'passed over' more than once for promotion. When you are in the service and surfing for people to join your crew, you call references. "How is Joe Smith?" you say. If the answer is "Twice passed over Lt. Commander," you say "Thank you very much" and hang up. His book was ghost written. If you believe his claims he is responsible for saving all of Italy, millions of Jews, all of Western Civilization, and, indeed, the whole planet from what he was able to do with the contents of a filing cabinet stuck in the corner. Sounds like a Napoleaonic complex to me.

I think some of the criticisms of Corso are not fair. He wasn't "on" the NSC, he was a staffer. OK. Give him that. Slip of the tongue, confusion of an old man. Whatever. No big deal. Colonel or Lt. Colonel? No big deal again. You just say Colonel just like you just say "General." It's no big deal if someone says, "I retired as a general." instead of "I retired as a Rear Admiral (lower half)." It's unreasonable to demand that. He had a retirement rank of bird colonel anyway. But it's the stuff he says he did that gives me pause with timelines that don't make sense.

Further, and this is not a ding on Corso at all. I can't believe that if we had a crashed saucer at Roswell all we did is sweep up and put some curious treasures in a filing cabinet to dispense to industry when we got around to it many years later. That's slipshod work. I do not believe it could possibly have happened that way. Corso, if anything, was a minor operator that had a habit of inflating his contributions.

Of course, since you've used him as your avatar I suspect you are entirely vested in him and will continue to give him a rip-roaring defense. So write a book and make your case. I'll read it.



[edit on 15-5-2007 by schuyler]

Originally posted by Thodeph
Colonel Philip J. Corso on the other hand... There's just no way a career officer with would deviate into smear and gossip. He produced a detailed book about ufos and reverse engineering.

I don't believe he is just making the whole thing up. But it seems like the ghost writer or co-author filled in a lot of the blanks in Corso's memory. The first half of the book was good. Even though I thought it was strange, after seeing the alien bodies in Kansas, he just "put it out of his mind". It's also very coincidental one of the few people to have seen real alien bodies was also the one tasked with this project 20+ years later. I could be wrong, but the alien bodies incident seems like it was thrown in to help sell the book. He did seem quite paranoid about the communists. The CIA was infiltrated etc...

However around the middle of the book when he was given the contents of the file cabinet and started the research team, the details get very hazy and his explanations fall way short of my expectations. I'm not an engineer but what others are saying makes sense to me. The book seems to imply just a year after setting up shop, patents were being issued to "beltway bandits", and all of this tech was streaming into the private sector. Even if we did recover alien tech at Roswell, it doesn't seem like we'd be able to make use of it so quickly. It would be thousands maybe millions of years ahead of anything our scientists have seen.

I'm sure they are working on reverse engineering alien tech at this moment, but it's hard to believe all of these consumer products came about from Roswell, in such a short time period. It would likely take decades worth of work and the fruits of which I believe would stay firmly planted in the military-industrial complex. Plus some of this tech has some paper trail. Like the woman credited with doing a lot of the research for kevlar. I believe this work was going on before Corso even claims his reverse-engineering program got started !!

Some other sources I've read estimate we still can't produce "true" alien tech, but that we can only "imitate" alien tech, if that makes sense ? Who knows ?

Also Friedman has a good point about it not going down the way Corso says. Because that makes no sense to me that alien tech recovered from Roswell sat around for 20+ years, in a file cabinet of all places, before Gen Trudeau appointed him for this project. Also I noticed the megalomania tinge to the whole story.

Now obviously Col. Corso did have some important jobs in govt and worked as an aid to some people who are well known for being alleged UFO insiders. i.e. General Trudeau. Considering he was the CO of a nuclear arty group, NSA staff etc.. I don't have much trouble believing Corso gained access to some information about UFOs/aliens in his official duties. I just can't buy everything happened in the book exactly as it is presented. I think it's a realistic possibility he went to a publisher and said, "Look at my credentials, Roswell was real, UFOs are real, here's my story." And the publisher sexed it up to make it into a best-seller.

P.S. With regards to Bob Lazar. The main reason Friedman "debunked" him and why I don't believe his story either is because IMO he quite obviously lied about his academic bona fides. If they were recruiting people to reverse engineer UFOs at A-51, it would logically be credentialed physicists and engineers. At least a master's degree if not higher. They'd want people at the top of the field. Lazar might be a smart guy, but I don't believe for a minute he has degrees from Cal Tech and MIT that got "erased" by the feds.




[edit on 16-5-2007 by Schaden]

Quoted from Schaden

They'd want people at the top of the field. Lazar might be a smart guy, but I don't believe for a minute he has degrees from Cal Tech and MIT that got "erased" by the feds.

Explain to me why you think the Feds didn't wipe away Lazar's record. The only way to prove they didn't is to prove that they couldn't do it. I'm sure they wanted to remove Bob's credentials after he went AWOL so to speak!
Also, did Bob ever prove that he spent time as a student at Cal Tech and MIT? Does anyone know?

I've read Corso's book, watched his interviews, and read what others have to say about him. In the final analysis, I'm troubled about him. I think he hyped himself as playing a greater role than he probably did. You see this throughout his testimony. Without Corso's timely interventions, the world would not be saved.

I'd certainly agree with this assessment. However, we are talking about an old man writing memoirs and trying to establish some importance. If his claims are true, then he certainly had some importance here (though not nearly as much as he takes credit for).

There is no doubt the man was in the position he states he was, and any such whistleblower certainly deserves an examination.

As for the transistor...here's an interesting take, right here on ATS...
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Even in scientific histories of the discovery, it seems that although it was "discussed" as early as the 30's, it wasn't until December 15, 1947, that the transistor was realized.

www.virtuallystrange.net...

Even Corso readily admits that he disseminated the debris to companies that were already working on similar projects, to better hide the source, and to better make actual use of the debris. He never claimed we wouldn't have gotten there without the assistance.

Originally posted by Gazrok

Even in scientific histories of the discovery, it seems that although it was "discussed" as early as the 30's, it wasn't until December 15, 1947, that the transistor was realized.

But they were working on it that year, and most of the issues they were having were related to materials science problems.

If you gave these guys a Pentium for a 'go-by', they would not have been able in 1947 to figure out how to make a point-contact transistor from it. The transistor topologies are different, the materials used are far more pure, the processes are different, the physical scales are incomparable. You'd have to use an electron microscope and cleave the die to see the transistor structures. They could not have implemented what they observed.


And you'd have to assume that a "UFO transistor" would be that much more advanced wouldn't you? I mean Corso was implying that it was optical in several places although he seems a bit confused as to what he is trying to state in a lot of his technical explanations. But in 2007 we're off spending a lot of our tax money working on QDL, which wouldn't be understandable at all to a 1947 designer. In 10 years or so, the military stuff you don't hear about will be QDL based, they're already salivating over it.

But again, I can only assume how primitive that would be to a grey, and it wouldn't be understandable or replicatable by 1940's standards.

Originally posted by plumranch
Quoted from Schaden

They'd want people at the top of the field. Lazar might be a smart guy, but I don't believe for a minute he has degrees from Cal Tech and MIT that got "erased" by the feds.

Explain to me why you think the Feds didn't wipe away Lazar's record. The only way to prove they didn't is to prove that they couldn't do it. I'm sure they wanted to remove Bob's credentials after he went AWOL so to speak!
Also, did Bob ever prove that he spent time as a student at Cal Tech and MIT? Does anyone know?

The thing is, it's more than just an "erasure."

1. Lazar "can't remember" exactly when he got his degree. I dunno, but I remember the exact dates I graduated. A Master's degree is not the kind of thing you 'can't remember.'

2. No person on the staffs of either college remembers Lazar.

3. The one professor's name Lazar did give out turns out to be a professor at the junior college where Lazar was attending, not at MIT.

4. Lazar graduated from high school in the lower third of his class, not exactly the kind of rank that will get you into MIT. This is a public record.

5. The dates he does give for attendng MIT conflict with the dates he gives for attending the junior college.

6. One of the other degrees Lazar cites is from an online diploma mill. You pay them money, they send you a cool looking degree. This is fake education right there.

Most of these points are self-inflicted. To make the 'government erasure' story work you have to also believe the government erased the minds of all the people associated with both Cal Tech and MIT, created a fake high school graduation ranking, teleported a professor from MIT to a junior college, etc.

This ALSO has to be placed into context of the rest of Lazar's claims, many of which have also been challenged. I'm not sure if its proper under the circumstances to go into these as well, since the original question was just about MIT, but the sum total of all the Lazar claims is enough to question his veracity quite heavily.

The claim of "erasure" is really contorted and complex. Like a lot of conspiracy theories, the explanations are way more complex than the original event. It is not true that the only way to prove the feds did not do it is to prove they could not do it. That is not a standard of proof used anywhere. If you make an extraordinary claim, the onus is upon you to prove it.

But they were working on it that year, and most of the issues they were having were related to materials science problems.

Quite true, but since gold contacts were one of the keys...perhaps (just perhaps) one of Corso's "wafers" with the gold grid sparked the idea... Hardly conclusive, granted, but possible? Sure.

If you gave these guys a Pentium for a 'go-by', they would not have been able in 1947 to figure out how to make a point-contact transistor from it. The transistor topologies are different, the materials used are far more pure, the processes are different, the physical scales are incomparable. You'd have to use an electron microscope and cleave the die to see the transistor structures. They could not have implemented what they observed.

Very good point, but it's not to say that such items wouldn't give you ideas or directions to go. We still don't have publicly acknowledged nuclear planes, but we do have advanced engines...so who's not to say one couldn't have gotten ideas from advanced alien tech? Corso's issue is that he plays up the importance of such materials to unbelievable levels. Indeed, it could be likened to a caveman trying to make a working tv set from a broken model.

I've no reason to disagree on Corso's technical arguments, and his claims hold very little credibility for me. Why were they taken seriously in the first place? In my long term quest to revive and repair the ET hypothesis, this is one roadblock I've yet to overcome altogether, and is a consequence of Clark's third law - any sufficiently advanced technology can explain ANYTHING (the Intelligent Design proponents - unintelligently - had this problem with their hypothesis as well, and refused to see it). Such a hypothesis boils down to a statement of faith and is immune to scientific inquiry.

So, we have to adopt a higher standard of evidence: what can ONLY be explained by a advanced technology? This is a very tough question, since we don;t know what a very advanced technology could do, or would do.

In Corso's case, there was nothing like this. There is a very good history of how we arrived at the better achievement of 20th Century science - nearly all of it in the open literature - and there is no breakthrough or leap that occurred that was not well within reach. Nothing just arrived, that we didn;t have a good grasp on the physics of. There was "high temperature" superconductivity, but it was very far from the application stage when discovered (and it's all painfully well documented).

So, just on this standard alone, we have to place Corso's claims in the same dusty and overstuffed cabinet in which place all of the countless claims for which there is no good evidence at all.

Why were they taken seriously in the first place?

Because he was a ranking military officer in the area of R&D at the Pentagon...that would be the simplest answer. The credentials demand a certain amount of taking it seriously, but it also requires the claims to be validated and evaluated.