Congressional, White House, UFO-related Constituent Correspondence, 1998

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!.iinc:l' all thf" m:ill.'riill ll;m.lcr used to
..prove" the r xistcncc Qf the inddcnts
werl.' public information ( Harder could
have read it in Saga, which is hardlr a
top scc;rrt )!O\'crnmcnt r:!port), his
rdcrcnce to a co\·eruµ and to sr.cret
inside informatiu,1 were clearly only
gimmicks t\1 impre~r; the news, media
with the value of his •'information".
NASA, meanwhile, says that no
such UFO event took place. The lights,
according to Dale Myers (Associate
Administrator
for
Manned
Space
flight: quoted in a letter dated Feb. 5,
1973 to Mr. Donald Ratsch of APROj,
were spacecraft fragments: "During all
of our Apollo lunar missions. objects
have been sighted by the various
crews.
Subsequent
to
the
crew
sightings,
the
flight
controllers
determined
the
observations were
probably either the S-IVB booster, the
spacecraft lunar adapter (SLA) panels,
or smaller objects such as mylar foil
particles. Because of their large size
and highly reflective surfaces, the
S-IVB and SLA panels should be
visible at great distances in the space
emironment..."
Astronaut
Conrad,
as
quoted
earlier, claimed that the flashing lights
were obviously SLA panels but that he
was 'joking with the ground. He
denounced the Saga story explicitly
and gave his opinion that Harder was a
"kook".
Astronaut
Gordon
has
publicly stated that he has never seen a
UFO on any .;pace flight. Alan Bean,
the only one of the three still on active
NASA duty, issued a statement soon
after Harder's latest charges went out
over the news media late in 1975. In a
UPI dispatch:
"Astronaut Alan Bean...said that
at no time during his mission did he
ever see an unidentified objecL Bean
said that there were some metallic
parts which floated behind their sp:>r.e­
craft after the Apollo-12 !Uf'l.?r module
lifled off from t~•• r:~oon. He said
these small p:.-<'::.; were visible until
they (tht> ... •!:onauts) made an engine
burn 'f':c: metallic objects wer~ parts
er <!",e insulation which came off the
lunar module during the launch phase
and lunar orbital phase. 'At no time
•did we see anything which was not of
our spacecraft, either during lunar
orbit or during the voyage to and from
the moon,' Bean stated."
To
Harder
and
his
"N,\SA
cuv~rup", these statements are just
more lies designed to confuse the
American public. So let's go back lo
the key r\pnll 11-l 2 LlFU c111:ountcr and
try lo determine just wh:1 is confused.
Lale on No,.·embcr 15th. 1969,
about 150,000 statute mi!es from
Earlh. the Apollo crew was talking to
cilDSllle
communicator
astronaut
Ger~rJ C:m about SQmc lights they
were watching out their wir.dow.
Apollo: The object is very bright
and it is obviously something that is
tumbling. It is tumbling (at) one and
one half rev(olution)s per second, or at.
least it is flashing at us (at) about that
(rate)...
CAPCOM: Roger. We are standing
by.
CAPCOM: (Apollo) 12, (this is)
Houston.
Apollo: Go ahead.
CAPCOM: As best we can tell,
looking at things down here, on those
SLA panels, we assume they weren't
imparted with any great amount of
delta-V
(velocity
change)-like
anything more than one or so feet per
second
when
they
separated
(thirty-three hours ago). Your SLA
panels would probably be only about
300 (nautical) miles (345 statute
miles) away fro m you right now.
**** The
following
reply
by
Conrad has been claimed by UFO
believers to indicate that the lights
(the so-called "SLA panels") have
suddenly
pulled
away
from
the
Apollo, something that a tumbling
piece of debris could not do. To
clarify the meaning, punctuation and a
few extra parenthetical words have
been added by the UFOiogists:
Apollo: That could be true, but gee
whiz, when I (just) turned around I
saw one of those "SLA panels" leaving
the area at a high rate of speed, and it
loo ked to me like it was leaving us
pretty (fast)-at a pretty rapid clip,
like it got a lot more than a foot per
second or so.
CAPCOM: Well, since we don't
really have any idea how they left, or
what their trajectory could be, it's
kind of tough really to say just what
the heck that could be.
Apollo: Okay. We'll assume it's
friendly anyway, OK?
The UFO reasoning, as worded by
APRO member Srad Sparks. goes as
follows:
''After
the
SLA
panels
separated and the S-IVB's tanks were
emptied (on No\·. U) they could not
change their ·,t>locity simply because
they had no form of propulsion to do
so. But Conrad saw one of the "SLA
panels" (on Nov. 15th ) suddenly leave
its position at a "high rate of sµccd ...
an i:11;,ossib1lity, unless it really was a
m.lal!uvcrable spacecraft of some ::-ort.
nut
where
docs
one
find
a
maneuverable
spacecrait
nearly
150,000 miles from the earth? The
:inswer: (excepting ,\ pollo 12 itself) in
November of 19C9 th~re weren't any.
The conclusion is inescapable: One
(possibly
two)
maneuverable
spacecraft not of man-made origin
were following our Apollo 12 on
November 14 and 15, 1969."
To anyone familiar with the flight
plan of an Apollo moon flight,
Conrad's words imply nothing of the
sort. Two facts must be brought to
mind. First, Apollo and the Capcom
were discussing the present position of
the SLA panels based upon their initial
separation velocities from the spent
S-IVB rocket stage. Second,. the SLA
panels break free after the Apollo pulls
off from the booster; the astronauts
then perform a maneuver called the
"turnaround" the Command Module
returns to the booster to dock with
the
now-exposed
Lunar
Module,
before pulling the LM free from its
"garage".
Striking the UFOlogist's punctua­
tion and clarifying words from the
communication, and putting it in
proper perspective, what Conrad was
saying was:
Apollo: That could be true (that
the SLA panels were flying off at one
or so feet per second), but gee whiz,
when I turned around (right after they
flew free, thirty-three hours ago) I saw
one of those SLA panels leaving the
area (of the LM "garage") at a high
rate of speed, and it looked to me that
it was leaving us pretty...at a pretty
rapid clip, like it got a lot more than a
foot per second or so.
The UFO believers' reasoning-and
the entire basis for Harder's and for
the Saga article's Apollo-12
UFO
sighting-is phony. The most generous
description of it would be a mistake, a
misreading of the transcript's meaning
in an attempt to "prove" a UFO
incident that never really happened
outside of the fertile imaginations of
certain
UFO
believers.
Conrad's
statement, Gordon's statement. Bean ·s
statement. and the NASA letter must
stand validated on this case: Apollo-12
was not followed by a t;FO on its
to the moon.
But how about on the way back?
"A light of indistinct shape" was
spotted
just
prior
to
re-en try,
52