posted 03-20-2007 06:26 PM               

Carpenter is quoted in a partial audio clip from a longer interview that occurs at 20:18 mins. That is his voice, btw, but it sounds like perhaps an interview from ten years ago.

Here is the shocker: The filmmaker uses one of Carpenter's stock replies to a stock question about the "fireflies" phenomenon to, um, prove, that the Mercury astronaut believed in space creatures! The audio clip then segues to another interview claiming--of course!--a NASA cover-up.

Of course, Carpenter's stock answer about fireflies includes his satisfied account that he actually DISproved that fireflies were "critters" and were actually capsule emanating "frostflies" created by frozen vapor clinging to the skin of the capsule. A rational observation in the best scientific traditions of NASA.

Anyway, thought to share the outrage and to ask if anyone has seen this video before (sent to me by a Finnish correspondent) who had a question about ETs and UFOs. He had heard, he says, that Carpenter believed in them.

posted 03-21-2007 12:36 PM               

The DP used the word "critter", which was a common term from the Colorado of his (early 20th Century) youth and well understood by those at NASA he was addressing (who were also country boys of similar age). So now it's pulled out of context and given a sinister connotation. (PS: "sinister" is just means "left")

I always considered it improbable that a craft capable of navigating over interstellar distances and surviving radiation, space debris, heat, cold, vacuum while providing life support systems for decades would come to New Mexico and crash because it got tangled up in some telephone wires.

I also think it's a colossal act of ego, as well as self-delusion of Biblical proportions, to suggest that Earth in general or humans in particular hold some fascination for the dudes in Flying Saucers.

On the other hand, considering some of the beeswax people get up to, we're probably the best free show in the Known Universe.

Continuing along that line of "thought", any species intelligent to fly across Outer Space will quickly determine that rather than hang around hovering above Stanton Friedman's place or over Ipanema like that famous UFO photo, a visit to Monkey Island at the Zoo will tell them everything they need to know about human culture and behavior.

That being said, I can tell you as a matter of absolute fact that if I had a Flying Saucer I'd DEFINATELY use it to hover over a beach in Brazil and make a few covert observations. I'd want to be sure I could give a complete report to the folks back on my home world about the phenomenon of human females playing volleyball while wearing somewhat scanty bathing costumes.