Symposium on unidentified flying objects: hearings before the Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives, Ninetieth Congress, second session, July 29, 1968.

216
Not
at
all.
This
argument
("It's
Impossible")
is
used
when what
should
really
be
said
is
we
don't
know
how
to duplicate
these
maneuvers.
Piston
aircraft
can't
fly
faster
than
the speed
of
sound
and
a
conventional
dynamite
bomb
couldn't
have
wrecked
Hiroshima
and
a
vacuum
tube
circuit
can't
fit
on
the
head
of
a
pin
but
surely
we
don't
say
that
supersonic
flight,
atom
bombs
and
microcircuits
viOlate
the
laws
of
nature or
physics.
Present
aircraft can't
duplicate
UFO
maneuvers;
no
laws
of
physics
have
been
violated
by
UFOs.
13.
Haven't astronomers
proved
that
trips to
other
stars
are
impossible?
Again, the
answer
is
no.
The
studies
12
that conclude that
trips
to
other
stars
are
impossible
are based
upon
false
or
unnecessary
assumptions such
as,
assum-
ing,
that
the
flight
be
at
orbital
velocity.
0
The
one
comprehensive study of
inter-stellar
travel
conducted
by
a
JPL
group
actually
concerned with space hard-
ware
concluded
that
with
present
technology
trips
to
nearby
stars
are
feasible
with
round
trip
times
being
shorter
than
a
man's
lifetime
and
without
violating
the
laws
of
physics.
They
assumed
that staged
vehicles
would be
used having
either
fission
or
fusion propulsion
systems.
14.
Are
fission
and
fusion propulsion
systems
actually
being
developed?
Both
fission
and
fusion
propulsion
systems
for
space
travel
are
under
devel-
opment.
I
have worked on
both.
The
NEVRA
program
has
successfully
tested
a
number
of
nuclear rocket
reactors
suitable
for
use
in
flight
throughout the
solar
system.
Flight rated
systems
offering
substantial
advantages
over chemical
propulsion
systems
could
be ready
in
less
than
a
decade
if
the current
program
at
Aerojet
General,
Westinghouse
Astronuclear
Laboratory,
and Los Alamos
Scientific
Laboratory
is
supported.
References
15 and 16
are
good
reviews
of
the
nuclear rocket
program.
The
fusion
work
is
not
nearly
as
far along
but has
been
productive
at
Aerojet
General
Nucleonics,
San
Ramon,
California.
An
older
review
of
some
of the
aspects
of
this
program
is
given
in
Ref.
17.
15.
Are
these
the only
possibilities?
Not
at
all.
This
is
one
of the
major
flaws
in
the
"non
-believers"
arguments;
they
presume
that
our
technology
is
the
ultimate—a
presumption
made
by
each
generation
of
scientists
in
the
last
75
years
and
proved
wrong
by
the next
gener-ation
of
engineers
and
applied
scientists.
If there
is
one
thing
to
be
learned
from
the
history
of
science
it
is
that
there
will
be
new
and
unpredictable
discoveries
comparable
with, say,
relatively,
nuclear energy,
the
laser, solid
state
physics,
high
field
superconductivity,
etc.
It
is
generally
accepted that
there
are
civiliza-
tions
elsewhere
which
are
much
more
advanced than are
we.
Look what
tech-
nological
progress
we
have
made
in
the
last
100
years.
Who
can
guess
what
we
will
accomplish
in
the
next thousand
years—or
what
others
have
accomplished
in
the
thousand or
million
or
billion
year
start
they
may
have on
us.
We
still
don't
know
about
gravity,
for
example,
no
less
anti
-gravity.
16.
Could
UFOs
be coming
here
from
our
own
solar
system?
They
certainly
could.
We
have no
data
from any
other
body
in
the
solar
system
which
definitely
rules
out
the
existence
of
advanced
civilizations.
We
frequently
forget that the
resolution
of
present
photographs of the other planetary bodies
is
extremely
poor.
As a
matter of
fact,
there
does
seem
to
be
a
direct correlation
between
the
number
of
sighting reports
per
unit
time
and
the
closeness
of
Mars
to
the
earth.
Both have
periodicities
of
about
26
months.
0
We
make
certain
spaceshots at "favorable times".
The
reverse
may
also
be
true
but without
the
restric-
tions
on
payload
and
trajectory
placed
upon us by
our
crude,
inefficient,
space
pro-
pulsion
systems which
no
thoughtful engineer considers
the
ultimate.
17.
Didn't the
Mariner
IV
pictures
prove
there
isn't
any
life
on Mars?
The
Mariner
pictures didn't
provide proof of
life
on
Mars
but they
certainly
didn't
rule
it
out
and were
not
intended
to.
Studies
19
of 10,000 pictures
of earth
taken
from
orbit
with
cameras
having
resolving
power
equivalent to those
onMariner
IV
provided only
one
picture
which
could
be taken
to indicate
that there
is
life
on
the planet
called
earth.
18.
Isn't
it
true that
life
as
we know
it
cannot
exist
on any
other
body
in thesolar
system?
This
statement,
though
repeated
many
times,
\
is
quite obviously untrue.
Con-
sider
for
a moment
the fact that
we
intend to
send
men
to the
moon and by
the
end
of the century to
Mars.
We
expect these
men
to stay for
a
while
and
to returndespite
the fact that
Mars and
thnoon
both supposedly
aren't
fit
for
life
as
we
a
know
it.
One
characteristic
of
an dvanced
technological
civilization is
the
ability
to provide suitable conditions for
life
almost anywhere;
including
under the
Footnotes at the end of
article.