A. Graduate students doing their thesis work on the development of a primitive society, on a planet where, amazingly, there is no planetary government, and where there are many different languages; on various strange biological specimens, or on genetic variations of the intelligent beings.

B. Broadcasters with weekly shows such as “Idiocy in the Boondocks.”

C. Mining engineers similar to those who went to California and the Klondike and Australia for gold, or to Texas and the Middle East for oil. As it happens, the earth is the densest planet in the solar system, so would be expected to have more of the rare but very important very heavy metals such as gold, uranium, rhenium, platinum, tungsten, osmium, etc. These are all much denser than lead. We know from studying star spectra that they are rare. They also have very special properties.

Phobos NASA

D. Mining engineers extracting more common metals from the nodules on the bottom of the ocean and from the asteroids between Mars and Jupiter. We have been talking about doing this. Obviously war is much more important than ocean mining to us, so we build nuclear submarines to stay in the depths of the ocean carrying their multitude of nuclear tipped missiles. There are also abundant supplies of so-called rare earths, many used in the electronics and nuclear industries. It should not be forgotten that a century ago the primary use for uranium was to prepare yellow glazes for pottery. Zirconium and titanium were essentially worthless. Now nuclear navies use zirconium based alloys because of their splendid nuclear and anticorrosion properties. Titanium is used in aircraft like the SR-71 because of its high strength and low density.

E. Operators of refueling and rest and relaxation centers on the back side of the moon or in the depths of the ocean or in the asteroid belt.

F. Visitors checking on old colonies established by their ancestors. Perhaps there were many different ones which might explain why we have black, brown, red, yellow and white races.

G. Jailers. This may be a penal colony on which aliens dropped off their bad boys and girls and that is why we are so nasty to each other. Georgia and Australia were first settled by convicts. Letting the convicts go bother other civilizations who, unlike us, have learned to live peacefully, may be a no-no in the galactic rule book.

H. Vacationers. This may be a recreation center. Notice how many people visit Hawaii and Las Vegas and Orlando. If the travel wasn’t easy, how many would venture forth to see Mickey Mouse or gaming tables or surfing beaches?

I. Specimen gathererers for ET zoos and aquariums. We are still finding new specimens.

J. Local galactic horticultural societies collecting specimens for their displays and genetic cross breeding.

K. Medical researchers. They may have to evaluate the genetic material of loads of specimens to find genetic defects or super-special genes. There are a number of conditions whose frequency in the population is quite small (for example, only one person in 14,000 has hemophilia) so many specimens must be checked.

L. Honymooners. Perhaps this is the honeymoon capital for this corner of the neighborhood. Special rates for a week on Earth… side trips to the moon and Mars…

M. Cartographers. Local neighborhood maps may describe, for example, the equivalent of English coaling stations in the 19th century.

N. Sports enthusiasts. There may be special excursions to observe various such events. Don’t forget that a World Championship Chess match was held in Iceland.

O. Scouts seeking the best site for a new amusement park in the solar system.

P. Weapons inspectors. If we make the eminently reasonable assumption that every advanced civilization is concerned about its own survival and security, than we would expect that our development of Weapons of Mass Destruction and the means for delivering them in the local neighborhood would be of great concern. Clearly after World War II it should take less than a century for us to master fission and fusion and other new technologies to allow us to take our brand of friendship/hostility… out there. Thus, a logical reason to visit is to quarantine us until we develop a technique for learning to live at peace with each other. No galactic federation new-member committee would allow us to join. Too primitive.I suspect that the SETI cultists think they would be welcome guests. Not very likely.

Q. Producers. Having worked on a lot of motion picture documentaries at many locations, I would suggest perhaps some visitors are planning epic fiction and factual movies for film companies at home… shooting on location hither and yon.

A. All major countries and many terrorist groups would very much like to duplicate the flight technology of the saucers. They can literally fly circles around our vehicles, move at very high speed, make right angle turns, move straight up and down — typically with little noise, no visible engines, no exhaust. They would make wonderful weapons delivery and defensive systems. Since we have recovered wreckage at least as early as 1947 (see Crash at Corona, Ref. 3) we would have set up a highly classified project (call it Operation Majestic 12 as described in my book TOP SECRET/MAJIC (Ref. 4)) to try both to evaluate the wreckage and to obtain measurements of flight characteristics using airborne and spaceborne and earth-based radar sets, cameras, electromagnetic sensors, and other instrumentation. Surely governments have very much more sophisticated instruments and observation platforms than do private individuals. The key rule here is that one can’t tell one’s friends without telling one’s enemies. It appears that there have been many UFO crashes including ones overseas (Varginha, Brazil, for example). There is a long history of countries gathering and evaluating crashed vehicles of their enemies. This does not require a conspiracy; everybody has the same self interest concerns.

B. Each country worries about its enemies determining the secrets of saucer technology before they do and must be concerned about how to defend against new vehicles and also how to learn what the other guy has already learned. Soviet spies at Los Alamos apparently shortened the time it took the Soviets to test their first A-bomb (1949) by at least a year.

C. What if an announcement were made, by highly trusted individuals around the world, such as the Queen and the Pope, saying that indeed SOME UFOs are ET spacecraft? Here are some things I believe would happen:

(1) Church attendance would increase.

(2) Mental hospital admissions would increase.

(3) The stock market would go down; uncertainty is always the enemy.

(4) Based on my more than 600 college lectures, the younger generation, which, unlike me, was never alive when there wasn’t a space program, would push for a new view of ourselves as EARTHLINGS instead of as Americans, Canadians, Greeks, Peruvians, etc. Many would think that would be great. But I know of no government on Earth that wants its citizens to owe their primary allegiance to the planet (where it belongs) instead of to individual national governments. Nationalism is the only game in town. I believe that alien visitors — they may be our landlords, for all we know — think of us as earthlings even though, because of our military traffic, they would be well aware of different ruling groups in different places.

D. A small group of religious fundamentalists (Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson come to mind) have already loudly proclaimed that UFOs are the work of the devil and there is no other intelligent life outside Earth. What an insult to the notion of an all powerful GOD! They would be up the creek without a religious paddle if an announcement were to be made. They have had a great deal of political clout.

E. Making an announcement would require that governments admit they have been lying through their teeth for decades. I don’t know of any government that wants to do that.

F. If an announcement were carefully made without the scare mongering of “War of the Worlds”, a lot of people would think that surely, aliens, who can come here, must be far more advanced technologically than are we, since we can’t go out there. This would strongly suggest that soon there would be new methods of energy production, air and ground transport, computers and communication systems, i.e. economic chaos. We are not very good at large scale economic changes in a hurry. Think of the Soviet Union which, at our strong demands, had democracy, elections, freedom, capitalism. On the average, except for the high price of oil, are Russians better off today than they were 17 years ago??

G. Because I am convinced that military pilots in many countries have been disintegrated or “disappeared” by UFOs, I think governments would all be very resistant to telling their citizens that we tried to attack UFOs and they returned the favor — only they succeeded. The head of the American Rocket Society in 1952 took President Truman to task for the attack orders. Frank Feschino Jr. (Shoot Them Down) has gathered hundreds of reports of supposed airplane crashes in the USA and overseas in the early 1950s. Three military pilots, each of whom flew over 100 missions in Korea where they had to deal with marauding MIGs, crashed when they came back home. That seems very suspicious to me.