NASA Prayer Request: Please pray for the family of astronaut Alan Bean (1932-2018). One year to the day after this interview aired, Commander Bean passed away.
* No Aliens, No (alien) UFOs, No (alien) UAPs: See our list just below. Real Science Radio host Bob Enyart interviews the fourth man to walk on the moon, astronaut Alan Bean. Shockingly, when Bob asked, What it's been like to tell your grandchildren about walking on the Moon?, Bean responded, sadly, "They've never asked." After their discussion, Captain Bean suddenly had to leave, so Bob then took time to discuss the one topic, aliens, that they disagreed about during the interview.
* RSR's List of Evidence Against Alien UFOs: Because Astronaut Bean told us on today's interview (as he has said elsewhere too) that he believes that aliens exist, we've decided to update our list of arguments against the evidence for their existence right here on this page (rsr.org/astronaut-on-rsr). Gary Bates's best-selling DVD Alien Abductions and UFOs – Exposed, which has ranked as high as an Amazon.com Top 50 Best-seller, provided the basis for this list. Now we've expanded it into our No Aliens, No Alien Unidentified Flying Objects, No Demon UFOs, and No Alien Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon List!
1. As a general rule, no two UFOs are ever alike. (Oct. 2019 Update: Consistent with the anti-alien-UFO rule #1, the recently released U.S. Navy "sighting" videos including from the USS Nimitz pilots and, right, the Outer Banks string of party lights sightings couldn't be more different.) This highlights the absurdity that we're either constantly visited by different alien races or that the same shy aliens have sent thousands of different spacecraft models. Here's a quick look at the Go Fast "sighting"...
2. They're already here? We've never seen them entering our atmosphere so they're always already here when they're seen. And astronomers, who spend their lives scanning the heavens, make a miniscule percentage of reports.
3. With hundreds of thousands of daily commercial flights, passengers don't video alien ships out of their windows and, thankfully, the associations for airline pilots have no policies for how to deal with aliens in the flight path.
4. They morph: Nuts and bolts spacecraft don't change shape like science fiction craft do.
5. They're not physical: Aliens, claimed to walk through walls, motivate "UFOlogists" to propose IDH, which is the Interdimensional Hypothesis that aliens don't have bodies. But then they wouldn't show up on radar or even need spacecraft.
6. They're not demonic: Demons are spirit beings which wouldn't show up on radar, wouldn't do aerial acrobatics, make crop circles, conduct anal probes, nor disembowel cattle. And biblically, there are extreme limits on when and what God has permitted demons to do.
7. Natural explanations: Rejecting alien and demonic "interpretations" a priori (automatically), we focus on the many standard explanations for UFOs including that they are radar equipment malfunction, foreign hacks, practical jokes (with flight simulation software, etc.); reported by fraudsters, or by "well meaning" folks bringing attention to a mostly ignored "crisis", or by potheads, exaggerations, deep fakes, selection biased ("sighting" over a nuclear facility gets more reporting than over a Burger King, and a pilot's report gets more attention even though he can be equally suspect, pranked, hacked, etc.), including that the actual explanation for a particular event is something that hasn't occurred to anyone.
8. Astronomical discovery makes the ET idea quaint: The UFO idea predates our better understanding: Aliens arriving was thought up during the 50s & 60s SciFi craze and since then we've learned how enormous the Universe is. Forget about aliens coming from other galaxies, just to get across our own, even at the speed of light, would take 100,000 years, so the nuclear physicist aliens would have to teach their children to be physicists, and that next generation of aliens would have to teach their children, and so on, and so on, and...
9. Spacecraft travel problems:
- At a million miles per hour (1/700th the speed of light), it would take 25 million hours to reach Alpha Centuri, our next closest star, i.e., about 3,000 years.
- At half the speed of light to reach Andromeda, our next closest galaxy, it would take four million years.
- To propel a one pound spacecraft to half the speed of light takes the energy of almost 100 atomic bombs (98 bombs for 500 grams) and to the speed of light takes virtually infinite energy.
- Space contains 100,000 dust particles for every cubic kilometer of space whereas a single speck of dust hitting at a 10th the speed of light is like 10 tons of TNT exploding on your craft.
- A .2 mm paint flake hit the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1983 and it cost $50,000 to repair the damage to the windshield.
10. Millions of Gs: The force of gravity at Earth's surface, times nine, aka 9Gs, could kill an airforce pilot. "Warp speed" would be millions of Gs. Make it so.
11. Cosmic radiation exposure: Years or millennia even of exposure to cosmic radiation would kill an astronaut.
12. Theoretical wormholes collapse spaceships: The inpenetrably vast distances of space leave science fiction writers obsessed with theoretical wormholes even though any ship entering its event horizon would be crushed by gravity so great that even light can't escape, and the "wormhole" itself would then instantly collapse, and even if a craft survived all that, traveling through a wormhole is slower, according to Harvard and Stanford physicists in 2019, not faster, than traveling through standard space.
12. String theory: Some UFOlogists claim that string theory's alleged 500 dimensions perhaps include spiritual dimensions in which aliens move. But God is spirit and He made spirit beings (angels) and these beings dwell not in multiple but in only one spiritual dimension. Further, after many decades, string theory has never found the observational evidence that its supporters have expected.
13. Violate the laws of physics: UFOs materialize and dematerialize and defy the laws of physics as they accelerate toward the ground and do a U-turn, etc.
14. Abduction syndrome: The thousands of supposed alien abductions are evidence for mental illness. Markers of the Classic Abduction Syndrome (CAS) include a capture, often an examination, telepathy, a tour of the ship, sometimes a journey, and then a return when the (perhaps otherwise functional) mentally ill person experiences some kind of interference that is often used as an excuse for depression and a generally depressing life. And of course, if the military actually had aliens in Area 51, as Elon Musk says, they would show them immediately to increase the Pentagon's defense budget.
15. Water is the enemy of abiogenesis: RSR put the question publicly to NASA and their lead astrobiologist admitted that water is a problem for the naturalistic origin of life. Water on another planet would further prevent, and not enable, the origin of life. Water is not a friend but an enemy of abiogenesis. It's the universal solvent that is both needed and problematic for the formation of prebiotic chemicals including the amino acids and polymers that would be needed to form the first molecular biological structures.
16: Abiogenesis killers: Practically everything needed for life would prevent life from arising naturally with the abiogenesis killers including water, sunlight, oxygen, ions, time and symbolic logic.
17. Expect fewer sightings of "actual" spaceships: RSR has predicted, with evidence in 2017 already suggested this will be confirmed, that the frequency of claims of clearly seen aliens and alien spaceships will diminish with the increased prevalence of cellphone video cameras.
18. ETs Need to Get a Job: Apparently, thousands of extraterrestrials fly thousands, millions, or billions of light years, then they lie about why they're here, they kidnap people at night, and what, they're here to fix global warming except that they never do? Or did they really come in order to disembowel cattle, make crop circles, conduct anal probes, and show off for photos in Phoenix? Then they leave. Really?
19. We may be near the center of the universe: Materialist scientists lack the evidence they desire and so therefore they merely assume that the universe has no center. (See some of the world's leading cosmologists admitting this, at rsr.org/center.) The evidence that does exist, for example from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, with its apparent quantized redshift of galaxies, and with Planck satellite confirmed "axis of evil", both of which are consistent with galaxies existing in preferred distances and concentric shells out from near the Milky Way, imply that the universe does have a center.
20. We are near the center of God's attention: God was willing to sacrifice His "only" Son once and only once and that was not to redeem aliens but to save those human beings who humble themselves and trust in Jesus Christ. If Earth and the the Milky Way were near the center of the universe, this would not be surprising given that the Bible describes mankind as at the center of God's attention. So God the Son became the Son of Man to sacrifice Himself to pay for our sin so that whoever believes in Him will have everlasting life. Jesus prayer in Gethsemane indicates that there is no other way to procure salvation for such eternal beings as ourselves, other than by the death of the one who made us. If God created sentient beings on other planets and they too fell by rebelling against Him, then God would have to sacrifice Himself again (and again and again for all these alien races). However, the New Testament says that the sacrifice that God endured to save us was to happen once for all and never again.
* See Also from an RSR Sparring Partner: From one of our rsr.org/spat partners, Phil Plait, see his Ten Alien Encounters Debunked.
* Bob asked Astronaut Bean about the Absurd Moon Hoax: So we've pasted the following from rsr.org/moon. Now that Neil Armstrong has passed away [and Commander Bean], the moon landing hoax is also going. As a tribute to the first man to walk on the moon [and to Alan Bean], we rebut the many claims of the alleged landing hoax. RSR hosts Bob Enyart and Fred Williams discuss:
- the passing of Neil Armstrong
- the first eating and drinking on the moon was Buzz Aldrin's communion
- that NASA seriously feared too much lunar dust (and yes, it accumulates fast)
- that the latest data shows that the moon dust argument is valid after all
- the many transient lunar events (that shouldn't be happening if the moon is old)
- (post show) what changed the moon's 30-day orbit to one of 29.5 days
- the definitive rebuttals to the various moon landing hoax allegations (see below)
-the right cross (punch in the face, in Christian love of course) that Aldrin delivered right on target to a conspiracy theory filmmaker.
- Post-show: Why does the recently created moon have so many craters?
- Post-show: In May 2017, tune in for Bob's interview with an astronaut who walked on the Moon at rsr.org/captain-alan-bean.
* Moon Landing and Hoax Sources: We are glad, once again, to speak out against a conspiracy theory. Bob Enyart was one of hundreds of millions of people who on July 21, 1969 watched the broadcast of man's first step on the moon. Four decades later Aug. 4, 2010 to familiarize himself with the moon landing hoax allegations and to learn how best to refute them, with producer Will he watched
- Conspiracy Theory: Did we land on the moon, 2001 (CT)
- Mythbusters on the moon landing (MB)
- Apollo 11, First Steps on the Moon (FSOTM) a documentary of NASA officials explaining the risks and uncertainties that threatened the mission. 1998 Global Science Productions
- Honorable mention: see also the moon hoax page from Discovery channel's Phil Plait
* Answering Specific Moon Landing Hoax Claims (collected from the CT video and elsewhere)
- Can't see stars in various photos: The bright foreground and dark background composition of such photos results in a photographic effect whereby dimmer objects, such as stars in the sky, do not appear.
- Craters on moon may actually be from Area 51: "Conspiracy Theory" aired prior to Google Earth displaying Area 51. Conspiracy theorists have not since not linked to, nor otherwise documented there, the alleged terrestrial moon landscapes.
- No engine noise: On Star Trek TV shows, there is a quiet hum from the engines during typical scenes that take place on the ship. However, the audio from the Lunar Lander is very quiet and an astronaut even mentioned how quiet it was. Sound waves don't propagate in space, so while on earth engine noise will bounce back off the air surrounding a car on the highway, that effect doesn't exist in space. The only engine noise would have been transferred through the craft's structure, which could certainly be audible, but NASA explains that the all important insulation on the craft would significantly dampen that sound.
- No crater in the dust from Lunar Module landings: Photos and videos don't show landing craters below modules, even though NASA artwork previously predicted such craters would result from blown away dust. Of course, the depth of any expected crater would originally be influenced by NASA's fear of deep dust. (See RSF's NASA feared deep dust on the moon.)
- Missing Lunar Module in photo: A photograph exists of a distinctive moonscape without the lunar module, and then another with the same moonscape that includes the lunar module in the photo. When the module blasts off, it leaves its base, so the first photo seems to have been taken prior to the astronauts landing on the moon. The answer lies in the hills of the moonscape being very far away and because there is no atmosphere on the moon, the image has great clarity giving the impression that the hills are nearby. Then, when the camera is moved just a hundred yards or so to one side and snaps a photo in the same direction, the Lander is no longer in the frame, but the background is hardly changed, because of its distance. Careful examination of the famous photos does show the parallax however. A YouTube video has a great example and actual photos showing that parallax.