(Part 2 of Ed Mitchell & Gordon Cooper article)
In June 1965, astronauts Ed White (first American to walk in space) and James McDivitt were passing over Hawaii in a Gemini spacecraft when they saw a weird-looking metallic object. The UFO had long arms sticking out of it. McDivitt took pictures with a cine-camera. Those pictures have never been released.
In December 1965, Gemini astronauts James Lovell and Frank Borman also saw a UFO during their second orbit of their record-breaking 14 day flight. Borman reported that he saw an unidentified spacecraft some distance from their capsule. Gemini Control, at Cape Kennedy told him that he was seeing the final stage of their own Titan booster rocket. Borman confirmed that he could see the booster rocket all right, but that he could also see something completely different:
Lovell: BOGEY AT 10 O'CLOCK HIGH.
Capcom: This is Houston. Say again 7.
Lovell: SAID WE HAVE A BOGEY AT 10 O'CLOCK HIGH.
Capcom: Gemini 7, is that the booster or is that an actual sighting?
Lovell: WE HAVE SEVERAL...ACTUAL SIGHTING.
Capcom: ...Estimated distance or size?
Lovell: WE ALSO HAVE THE BOOSTER IN SIGHT...
Donald Slayton a Mercury astronaut revealed in an interview he had seen UFOs in 1951:
ö- I was testing a P-51 fighter in Minneapolis when I spotted this object. I was at about 10,000 feet on a nice, bright, sunny afternoon. I thought the object was a kite, then I realized that no kite is gonna fly that high."
As I got closer it looked like a weather balloon, gray and about three feet in diameter. But as soon as I got behind the darn thing it didn't look like a balloon anymore. It looked like a saucer, a disk.
About the same time, I realized that it was suddenly going away from me -- and there I was, running at about 300 miles per hour. I tracked it for a little way, and then all of a sudden the damn thing just took off. It pulled about a 45 degree climbing turn and accelerated and just flat disappeared."
On May 11, 1962 NASA pilot Joseph Walker said that one of his tasks was to detect UFOs during his X-15 flights. He had filmed five or six UFOs during his record breaking fifty-mile-high flight in April, 1962. It was the second time he had filmed UFOs in flight. During a lecture at the Second National Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Space Research in Seattle, Washigton he said: :
"- I don't feel like speculating about them. All I know is what appeared on the film which was developed after the flight."
Eugene Cernan was commander of Apollo 17. In a Los Angeles Times article in 1973 he said, about UFOs:
"-...I've been asked (about UFOs) and I've said publicly I thought they (UFOs) were somebody else, some other civilization."
In 1979 Maurice Chatelain, former chief of NASA Communications Systems confirmed that Armstrong had indeed reported seeing two UFOs on the rim of a crater. Chatelain believes that some UFOs may come from our own solar system -- specifically Titan.
"- The encounter was common knowledge in NASA, but nobody has talked about it until now."
"-...all Apollo and Gemini flights were followed, both at a distance and sometimes also quite closely, by space vehicles of extraterrestrial origin - flying saucers, or UFOs, if you want to call them by that name. Every time it occurred, the astronauts informed Mission Control, who then ordered absolute silence."
About Pilot Walter Schirra:
ö- I think that Walter Schirra aboard Mercury 8 was the first of the astronauts to use the code name 'Santa Claus' to indicate the presence of flying saucers next to space capsules. However, his announcements were barely noticed by the general public.ô
About James Lovell:
ô- It was a little different when James Lovell on board the Apollo 8 command module came out from behind the moon and said for everybody to hear: 'PLEASE BE INFORMED THAT THERE IS A SANTA CLAUS.' Even though this happened on Christmas Day 1968, many people sensed a hidden meaning in those words .ô
Rumors stay. NASA might be a public organisation, but many of their programs are sponsored by the defencedepartment and so are under military control. Beside the fact that National Security Agency check all the film and probably the radio-communication too, we have the statements of people like Otto Binder, Dr. Gerry Henderson and Maurice Chatelain that the astronauts was under strict order not to discuss their observations with anyone. And then we have Gordon Cooper who stod up infront of the UN commitee and stated that he really saw things on the Moon. If there isn't a cover-up - why haven't this material been released that all these people claim NASA is in the possesion of?
