UFO “CRASHES” — WHAT IF THEY WEREN’T CRASHES AT ALL?

 

UFO “CRASHES” — WHAT IF THEY WEREN’T CRASHES AT ALL?

Maybe we've been looking at extraterrestrial spacecraft the wrong way.

One of the arguments I hear most often from UFO skeptics is this: If an extraterrestrial civilization is advanced enough to travel between the stars, why does it keep crashing its spacecraft on Earth?

It's a fair question. After all, we're supposedly talking about civilizations that could be thousands, perhaps millions, of years ahead of us technologically. They've apparently figured out how to cross the unimaginable distances between stars, yet somehow they can't keep their flying saucers from slamming into the New Mexico desert.

It does sound a little ridiculous when you put it that way, but I've often wondered whether we're looking at this from the wrong perspective. What if some of these alleged UFO crashes weren't crashes at all? What if they were deliberate landings, planned impacts, or simply the disposal of equipment that had already served its purpose?

To understand what I'm getting at, we don't need to speculate about alien propulsion systems, antigravity, or faster-than-light travel. We only need to look at how NASA explores other planets.

When you think about it, we leave an awful lot of junk behind.

We do the same thing on Mars

Consider NASA's Curiosity and Perseverance rovers.

Getting those machines safely onto the surface of Mars required some remarkable engineering. They arrived protected by heat shields, deployed enormous parachutes, and used rocket-powered descent stages to lower the rovers to the surface.

Along the way, components were deliberately discarded. Heat shields fell away. Parachutes and aero-shells landed elsewhere. Once the rovers were safely on the ground, their sky-crane descent stages flew off and crashed some distance away.

NASA later photographed some of that discarded equipment from orbit.

Imagine for a moment that Mars was inhabited by an intelligent civilization that knew nothing about Earth or NASA. Its scientists discover a debris field scattered across the landscape, including shattered machinery, parachutes, and impact craters.

What would they make of it?

They might reasonably conclude that an alien spacecraft had crashed, and they'd be wrong.

The spacecraft did exactly what it was supposed to do. The apparent wreckage was simply part of the landing system. The important part of the mission, the rover, was somewhere else, happily rolling around taking photographs and collecting scientific information.

The debris wasn't evidence of a failed mission. It was evidence of a successful one. That's an important distinction, particularly when we start talking about alleged UFO crash recoveries.

Sometimes we crash spacecraft on purpose

NASA has deliberately smashed spacecraft into other worlds.

In 2009, the LCROSS mission sent a spent Centaur rocket stage crashing into a permanently shadowed crater near the Moon's south pole. A following spacecraft observed the resulting plume of debris before it, too, impacted the lunar surface.

The idea was to kick up material from the crater and analyze it for evidence of water ice, and it worked.

Neither vehicle was intended to survive. Destruction was part of the mission plan.

We've also had spacecraft that genuinely malfunctioned. NASA's Genesis sample-return capsule came back to Earth in 2004 carrying particles collected from the solar wind. Its parachute failed to deploy, and the capsule slammed into the Utah desert.

Despite the crash, scientists managed to recover valuable samples.

So there are several possibilities even with our own relatively primitive space program. Some spacecraft land successfully while leaving behind debris that looks like wreckage. Some are deliberately destroyed. Others actually crash but still manage to accomplish part of their missions.

Now imagine those same possibilities applied to a civilization that's been exploring space for a million years.

Why assume there's a pilot?

Another assumption that bothers me is the idea that every extraterrestrial spacecraft must be carrying living astronauts.

Look at our own exploration of the solar system. We've sent spacecraft to every planet, landed machines on Mars, dropped probes into planetary atmospheres, and dispatched robotic explorers into deep space.

Not one of those missions required a human pilot aboard.

Why would an advanced extraterrestrial civilization do things any differently?

If anything, the enormous distances between stars make robotic exploration far more practical than sending living crews across the galaxy. Even traveling at a substantial fraction of the speed of light, the journeys could take decades or centuries.

An advanced civilization might have millions of autonomous probes scattered throughout the galaxy, each with a specific assignment. Some could be designed to study planetary atmospheres. Others might monitor developing civilizations, collect biological samples, or observe technological activity.

Some might remain in orbit for centuries, while others might descend to a planet's surface, deliver their payload, and simply shut down.

The spacecraft itself might be nothing more than a delivery vehicle, and when its job is finished, who cares what happens to it?

We certainly don't worry about recovering every heat shield, parachute, or descent stage we leave scattered across Mars.

For that matter, why assume the alleged occupants described in UFO recovery stories were pilots?

This is where things get admittedly speculative, but it's worth considering.

We're already developing increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence, robotics, and biological engineering. Imagine what those technologies might look like after another million years of development.

What if an extraterrestrial probe contained an artificial biological organism, something engineered specifically to survive and operate in Earth's environment? It might look alive because, in some sense, it is alive, but it might not be an independently evolved creature, much less the captain of an interstellar spaceship. In fact, it is not beyond the realm of possibilities 

It could be a sophisticated instrument, a biological computer, or simply another expendable component of the mission.

Of course, there's no verified evidence that alien bodies have ever been recovered. I'm not suggesting otherwise. But if we are going to entertain the possibility, we should at least consider explanations that don't depend on little green men sitting at the controls of flying saucers.

In fact, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that the alleged alien bodies described in some UFO recovery accounts, assuming there's any truth to those reports, weren't really aliens at all, at least not in the way we think of them.

What if they were deliberately engineered biological interfaces, designed to resemble humans just enough to interact with us? After all, if you're an advanced artificial intelligence trying to study another intelligent species, what better way to understand it than to create something that looks, moves, and perhaps even thinks somewhat like the creatures you're studying?

Think of it as an artificial intelligence wearing a biological suit. Not necessarily a robot disguised as a human, but a purpose-built organism controlled by, or integrated with, a far more sophisticated intelligence.

Such an entity might be capable of learning our languages, interpreting our emotions, studying our behavior, and eventually communicating with us on our own terms, and perhaps that resemblance to humans wouldn't be coincidental at all. It might be an intentional design feature.

Of course, this is pure speculation, but it's an interesting alternative to the familiar image of little gray aliens piloting flying saucers across the galaxy.

Maybe what some people describe as extraterrestrial beings aren't the explorers themselves. Maybe they're the interface the explorers built to communicate with us.

Which brings us back to Roswell

In July 1947, something came down on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico.

The military initially announced the recovery of a flying disc, then quickly reversed course. Decades later, the Air Force attributed the debris to Project Mogul, a classified balloon program intended to detect Soviet nuclear tests.

That remains the official explanation, although it certainly hasn't ended the controversy, but let's suppose, just for the sake of discussion, that something genuinely extraterrestrial was recovered.

Why automatically assume it crashed?

What if it was never designed to make a return trip?

What if the debris was part of a landing system that had already delivered its payload? What if the actual mission was somewhere else, perhaps a small autonomous device that departed the landing site long before anyone arrived? 

What About the Roswell Debris?

There's another aspect of the Roswell story that I find particularly interesting when comparing it to our own planetary probes: the descriptions of the debris itself.

Witnesses described thin metallic material, lightweight sticks or beams, string-like material, and pieces resembling foil or flexible fabric. Some of the later accounts went considerably further, describing materials that were extraordinarily strong, could not easily be cut or broken, or could be crumpled and would return to their original shape.

Those more exotic properties remain unverified, and it's important to distinguish the original descriptions from stories that emerged decades later. Set that aside for a moment and consider what those materials might represent.

Don't they sound remarkably like the kinds of materials we use in planetary exploration systems?

Think about the parachutes, suspension lines, lightweight structural supports, thermal blankets, metallic films, and protective coverings used in NASA spacecraft. Some of these materials are remarkably strong for their weight, while others are designed to withstand extreme temperatures and stresses during atmospheric entry.

In fact, the high-strength parachute suspension lines and discarded aero-shell from NASA's Perseverance landing were photographed lying in a debris field on Mars. 

Imagine finding those materials scattered across a remote desert without knowing what they were or where they came from. 

Now go back to those descriptions from Roswell. Sticks, strings, foil-like metallic pieces, and flexible sheets of material scattered across a ranch.

Sound familiar?

Of course, the Air Force maintains that the recovered debris was associated with Project Mogul, a classified balloon project that used lightweight radar reflectors and other equipment. That explanation accounts for many of those same descriptions. 

Here's my point: if we were someday to discover the discarded landing equipment from an actual extraterrestrial probe, why would we expect it to look like the wreckage of an airplane or a conventional spacecraft?

It might look much more like a collection of lightweight structural components, protective films, cables, and fabric, exactly the sort of materials witnesses described at Roswell.

The resemblance doesn't prove Roswell was extraterrestrial. But it does challenge the assumption that an extraterrestrial spacecraft recovery would necessarily involve a smashed, intact flying saucer.

Perhaps the most interesting part of a hypothetical probe landing wouldn't be the strange material left scattered across the ground.

It would be whatever that material was originally designed to protect, transport, or deliver, and that raises the possibility that the people who recovered the debris might have been looking at the least important part of the entire mission, or that the vehicle had spent decades or even centuries traveling between the stars. It reaches Earth, releases whatever it was carrying, and the remaining hardware is deliberately discarded.

From the perspective of a rancher finding strange material scattered across the desert, it would certainly look like something had crashed.

I'm not arguing this is what happened at Roswell. We simply don't have the independently verified evidence to make that claim.

What I'm suggesting is that we've allowed the word "crash" to shape the entire discussion, even though it may be an inaccurate description of the event we're trying to explain.

Think like an interstellar civilization

I've long believed that if extraterrestrial civilizations exist and are exploring the galaxy, they're far more likely to use intelligent robotic probes than enormous spaceships filled with biological crews.

The distances are simply too great, the energy requirements too demanding, and the logistics too complicated.

A robotic probe doesn't need food, water, oxygen, or a return ticket. It doesn't get bored, homesick, or worried about spending several centuries between destinations.

Give it sufficient intelligence, a reliable power source, and the ability to repair or replicate itself, and you've got an extraordinarily efficient exploration system.

Now imagine a civilization that has been doing this for hundreds of thousands of years.

Its probes could be everywhere.

Some might be monitoring planets that show signs of life. Others could be watching for technological milestones, such as radio transmissions, nuclear detonations, or the development of artificial intelligence.

Perhaps a planet reaches a certain stage of development and triggers the deployment of additional instruments.

We already have the beginnings of that concept in our own space exploration programs. We leave instruments behind, send orbiters to monitor planetary conditions, and design machines to function autonomously when communication delays make direct control impractical.

An advanced civilization might simply be doing the same thing on a vastly greater scale, and if some of those probes were expendable, the discovery of their remains wouldn't necessarily tell us anything about the reliability of extraterrestrial technology.

They might be the equivalent of finding a discarded NASA heat shield.

There's still the matter of evidence

Now, before anyone accuses me of trying to explain away every alleged UFO crash, there's an important point I want to make.

We still need evidence.

It's one thing to propose a plausible explanation for why an extraterrestrial spacecraft might end up on the ground. It's quite another to demonstrate that an extraterrestrial spacecraft has actually been recovered.

Those are two entirely different propositions.

If someone claims to possess material from an alien vehicle, I want to know where it came from, who recovered it, how it was handled, and what independent scientific examination has established.

I also want to know what the physical evidence tells us about how it arrived.

A high-speed impact should leave a different signature than a controlled landing. A vehicle that disintegrated under tremendous force should look different from one that deliberately separated into components.

Those distinctions matter.

We shouldn't automatically accept every story about a crashed flying saucer, but neither should we automatically dismiss the possibility of extraterrestrial probes simply because supposedly advanced technology shouldn't crash.

That's applying human assumptions to a technology we don't even know exists.

Maybe we're asking the wrong questions.

One of the problems with UFO research is that so much of it has been shaped by science fiction. We imagine alien spacecraft as futuristic versions of our own airplanes, complete with cockpits, pilots, passengers, and the occasional catastrophic mechanical failure, but that's not really how we explore space, is it?

We send machines.

We deliberately throw away expensive hardware.

We crash equipment into other worlds because sometimes that's the best way to accomplish a scientific objective, and we leave behind debris that another civilization, unaware of what we were doing, might easily mistake for the remains of a disaster.

If an extraterrestrial civilization is exploring Earth, there's no reason to assume its exploration strategy would be all that different from ours.

Its technology might be incomprehensibly advanced, but the fundamental logic of exploration could be remarkably familiar.

So the next time someone asks why an alien civilization capable of crossing interstellar distances would keep crashing spacecraft on Earth, I think there's a reasonable response.

Who says they crashed?

Maybe they landed.

Maybe they delivered something.

Maybe their mission was already accomplished, and perhaps the most interesting possibility of all is that, just like a NASA rover sitting miles away from its discarded landing hardware, whatever those hypothetical extraterrestrial probes came here to deliver might still be out there, quietly doing exactly what it was designed to do.

Now there's something worth thinking about.

-Steve Douglass