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New York Post
a day ago
- Science
- New York Post
US government uses UFOs as cover to ‘hide a lot of things': ex-NASA official
In an era captivated by unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and government conspiracies, one former NASA official is cutting through the noise and casting doubt on aliens coming to Earth. Joseph Gutheinz, a retired senior special agent with NASA's Office of Inspector General and current criminal defense attorney, said it's time to apply science, not speculation, to the debate. 'Prove it. Honestly, prove it,' he said to those who believe in the presence of UFOs on Earth. 'They've been claiming that there have been UFOs since the 1940s. And, you know, Area 51 supposedly houses UFOs,' he told Fox News Digital. 'Have someone go in, look at Area 51.' Gutheinz said that during his work with the NASA Office of Inspector General, he would regularly get calls from individuals who believed they were abducted, or had a chip in their brain from aliens. 4 Joseph Gutheinz, a former NASA agent, is casting doubt on aliens coming to Earth. Fox News 4 Gutheinz said that during his work with the NASA Office of Inspector General, he would get calls from people who thought they were abducted, or had a chip in their brain from aliens. AP 'What I used to tell my students was the possibility of anybody coming from another world to visit us was beyond unlikely,' he said. 'And what I would tell the people that would call me up with these tales about being visited by aliens, see a psychiatrist.' Citing astronomical distances and scientific understanding of the solar system, Gutheinz explained the improbability of any extraterrestrial visitors reaching Earth. 'There are up to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way. There are maybe one to two trillion galaxies in the universe. But the reality is this, the closest solar system is Alpha Centauri. Alpha Centauri A, B, and Proxima Centauri are the closest stars,' he said. 4 A UFO variety was photographed when it hovered for fifteen minutes near Holloman Air Development Center in New Mexico. Bettmann Archive 'The bottom line is that it's 4.4 light years away, or 25 trillion miles away. And if somebody started flying to Proxima and Satori, or the other way around, it would take them over 70,000 years to get there,' he said. 'Nobody is visiting us from another world, likely.' He pointed to moons like Europa, Ganymede, Titan, and Triton as the only plausible places for primitive life in our solar system. 'If there is life on any of those moons, it's possible. Again, it is primitive, it is microorganisms, it's nothing that's going to visit us in a flying saucer.' 4 Razor wire and security cameras at the entrance to Area 51, a secretive U.S. military base believed by UFO enthusiasts to hold government secrets about extraterrestrials. REUTERS When asked whether such sightings could be explained as natural or spiritual phenomena, he suggested that it could be government testing. 'If you're seeing something up there, and it's real, it's coming from the Chinese or the Russians or your next-door neighbor flying around with their drone,' he said. Historical military secrecy, Gutheinz suggested, may have played a major role in fostering the UFO myths. 'I believe early on in the 1940s when all these UFO stories started coming up, it was because the military was probably testing some aircraft, and they didn't want the Russians to know about it,' he said. 'And so, if the UFO cover worked, and I would not be surprised if there are some people in the military and the government that played along with that in order to conceal our stealth technology, that is really remarkable, and they just don't want to share that with other countries.' 'The bottom line is, I think that we use the UFO cover to hide a lot of things.' Fox News Digital has reached out to NASA for comment.
Globe and Mail
23-02-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
NASA May Cancel Boeing's Big $82 Billion Space Opportunity
"The report of my death was an exaggeration." -- Mark Twain First published more than 125 years ago, the great author's quip about his rumored demise applies well to the situation today with NASA's Space Launch System (SLS), a 322-foot tall rocket designed to carry astronauts to the moon, and built by Boeing (NYSE: BA) and its partners. I've written at least a half dozen stories, dating back as far as 2018, highlighting various political efforts to cancel the SLS program and its $82 billion worth of future NASA contracts. Just last year, for instance, the NASA Office of Inspector General called the SLS excessively expensive, while former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg lambasted it as likely unnecessary. And yet the program lives on. But perhaps not for much longer. Boeing sounds a warning note About a week ago, Boeing SLS program manager David Dutcher called an all-hands meeting of the 800 or so employees working on the rocket and warned that as many as half their jobs could soon go away. Admittedly, this is not Boeing's intention. The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act requires large U.S. employers to give 60 days' notice to workers if there's a possibility the company will conduct a mass layoff. Dutcher's meeting was apparently called in response to this requirement, given the fear that the Trump administration may end Boeing's SLS contracts in March. Dutcher acted in the context of the ongoing work by the Department of Government Efficiency to cut federal spending, as well as the expected March release of the Trump administration's 2026 budget proposal, which may or may not include funding for the SLS. However, canceling the SLS program doesn't seem to be part of NASA's plan, at least not yet. Soon after the Boeing meeting took place, NASA released a statement confirming that it sees the SLS as "essential" to Project Artemis. And a Bloomberg article published on Feb. 12 reported that Boeing thinks as few as 200 employees might end up getting laid off. Still, NASA couldn't assure Boeing that all its SLS project workers' jobs were safe. "NASA defers to its industry contractors for more information regarding their workforces," said the space agency. What does this mean for Boeing? It's hard to overstate how great the risk is here for Boeing. Ars Technica's Eric Berger estimates that NASA spends about $3 billion a year developing and keeping the SLS program going, which is equal to about $1 out of every $8 that Boeing's defense, space and security division makes. And that's not even counting the $4 billion-plus cost each time this rocket launches. At a minimum, if the SLS program were canceled (and not replaced by other rocket programs), that would save the government more per year than the sum of all the cuts made so far by the Trump administration based on the recommendations of Elon Musk's "Department of Government Efficiency." (That's according to an estimate from Musk's own Grok AI, by the way). Over the entire anticipated length of Project Artemis, with 20 missions planned, the revenues lost to Boeing and its partners could add up to $82 billion. So whether you're a shareholder in Boeing, which oversees the SLS program, or in Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC), which builds the rocket's solid rocket boosters, L3Harris (NYSE: LHX), which makes the main engines, or Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT), which builds the Orion space capsule that it carries, ending the SLS program would sap billions of dollars of revenue from your space stock's top line. Silver linings for space investors That said, it's not all bad news for space investors. Canceling SLS wouldn't necessarily mean canceling Project Artemis. It doesn't mean America isn't going back to the moon -- just that it wouldn't be using SLS rockets to get there. Funds originally designated to pay for fewer than two dozen SLS launches could, and likely would, be retargeted toward launches (maybe even more launches) by companies not named Boeing. Musk's SpaceX would presumably be a prime beneficiary, given that it already has NASA contracts to build two moon landers, and possesses at least one rocket (Falcon Heavy) capable of reaching the moon, as well as a second rocket (Starship) that's undergoing test flights. Blue Origin is another likely beneficiary. Jeff Bezos' space company has already launched one New Glenn rocket with a payload to orbit capacity greater than the Falcon Heavy's. Blue Origin also has a NASA contract to produce landers for Project Artemis. And then there's Intuitive Machines (NASDAQ: LUNR), which is building smaller landers, as well as Rocket Lab (NASDAQ: RKLB) and a whole host of other small space companies that would probably love to bank some of that sweet, sweet Project Artemis money. Not all of these companies are publicly traded. SpaceX and Blue Origin, for instance, may still be years away from their IPOs. But you can already invest in Intuitive Machines and Rocket Lab today. Come to think of it, if the SLS gets canceled, maybe you should. Don't miss this second chance at a potentially lucrative opportunity Ever feel like you missed the boat in buying the most successful stocks? Then you'll want to hear this. On rare occasions, our expert team of analysts issues a 'Double Down' stock recommendation for companies that they think are about to pop. If you're worried you've already missed your chance to invest, now is the best time to buy before it's too late. 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