>>6606774 LB
Personally, I don't think what those Navy pilots saw was extraterrestrial.
We've had a long, long time to get really, really good at building cool things, with some incredibly talented people doing it.
It's a little heartbreaking that we probably won't ever learn many of their names, but most of them probably would rather just be anons.
I have a very personal reason for such anger at the people who've played fast and loose with our nation's secrets. Some very brilliant and very good people contributed years of their lives bringing those secrets to fruition. Their work shouldn't be wasted. The best and most beautiful assets of the United States aren't in bank accounts.
Which brings me to this:
"During a 1993 Alumni Speech at UCLA, Rich stated: “We already have the means to travel among the stars, but these technologies are locked up in black projects and it would take an Act of God to ever get them out to benefit humanity…Anything you can imagine, we already know how to do.” At the end of the speech, Rich said, “We now have the technology to take ET home.”
Critics discount the reports of two reputable witnesses at the 1993 speech who spoke with Rich after the speech was over. Jan Harzan and Tom Keller, both engineering alumni of UCLA and UFO enthusiasts, caught up with Rich after his speech and asked him to explain his “taking ET” home comment. The following oft-reported exchange occurred.
Harzan reported that Rich said, “We know how to travel to the stars. We found an error in the equations and it won’t take a lifetime to do it.”
Harzan laments that Rich “didn’t say what the equations were,” so Harzan pursued questioning Rich on “the workings of interstellar propulsion systems.”
Rich turned to Harzan and asked, “How does ESP work?”
Harzan replied, “I don’t know. All points in space and time are connected?”
Rich said, “That’s how it works.”
James Goodall, aerospace journalist and an in-demand public speaker, became friends with Ben Rich. Goodall states that he spoke with Rich about 10 days before Rich died. The conversation took place over the phone while Rich was in the USC Medical Center in Los Angeles where Goodall claims that Rich said, “Jim, we have things out in the desert that are fifty years beyond what you can comprehend. If you have seen it on Star Wars or Star Trek, we’ve been there, done that, or decided it wasn’t worth the effort. They have about forty-five hundred people at Lockheed Skunk Works. What have they been doing for the last 18 or 20 years? They’re building something.”
John Andrews was a Lockheed engineer and personal friend of Ben Rich. Andrews expressed his own personal opinion that UFOs existed in a letter he wrote to Rich, asking Rich to share his own opinion. Andrews claimed that Rich responded that he believed “there are two types of UFOs, the ones we build, and the ones they build…I am a believer in both categories. I feel everything is possible. Many of our man-made UFOs are Un-Funded Opportunities.” Rich underlined the “UFO” in “Un-Funded Opportunities,” but gave no explanation.
Rich continued, stating that most “biomorphic” aerospace designs were inspired by Roswell spacecraft. Rich wrote that he believed the American public “could not handle the truth” about UFOs and ETs. However, he changed his mind toward the end of his life and felt that keeping the secret could be more of a danger to “citizens’ personal freedom under the United States Constitution than the presence of off-world visitors themselves.”
Sauce: https://www.gaia.com/article/ben-rich-lockheed-martin-and-ufos