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- "Everybody is entitled to their beliefs and opinions
based on their own readings and experiences," said Don Savage, a NASA
spokesman. "The biggest problem with UFOs is that it's a difficult
area to bring the scientific process into any kind of study."
-
- UFO sightings, Savage said, "are transient events.
They are not repeatable, so they are not subject to scientific study per
se. It's something that we don't have any research into here at NASA."
-
- But Cooper is undeterred in his UFO beliefs.
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- Early sightings
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- In his book, written with Bruce Henderson, Cooper tells
how he saw his first UFO over Europe in 1951. An Air Force pilot in West
Germany, Cooper and his squadron mates were scrambled in their F-86 Sabre
jets to intercept what appeared to be several metallic silver and saucer-shaped
craft.
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- Cooper also describes an incident at Edwards Air Force
Base, California, in which he once looked at film of a crashed UFO in the
American Southwest taken in the late 1950s. That film, he writes, was whisked
away to the Pentagon never to be seen or heard of again.
-
- Throughout the book, the former astronaut argues for
the government to open up its files and come clean about alien visitations.
-
- So convinced is Cooper that UFOs deserve serious study
that he once testified before the United Nations in 1978 on the topic.
His hope was that the UN would become a central repository for accounts
of UFO sightings.
-
- "I made the effort to get the UN to pick up the
ball," Cooper said at the book signing. "They thought it was
a great idea, but they never did anything about it."
-
- The Right Stuff on the line
-
- Still spry and witty, Cooper enjoys talking about his
own jaunts into space.
-
- "In the early days, there was so little that we
knew about space. Every day was an 'oh, gee whiz day' or big adventure,"
he said.
-
- Recalling his circuits around Earth in his Mercury capsule,
Cooper said that the spacecraft's cooling system developed problems. That
in turn caused the electrical systems to fail one by one.
-
- Where other pilots might have panicked, Cooper coolly
took control of his capsule and flew it manually. All his maneuvers to
drop out of orbit for a splashdown in the ocean were done with seat-of-the-pants
flying -- a far-cry from the automated cockpit procedures of today's computerized
space shuttle.
-
- Recovery crews greet a smiling Gordon Cooper after do-it-yourself
landing.
-
- Cooper used his knowledge of star patterns and Earth's
horizon to orient his tiny spacecraft for re-entry into the atmosphere.
For good measure, he had lines scribbled on his window to make sure he
was positioned properly before firing his re-entry rockets.
-
- "So I used my wrist watch for time, my eyeballs
out the window for attitude. Then I fired my retro rockets at the right
time and landed right by the carrier," Cooper said, matter-of-factly.
-
- Asked who was the best pilot among the Mercury astronauts,
Cooper thrilled his listeners by reciting the line spoken by Dennis Quaid,
who played Cooper in the movie "The Right Stuff."
-
- "You're looking at him," Cooper said, flashing
a grin.
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- Holding out for Mars
-
- Cooper is ready to leave Earth again, at the drop of
a space helmet.
-
- "I told the NASA administrator (Dan Goldin) that
when I was John Glenn's age, I wanted to take another flight," he
said with a smile.
-
- "But the flight I want is to be put on the Mars
mission. I hope to hang in there for it."
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