My thoughts on the first round of UFO files

The Department of Defense's file release included NASA transcripts from missions roughly four years after the earliest Pentagon material in the same release.

Department of Defense has released hundreds of never-before-seen files on UFOs... NASA transcripts from four years later are also part of this release.

The NASA documents included in the file release were never classified.

those NASA documents were never classified.

Astronauts' in-flight reports of light flashes during Apollo-era missions have a complete, mundane physical explanation and are not evidence of anything anomalous.

what the astronauts were seeing would have a complete full rational explanation, but you have to read the transcript to see and understand why

The press did not do adequate homework in covering the file release and misleadingly implied that all the released material, including the mundane NASA transcripts, was part of the same unexplained mystery as the Pentagon UAP files.

I'm a little disappointed with the press how they've treated this subject because they're not doing their homework... juxtaposed with other files where people see unidentified anomalous phenomena... it's almost guilt by association.

Cosmic rays (relativistic particles from supernovae and galactic centers) strike a telescope's digital detector and corrupt individual pixels, requiring astronomers to take multiple exposures and discard or median-combine affected pixels.

cosmic rays will hit your digital detector and light up pixels within it... you want to take at least three images of your object.

Apollo astronauts reported seeing flashes of light with eyes both open and closed while in space, indicating the effect originates in the eye/retina rather than in the external visual field.

They would just see it with their eyes open and with their eyes closed. Evidence that something is getting triggered on their retina

A helmet fitted with cosmic-ray detectors (ALFMED) registered particle strikes at the same moments astronauts reported seeing flashes, corroborating the cosmic-ray-retina explanation over an alternative 'cosmic alien force' framing.

if a cosmic ray triggers your helmet at the same time you see a flash, there's hard evidence... Sure enough, that's exactly what was observed.

Our check The ALFMED (Apollo Light Flash Moving Emulsion Detector) headband was worn by an astronaut on Apollo 16 and 17 for cosmic-ray tracking correlated against verbal flash reports. NASA's own analysis found direct temporal coincidence for a subset of events (2 of 15 tracked particle events lined up with reported flashes), and combined with geometry/Monte Carlo modeling and later corroborating evidence (ground-based particle-beam studies, ISS reports), this is treated as confirming the cosmic-ray/retina explanation over any exotic alternative. The direct hit-rate was modest, which nuances but does not overturn the claim's framing.

Sources ntrs.nasa.gov, en.wikipedia.org

Beyond producing visible flashes, cosmic-ray particles entering an astronaut's body can damage DNA and break apart complex molecules, a longer-term medical concern for spaceflight.

These particles are entering their bodies and could mess with your DNA. It can break apart complex molecules within your body, within your brain.

Transcript phrases like 'bright as a headlight' describing the light flashes sound dramatic ('like there's some craft out there') taken out of context, but read in the surrounding transcript are ordinary technical communication with mission control about the ALFMED experiment.

Bright as a headlight... if you just take that comment out of context, it's like what are they experiencing? But in the framing of the sentences that precede it and follow it, it is clear that it is simply more communication with mission control about flashes of light.

A separate astronaut report of lights outside the capsule described as reminiscent of '4th of July' fireworks is attributable to frost, fin fragments and paint chips shed from the Saturn V third stage during the translunar injection (TLI) burn, not to an anomalous craft.

one report was that there were lights outside of the craft that reminded them of the 4th of July... Right about at that time, they see these flashes of light outside their capsule.

The Apollo command module had windows facing only one direction (forward of the crew), unlike the 360-degree cupola view added later on the space station, limiting what astronauts could visually confirm about lights outside the craft.

the Apollo capsule is not completely clad with transparent windows. They're only windows sticking out in like one direction... you don't have a 360 couple of view the way they do in the space station

Every astronaut who traveled to the Moon served in the military, as an officer or (in one or two cases) enlisted, except geologist Harrison 'Jack' Schmitt, supporting the claim that the Apollo program was fundamentally a military/Cold War undertaking.

Every astronaut who went to the moon served in the military and were either officers in the military or one or two might have been enlisted. They all served in the military except for one who was the scientist, Jack Schmidt.

Testimony from whistleblowers, insiders, former security officials and ex-military personnel provides sufficient reason to think there is a real, undisclosed extraterrestrial presence being held by the government, though this falls short of direct physical proof.

We have sufficient reason to think there are aliens in the back shed because of testimonies from whistleblowers and insiders, former security officials and for ex-military.

In the history of science, the correct explanation for a previously mysterious phenomenon has never turned out to be magic or aliens.

in the history of science, the correct explanation has never been magic or aliens ever.