Profile in Courage

Bill Nelson’s Mission to Turn NASA Around on UFOs

Ex-Senator and former astronaut Bill Nelson says that NASA is going to look for evidence to explain the UAP our military has encountered. Oh, and that he’s wide open to the possibility that they may be extraterrestrial!

WHAT ON EARTH is NASA administrator Bill Nelson thinking? Well, for starters, he’s thinking that some of these UAP may not be from Earth in the first place. Fasten your seatbelts for liftoff…

Who is Bill Nelson Anyway?

Nelson was confirmed unanimously by a voice vote in the U.S. Senate on April 29th to be the full-time NASA administrator. Since then, Nelson has been on a fast run through the media and he’s been getting bolder and bolder in his statements about the possibility that we are not alone.

Nelson was appointed by President Joe Biden who must be aware of the things that Nelson has been saying since getting the gig. And every single one of the members of a U.S. Senate that can’t agree on a damned thing these days, those same people agreed that the guy running his mouth about ET should lead the agency. Just sayin’…

U.S. Senator Bill Nelson represented Florida for nearly two decades from 2001 to 2019, a time when NASA’s space shuttle program ended and the era of commercial spaceflight began. His political career ended in 2018 with a squeaker loss to then-Governor Rick Scott. Just a few months after leaving office, Nelson was appointed to the NASA advisory council, and was a strong advocate of human spaceflight putting American boots on the Moon and Mars in the near future.

Nelson is no stranger to space, having actually been a former astronaut himself. Back in 1986, while a U.S. congressman, he served as a payload specialist on a six-day flight on the space shuttle Columbia, the same shuttle that would be lost during a landing in February 2003. Interestingly, his Columbia flight was the last successful shuttle mission before the the Challenger disaster of ’86.

“In the Senate he was known as the go-to senator for our nation’s space program,” said the White House statement released during the confirmation period. “Most every piece of space and science law has had his imprint.”

So, let’s just stipulate that a guy who’s been to space, was elected multiple times to both the U.S. House and the Senate, and just got the top job at NASA, is probably a man who knows how to watch what he says, and probably means to say what he says when he says it.

Let’s talk about exactly what that is because that’s where this story gets truly interesting.

What Exactly is He Saying in Public?

Last week, the Bill Nelson UAP show landed at the University of Virginia where he was interviewed for over an hour by the Center for Politics’ Larry Sabato. You can watch the entire interview at the end of this article for complete context.

What really mattered though was the just over two minutes that the two men talked about the matter of UAP reality. They were in the middle of a back-and-forth about what would happen if a massive asteroid were to collide with the Earth. Unprompted, Nelson brought up the whole UAP and Navy pilots issue and the fact that he’d had a classified briefing on the issue back when he was in the Senate after the 2017 revelations were made.

“I know what you’ve seen is what those Navy pilots saw in 2004, and there have been some 300 sightings since then. I’ve talked to those pilots, and they know they saw something, and their radars locked onto it, and then all of a sudden it was here (pointing down) on the surface and then it’s there (pointing up). And they don’t know what it is, and we don’t know what it is.”

Nelson went on to say that he hoped whatever the technology is, he hoped it wasn’t controlled by an adversary of the United States here on Earth because obviously that would mean we had been leapfrogged in the field of advanced technology by a country that means us harm. To say that evidence that Russia or China had developed breakthrough or disruptive technology would represent a national security challenge is a vast understatement. Yet the June 25th Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena makes it very clear that it is highly unlikely to be our own tech or anything belonging to our adversaries. Do the math. For most people, that leaves somebody from someplace that isn’t here.

Now the history of NASA and UFOs is not a happy one. Researchers have continually argued that the agency knows a whole lot more than it lets on, and the agency has argued that it’s too busy trying to explore our solar system and do great scientific research to get involved with silly little UFO theories. On that score, however, it is clear that Bill Nelson has new ideas.

“But it’s something. And so, this is a mission that we’re constantly looking — what, who is out there? Who are we? How did we get here? How did we become as we are? How did we develop? How did we civilize? And are those same conditions out there in a universe that has billions of other suns in billions of other galaxies — it’s so large I can’t conceive it.”

Interviewer Larry Sabato, who likely was not planning to go here with the NASA administrator, now pointed to a May episode of 60 Minutes on UAP and asked Nelson if he had a theory on who was responsible. “You’ve heard a lot of options,” he told Nelson. “Which one do you think is the most credible, if you could choose?” He got a real answer, not an evasive one.

“I don’t know the answer to that. But I do know this, that my personal opinion is that the universe is so big, and now, there are even theories that there might be other universes, and if that’s the case, who am I to say that planet Earth is the only location of a life form that is civilized and organized like ours? Are there are other planet Earths out there? I certainly think so, because the universe is so big.”

Let’s parse that at least a bit. The administrator of NASA, a friend of President Biden’s, says that UAP could easily be explained by extraterrestrial visitation or even, taking in the “other universes” mention, from other dimensions. Yes, this is a change in direction coming from the top.

Here is a chance to watch just the relevant part of the interview where you can see the actual sincerity in his voice. This is a man who simply is not afraid to say what others are thinking but are too worried about reputation to say themselves. It’s bracing and refreshing.

UAP truth advocate and former government insider Christopher Mellon called it “an unprecedented statement” by Nelson. “It is the most honest and forthright commentary to date on the UAP issue from a NASA Director, and perhaps the most thoughtful UAP-related statement ever made by a serving senior U.S. official.”

Well, yes, all that.

As noted, this was no singular one-off. Nelson’s been talking like this in numerous forums for all his tenure — to CNN, PBS and a dozen others. But his message gets more refined each time he offers it.

What Is He Doing About It?

“I’ve seen the classified report,” Nelson told CNN’s Pamela Brown in an interview shortly before the June 25th “Preliminary Report on UAP” came out. “It says basically what we thought. We don’t know the answer to what those Navy pilots saw.”

“Now, they know that they saw something. They tracked it. They locked their radar onto it. They followed it. It would suddenly move quickly from one location to another. And what the report does tell us that is public is that there have been over 140 of these sightings, So, naturally, what I ask our scientists to do is to see if there’s any kind of explanation from a scientific point of view and I’m awaiting their report.”

This summer NASA press secretary Jackie McGuinness confirmed her new boss Nelson had directed researchers to move forward with exploring any lines of questioning around the topic as they see fit.

“There’s not really a lot of data and scientists should be free to follow these leads, and it shouldn’t be stigmatized,” McGuinness said, acknowledging that UFO research can be negatively associated with unfounded conspiracy theories. “This is a really interesting phenomenon and Americans are clearly interested in it so if the scientists want to investigate, they should.”

This is great news for large numbers of scientists who have been frustrated about attempts to get research started because of the stigma the topic generates. The idea that NASA itself is willing to authorize, support and coordinate such work is revolutionary.

What Questions Did He Ask Again?

Now you read it in the earlier breakout quote in this article, but in one of his responses Nelson asked a series of questions. Let’s give them a little more breathing space as we wrap up here:

• What, who is out there?
• Who are we?
• How did we get here?
• How did we become as we are?
• How did we develop?
• How did we civilize?

It’s worth considering that these are not the first things a public official is likely to say when questioned about the June 25 Preliminary Assessement: Undentified Aerial Phenomena, is it? On the other hand, we know he has had the Full Monty of the classified briefing, and probably others. We also know that if Joe Biden wants to know what the hell is going on, he’s apt to call up Bill Nelson.

Still, it sure sounds like Nelson seems to be saying something with a little more complexity than the version of human development we get taught in high school and college. He’s asking questions that make it seem like we had help.

Why Is He Talking Like This?

It seems the main reason is that he believes it. That, of course, would be refreshing and illuminating and, from what I’ve read, seen and heard, it appears to be the truth.

But it may also be that his age has something to do with it. Nelson turned 79 this year. He was born in World War II, fought in Vietnam, had a lifetime of experiences that many of us will never have. He knows in his heart that something strange is going on now, and has been for the entire time he’s been on this Earth.

He seems ready to play his part now by saying the quiet part out loud.

Keep it coming, Bill. Turn your teams loose on this. Tell them they can speak truth to power. Find out some answers. Confirm what you can and offer the best theories and interpretations that can be made about the explanations. We’ve all been waiting a long time, too.

The Entire UVA Center for Politics Interview

Here is the entire UVA interview Bill Nelson just did with Larry Sabato so you can view the comment in its context:

Trail of the Saucers is published by Stellar Productions and Bryce Zabel, the co-host of the popular new podcast Need to Know with Coulthart and Zabel.