NASA Doesn't Have a Plan and I'm Not Surprised

NASA Chief Bill Nelson admits the agency doesn't have even a simple plan for what to do if we encounter alien representatives in Earth atmosphere or in our Solar System. He made the admission on PBS Firing Line recently.

“Does NASA have a plan for what it would do if a UAP turned out to be a space alien?” host Margaret Hoover asked Nelson.

“No,” Nelson said, plainly.

And that's not a surprise. Just the act of creating such a plan probably would have led to congressional investigations and admonishments a few years ago. 

And now? If you haven't noticed, our human pants are on fire. Between COVID and Climate Change we have more than we can handle. This is the basic premise of my book: “The Extraterrestrial Big Hello: A Guide for What to do When the Aliens Introduce Themselves.” I don't want to take scientists and world leaders away from the very important challenges presented by COVID and Climate Change. In fact, I would hope that we would pump 10 times the resources into dealing with both issues. Maybe 20 times. But, in the meantime, for those of us who are not actively fighting COVID and Climate Change, can we not find a few hours of time to pull together a basic contingency plan for alien First Contact? 

In the book, I propose spending just half the time and resources we waste on worrying about the British Royals. That's all it would take. Just half that amount of time and effort and we could create a basic plan for dealing with the very first elements of First Contact. And that plan needs to go way beyond..."why are you here?" and "are you going to eat us?" The plan would need to address: who leads such an effort? How is it organized? How do we prevent the most powerful nations from controlling such an event?

Anyway, the book is a collection of my thoughts on those matters, for anyone who might be interested. It's a really complicated and challenging subject when you spend the time to carefully consider it. I try to make my consideration something that anyone in the general public could read and understand. Academics seem a bit perturbed by my style in the book. My reply to that criticism is that First Contact would be an event for all humans. All humans need to know what they would be getting into. I am writing for all humans, not just academics. 

“The Extraterrestrial Big Hello: A Guide for What to do When the Aliens Introduce Themselves.” It is available on Amazon worldwide.