'Space professor' Greg Autry talks NASA, UFOs, and simulation theories

Former NASA White House Liaison (2017), presidentially nominated to serve as the space agency’s Chief Financial Officer, and current Clinical Professor of Space Leadership, Policy and Business in the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University Greg Autry wants to be the first “space professor.” Autry will be heading up ASU’s Executive Master of Global Management: Space Leadership, Business, and Policy (EMGM-Space), currently sees parallels between the interest in business space ventures, and UFO stories becoming mainstream news. Is this the case fully, or is space ventures a logical endeavor in terms of where we are at technologically?

“Certainly, there has always been a constructive feedback loop between science, speculation and science fiction,” Autry said. “It is worth noting that most of this interest and reports increase as terrestrial aviation advances technically and in sync with public interest in high performance flight and space. There was a lot of this in the 50s,60s and 70s when sci-fi and space were hot and now when we have the same mix. Maybe we see what we want to see or maybe we notice or frame things differently?”

Autry has always been interested in the UFO phenomena, and the possibility of extraterrestrial life. He recalls reading the findings of Project Blue Book in junior high school, and in high school in his advanced biology class did paper on astrobiology, and Viking lander experiments, which led to his teacher writing “This is NOT a science” across the top. Undeterred, Autry wasn’t afraid to bring up the topic during his time at NASA.

“I think there was reasonable interest in the UFO topic when I was at NASA,” Autry said. “ I certainly discussed it several times with several people and learned what I could. While everyone at NASA is pragmatic, rigorously scientific and skeptical of speculation, they are certainly not unimaginative or closed minded. The job of a scientist IS to attempt to reject every hypothesis that comes their way! We are going to need a lot more data to get any formal acceptance of UFO / UAP relation to space out of a science agency. The bigger change is at DoD where pragmatism must rule by nature.”

Autry has been paying attention to the current Pentagon-UAP released videos. He looks at them through various viewpoints, and even ponders the simulation theory.

“I think it is clear from DoD and other sources that there ARE UFO / UAP being observed fairly regularly, however, I don’t think Occam’s razor would tell us that means some biological entities have physically transported themselves across light years in order to spy on us and be kind of bad at that,” Autry said.” I’m of the general opinion, the more I learn and think about the Drake Equation, Fermi Paradox and lack of SETI results those civilizations are probably very rare and other possibilities should be considered. These include domestic secret experiments, foreign intrusions into our airspace with sophisticated vehicles, non-vehicular but artificially constructed manifestations / projections, misunderstood atmospheric phenomena. Lastly (some people will think I’m nuts, but it isn’t crazier than aliens) we should consider the possibility that these phenomena may be an artifact of our experience as conscious data within digital simulation (as Elon Musk and others have been riffing on recently) or a manifestation of the monitoring systems of such a simulation.”

By MIKE DAMANTE

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