I’m standing with Dr. Story Musgrave who is the only astronaut to have flown missions on all five Space Shuttles. Besides being a medical doctor, this former Marine and Air Force pilot has 7 graduate degrees in math, computers, chemistry, medicine, physiology, literature and psychology.

A little background about my encounter with Dr. Musgrave - When I did the movie SPACE COWBOYS, I had to spend a lot of time with Astronaut Robert Cabana who had flown America’s first module of the International Space Station into orbit. He has since retired as Director of NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center, but at the time, he was acting as our technical advisor. He consulted with me quite a bit since I was responsible for all the computer screens for the capsule and mission control, etc. During a discussion about his fellow Marine Corps pilot chasing a UFO, Col. Cabana said to me, “You should talk to Story Musgrave, he believes in UFOs.”

Eleven years later, I got my chance when Dr. Musgrave gave the keynote address at a symposium hosted by MUFON. During his speech, Dr. Musgrave said that he believes that there are thousands, if not millions of advanced civilizations in the universe.

Afterwards, I was in a group chatting with Dr. Musgrave and I asked him about an article I’d read in a Canadian newspaper written by Clark C. McClelland the former ScO of the Space Shuttle fleet. Scott said in the article: As the final slide of a “Grey" ET was shown during a recent astronomy presentation by Dr. Musgrave, he made this surprising comment: "These guys are real... I guarantee it!"

Interestingly, Dr. Musgrave wouldn’t confirm the report and basically said don’t believe everything you read on the Internet. Not only was he giving good advice, Dr. Musgrave was also providing a good example of the kind of problems I’ve encountered while doing research on the UFO subject for a screenplay that I’m writing.  Who to believe – McClelland or Musgrave? It was suggested by some that Dr. Musgrave crossed a line by saying he knows for sure about aliens rather than he has a general belief in them. And that he couldn’t confirm the newspaper story for fear of losing his pension or from some other restriction as a military officer.

But wouldn’t a similar restriction apply to former military pilot (Navy Captain) astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell (PHD from MIT, co-holder of the record for the longest walk on the moon)? However, in 2009, Dr. Mitchell said, “I happen to have been privileged enough to be in on the fact that we've been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomena is real…It's been well covered up by all our governments for the last 60 years or so, but slowly it's leaked out...”

And what about Major Gordon Cooper, one of the original Mercury Astronauts? He was very public about his belief in UFOs after he sighted some in 1951 while piloting an F-86 Sabre jet over Western Germany. They were metallic, saucer-shaped discs at considerable altitude and could out-maneuver all fighter planes. Major Cooper also testified before the United Nations: "I believe that these extra-terrestrial vehicles and their crews are visiting this planet from other planets... Most astronauts were reluctant to discuss UFOs."

Although I'm impressed by what astronauts like Musgrave, Mitchell and Cooper have to say, there are others in the UFO field who are less reliable. However, after a long chat I had at the symposium with nuclear physicist Dr. Stanton Friedman, I came to the conclusion that he is someone who can be trusted to tell the truth. He relied on the government’s words in their own reports to make his case for extraterrestrial visitation. And whenever their was an item that he couldn’t prove, he would say that it was in his “grey basket.” So I respect this venerable researcher who celebrated his 77th birthday at the symposium.

Dr. Stanton Friedman was employed as a nuclear physicist by such companies as GE, GM, Westinghouse Astronuclear Laboratory, TRW Systems, Aerojet General Nucleonics, and McDonnell-Douglas Astronautics working in such highly advanced, classified programs as nuclear aircraft, fission and fusion rockets, and various compact nuclear power-plants for space and terrestrial applications.

The program is a six-day intensive designed to teach a method of discovery in which one can explore different states of consciousness through direct experience.

Here I am with one of my heroes - physicist Dr. Tom Campbell (on the right.) Dr. Campbell discovered the answer to two of the most important mysteries that have baffled physicists for almost a century - why is the speed of light a maximum constant and why did the famous "Double Slit" experiment in the 1920's show that consciousness was a determining factor in whether light appeared as a wave or particle.

Not only did the Double Slit experiment give rise to the new physics of Quantum Mechanics, it forced Einstein, Baum and other top physicists to realize that reality is created by consciousness. Since they tried in vain for the rest of their lives to understand why and how consciousness is involved in the process, it's a great accomplishment by Dr. Campbell to discover the answer.

As the Nobel Prize winning physicist Eugene P. Wigner said, "It will remain remarkable, in what ever way our future concepts may develop, that the very study of the external world led to the scientific conclusion that the content of the consciousness is the ultimate universal reality."

I went to a ranch at the foot of Mt. Adams in Washington state for a week of solitude to do some writing. While at the ranch, which has a reputation for being a UFO hotspot, I was very interested to see some strange objects flying in the night skies above the mountain. I don't know if they were "ours" or "theirs", but as someone who has briefly piloted a few airplanes (civilian and military) and ridden in a lot more, I can say that the objects behaved differently from any publicly known craft!

The day before I left the ranch, a fire broke out on the mountain. Thinking about the effect on wildlife was upsetting to me, since I'm an animal lover, as you might have guessed from my May 2008 adventure -see below: