Why visit Earth? � 24 Reasons By Stanton Friedman

The focus in my college lecture "Flying Saucers ARE Real!" has always been on
facts and data... five large scale scientific studies, Roswell, Gallup Polls,
Physical trace cases, MJ-12 documents, real UFO photos, star travel, etc.
However, very often I am asked after my lectures and during radio and TV
appearances a lot of "why?" questions, such as why hasn't the government told us
what it knows? Why haven't saucers landed on the White House lawn? Why are the
SETI cultists so opposed to the notion of flying  saucer reality?	

Obviously I have never claimed to speak for the U.S Government, the aliens, or
the SETI cultists. However, after 44 years of study and investigation and 700+
lectures and answering maybe 35,000 questions, I have come up with my own
speculations.  Here, for example are a number of reasons for aliens to travel to
Earth.

Please note that I am assuming that travelers come from within our local
neighborhood, since there are 46 sun-like stars within only 54 light years of
the sun that might be expected to have planets and life. One pair, Zeta 1 and
Zeta 2 Reticuli, in the southern sky constellation of Reticulum, are less than
one light year apart, about 37 light years from here, and are about a billion
years older than the sun.

They have had ample time to develop technology much more advanced than ours. I
do not assume that the small craft often observed near the ground just came here
from Zeta Reticuli 1 or 2, but that these were carried here by a huge mother
ship, as seen in a number of excellent cases.

So visiting aliens might be:

1. Graduate students doing thesis research on the development of a primitive
society, on the huge variety of languages here, the huge variety of genetic
stocks, etc.

2. Broadcasters with a weekly show "idiocy in the boondocks."

3. Mining engineers. Since the Earth is the densest planet in the solar system,
it has more relatively rare, very dense elements with very special
properties-such as uranium, platinum, osmium, rhenium, gold, tungsten-than any
other planet in the solar system.

4. Checking on this planet to which they banned bad guys and girls ages ago. It
was the Devils Island of the neighborhood, and that is why we are so nasty to
each other.

5. Potential observers of expected natural catastrophes, such as nuclear war, a
collision with a large orbiting body, asteroid etc.

6. Running special jaunts to this honeymoon capital of this corner of the
galaxy. 

7. Guides for hunting and fishing expeditions seeking the weird wildlife
specimens cavorting about. No license required.	

8. Specimen gatherers for ET zoos.

9. Gatherers of genetic material for hybridization, since we have a huge variety
of almost all biological and botanical materials, including humans. Other older
places may have long ago run out of many varieties.

10. Jailers of miscreants who are being punished by having to spend two weeks
near earth. Punishment to last a lifetime.

11. Advance men for the establishment of amusement parks. The land for
Disneyworld in Florida was bought up secretly in advance.

13. Proprietors of supply centers for travelers needing water, food, or various
hydrogen isotopes for their fusion or other propulsion systems. Sort of like the
English coaling stations on islands in the oceans in the last century. Or gas,
food, lodging next exit, perhaps on the side of the moon away from the earth.

14. Anthropologists checking on colonies left here millennia ago, perhaps as
part of a competition for who can do the best job.

15. Flyers doing their cross galaxy flying solos.

16.Training missions for space explorers, anthropologists, marines, navigators.

17. Repairmen for space communication systems, checking out the "new sources" of
electromagnetic waves fouling up their communications.

18.Antique and curio buyers from elsewhere gathering specimens and souvenirs.

19. Advance men for space missionaries like those who converted the natives in
Africa.

20. Talent recruiters for non-earthling sports teams. We on average seem to be
larger and stronger than our visitors.

21. Relativistic space travelers returning home after a short (pilot time)
journey.

22. Advance men planning an interstellar competition on neutral ground, such as
Iceland was for the Fisher Spaasky chess match.

23. Rescuers of arms caches left behind eons ago for use in warfare.

24. Intragalactic advance men for the next Olympics or for new hotels and
resorts.

I am sure readers can come up with their own top-ten list. My preferred reason
for alien visitations is to quarantine us to make sure we don�t take our brand
of friendship � usually described as hostility � out there.

This notion in based on one assumption I make about every advanced civilization,
namely that it is concerned with its own survival and security. This means that
it must keep tabs on the primitives in the neighborhood, but only close tabs on
those able to bother that civilization.

At the end of WW 2, it was perfectly clear to any visiting alien spy checking
out the place that soon this primitive society, whose major activity is tribal
warfare (we Earthlings killed more than 50 million of our own kind and destroyed
1700 cities during WW 2), would be moving out and bothering the neighbors. Soon
would mean roughly one hundred years, which is obviously nothing on a cosmic
time scale. The three indicators of rapid development of interstellar flight
capability were nuclear weapons, powerful V-2 Rockets, and powerful radar and
other electronic devices.

As it happens, the only location on the entire planet at which one could study
all 3 in July, 1947, was Southeastern New Mexico. The first atom bomb was tested
at Trinity site on White Sands Missile Range in July, 1945. White Sands was
where the captured German V-2 rockets were being launched, and is also where the
best radar was to track the rockets. The recovery of a crashed saucer near
Roswell - and another in the Plains of San Augustin - should not be surprising
at all.

I would further note that because the time to go from one's first flight
technology to space travel is so short, that during any one century it is very
unlikely that there are other solar systems in the neighborhood going through
this transition at the same time. They are either way ahead of us or way beyond
us.  We would be a natural focus for visitation.