Apollo 11 Saw Ufo!!, Astronaut confesses... Options

[Mandrake]

This article is in today's Times Of India, Mumbai edition (25 July 2006)



First men on moon saw UFO there, used pen to fix lander'



The Apollo Mission Was Near Disaster, Says Edwin Aldrin In Docu Film



New York: A new documentary reveals the US was so eager to show their one-upmanship over Russians during the Cold War, they launched the mission to moon without much scientific precision or the required precautions. The mission came to be launched in hope rather than in expectation. The doucmentary, Apollo 11: The Untold Story, brings out several lacunae that would have ended up in disaster.
The uncertainty was so strong that the then US president Richard Nixon had even prepared an address to the nation announcing that the three astronauts—Neil Armstrong, Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin and Michael Collins—had died in a space mishap.
Aldrin, now 76, interviewed by the makers of the documentary, narrated how he found to his dismay that a vital switch got damaged as one of the astronauts brushed against it in a bulky spacesuit. He said as he looked around some of the lunar dust on the floor, he found there was something that did not belong to the moon—a broken part of a circuit breaker. That was a vital link for the trio to return to the earth in safety. "In the countdown procedure, I used a pen, one of several that we had on board that didn't have metal on the end, and we used that to push the circuit breaker in."
The documentary provides an account of the crisis when the landing module was thrown off course by a computer breakdown as it was about to land. The trio was 100 feet from landing and the vehicle had only fuel for 60 seconds. Armstrong managed to land with just 15 seconds of fuel left.
There were problems about escape procedures for the astronauts. Classified documents that have been made public indicate Nasa never told the astronauts the escape procedures could be useless as they would work only if the Saturn V rocket that powered their craft had broken off. The US government had ordered ground control to cut links with the astronauts if a disaster occurred. They was more concerned about the world watching.
Aldrin also revealed that he and other astronauts had reported seeing a UFO during the flight, but Nasa had covered it up. He said, "There was something out there, close enough to be observed, and what could it be? Obviously, we weren't going to blurt out, 'Hey Houston, we've got something moving alongside of us and we don't know what it is,' you know?"

[Mandrake]

Yes, Vivz, somehow I too think this could be a hoax, going by a simple psychological yardstick:
why did TOI print this half-page news somewhere in the middle of the paper? Why not on the front page?
When they 'discovered' the 'human face' on Mars, the news was all over the front pages. Then why this thing way inside on page 15 or so?