There are some big things happening this weekend related to the Pentagon’s UAP Task Force and congressional action associated with their work (more on that in a moment.) With this topic remaining in the news, I wanted to touch on the involvement of federal agencies in terms of identifying the various UFOs being seen by military pilots and others, along with how the United States (and the world) plans to respond in the event that at least some of these objects turn out to be of nonterrestrial origin. One agency that’s been increasingly involved in this research of late is NASA, which sort of makes sense since much of their business activities take place outside of our atmosphere. The person in charge there, former Senator and astronaut Bill Nelson is probably a good candidate to ask what’s going on and what sort of plans we have in place.

During a fairly recent podcast hosted by PBS anchor Margaret Hoover this summer, Nelson actually had the question put to him directly. He first opined that he is quite confident there is other life in the universe. He also spoke of being briefed by military pilots who described things that we still can’t explain. But then Hoover took a very direct line, asking the NASA boss the one question that few have seemed to want to address. If some of these unidentified craft actually did turn out to be controlled by some extraterrestrial intelligence, do we have a plan in place as to what we would do next? Nelson was rather blunt about it. The answer is no. Fast forward to the 21-minute mark for this portion of the interview.

Margaret Hoover: Does NASA have a plan for what it would do if a UAP turned out to be a space alien?

Bill Nelson: No. But the first thing we’d want to do is find out is if it’s friend or foe. But we’re not to that point because we just don’t know what this phenomenon is. I think that with all of those sightings that you referenced, there’s something there. This is not an optical illusion or a radar blip that’s a mistake. So we need to find out. When you talk to those Navy pilots, they’re convinced because they saw it and they tracked it.

Okay, so there is no plan. The host didn’t allow the question to drop completely. In the final two minutes of the podcast, Hoover goes back to the well and asks Nelson the question we should have answered long before this.

Hoover: Given what we know about the UAPs, (sic) when is the right time, Senator, for us to come up with a plan to handle the intelligent life that we’re looking for?

Nelson: Well, we better identify it first and once we identify it, then we’ll know what to do. We don’t have any idea if suddenly an alien is going to appear. This is still great speculation, but we’re in the search for life out there and this phenomenon that these Navy pilots have seen, let’s find out about it. What is it? And then we can deal with it.

Hoover: For all the contingency plans that the U.S. Government has on every shelf and in every binder, I would think that we would be more prepared for that possible eventuality than you say that we are.

Nelson: It is what it is.

On the one hand, there are several reasons to be sympathetic for Nelson’s position on this, at least to a point. What sort of detailed “plan” could we develop for the sudden arrival of some sort of technologically advanced non-human intelligence? Without knowing who or what they are, to say nothing of their potential offensive and defensive capabilities, any sort of military response would be based on nothing but utter speculation. And if they appeared to be peaceful, even diplomatic preparations would be hindered because we don’t know anything about their intellect, emotions, or anything else.

Then there are the political implications to be considered. Up until very recently, this topic was strictly verboten in government circles. Nobody wanted the job of being the guy or gal who had to produce an official federal policy for dealing with the arrival of “little green men.” That would be a career killer. It’s only been the last couple of years when it was finally considered acceptable for people at Nelson’s level to go out in public and talk about it.

But even with all of that said, shouldn’t we be working on some sort of plan by now? At least for starters, it seems like we could work out a few likely, binary scenarios. Let’s say we definitely encounter an alien craft. The first question to address is the one Nelson himself brought up during the podcast. Are they friend or foe? Do they come out firing or looking for a conversation? If it’s the former, we can and should be assembling all of the data that the UAP Task Force has been collecting and determining what we have in our inventory that might have a chance of successfully responding to them. If it’s the latter, which branch of the government would handle the diplomacy? The State Department? (Yikes.)

These are just a few of the questions the public should have answers to. And as I mentioned at the top, there’s something going on all weekend where you are all invited to help move the process forward so we might get some of those answers. From this afternoon until Monday evening, a big group of journalists, researchers, scientists, along with current and former members of the federal government and the intelligence community will be participating in 24 hours of outreach. It’s called The Big Phone Home 2. They are hoping to encourage as many people as possible to join in over the holiday weekend and push Congress to schedule public hearings on what the UAP Task Force has been up to and reveal as much information as possible as to what’s been going on in our skies.

There is a petition that anyone can sign. There is a tool to help you find the contact information for your representatives and senators. There are scripts and templates available for calling or emailing them if you’re not sure what to say. There are even ways to reach out to them on social media. I’ll be participating this evening at 6 pm eastern time and again on Monday at 1 pm in case any of you want to drop by in the chat. This could potentially wind up being one of the biggest stories in the history of human civilization and our elected officials need to hear that the voters want more and better information than we’ve been getting. The first day’s events kick off at noon eastern today. You can even watch it below if you like.