INTRODUCTION TO THE CONTACT INITIATIVE

People watching the sky
A group of people looks up toward the sky.

The CONTACT INITIATIVE looks for answers about the nature of UAPs/UFOs.

My name is Erich Habich-Traut and I’m the initiator of the ‘Contact Project’.

I’ve coordinated a multinational science project 2001 – 2015 with my website “Our Planet Earth From Space”, which tracked Earth Changes: http://opefs.com.

I’ve been a volunteer for Bigelow Aerospace from 2006 ~ 2012, providing real-time tracking of their prototype space habitats Genesis I & II via NORAD (https://web.archive.org/web/20120504010218/http://bigelowaerospace.com/genesis-1-tracking.php).

The difference between the Contact Project and classical SETI is that UAPs are included in its search for extraterrestrial life.

The Contact Project wants to gather high quality evidence about the phenomenon. It also wants to inform and enthuse the public about the possibility of contact

UFO ALERT
One possibility to gather evidence on UFOs and make contact with ETi that the Contact Project has investigated is an app based approach- a smartphone app that records GPS coordinates of UFOs after a user alert. The following is past tense:

Users could take snapshots or video of the UFO with their smartphone. But that was not the primary goal. When the smartphone was used to photograph the UFO, its gravity sensors record the elevation and the compass records its azimuth.

The UFO alert then would have been sent to an astronomical database, NORAD database and air traffic databases to identify known flying objects. Secret military projects were to be excluded via NORAD TLEs.

The remaining objects qualified as prospective UAP. They would have been investigated by forwarding their GPS coordinates to close-by search partners using the same Contact app. All this was to happen near real-time.

The search partners were to be selected by their proximity to the sighting and their capability/qualifications.

Search partners could have been HAM radio operators, videographers, gigapixel camera operators, Unistellar telescope operators and (passive) radar operators. Passive radar was a subset of radio HAM enthusiasts.

To motivate the public to take part in this search prizes were to be given for successful detections of UAPs, staggered by evidence weight:

less important:
1. confirmed UAP pictures, 2. video, 3. radar images,

more important:
4. reception of radio emissions,  5. verifiable conversation with ETI (CETI), 6. physical alien artifact, 7. actual landing of UAP with ETI.

Alternative to cash prizes, credits may be given. Those could be collectible non-fungible tokens (NFT’s), whose value is based on their desirability.

The whole endeavor (and prize money) would have been funded by private enterprise through the “Alien Marketplace” advertising space. This marketplace was accessed through the Contact app. To filter out fakes and false identifications AI algorithms and volunteers were to evaluate the results. The volunteers may have been paid cash or NFT tokens that can be traded on the Alien Marketplace.

MY OWN MOTIVATION

MUFON #111680, UK, 1995


My own motivation to get this “Contact Project” app off the ground are my own UAP sightings from Ireland in 1986 and 1995 in the UK.

The 1995 UAP I managed to photograph twice on 35mm film, making it possible for me to finally triangulate it’s approximate size, distance and speed in May 2020, when I found the lost and forgotten negative film from 1995.

According to a Gallup poll over 40% of the American public believes in UFOs.  Now, after the release of the Pentagon ODNI UAP report in July 2021 the climate seems right to get to the bottom of this and ask the question for real and to get a real answer: Are we Alone?

After this introduction, could I please interest you in reading the proposal outline and flowchart of the “Contact Project”?

Keywords: Contact Initiative, GPS tracking, smartphone app, crowd sourced, automated alert system, distributed, public and specialized observers, passive radar operators, proactive HAM radio operators, gigapixel camera operators, CETI, METI, SETI, commercial funding, NFT, alien marketplace

https://contactproject.org

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3. A BIT OF UFO HISTORY

Headline of the Chicago Sun, June 26, 1947. This started modern UFO/UAP history.

It’s been 74 years since the first widely publicized UFO encounter of Kenneth Arnold in 1947, who coined the term “flying saucer” when he saw nine objects skipping along the sky from his plane. Since then there have been tens of thousands reported unidentified flying objects in the Earth’s skies, some of them even similar in shape to Arnold’s sighting.

Countless theories about the origin and purpose of these phenomena exist. UFOs were a subject of public interest and regularly reported in the media until the end of the 1960’s .

Fall RIver Herald News, July 29 1952: The invasion of Washington
UFO/UAP captured from government survey plane in 1971 over Lake Cote, Costa Rica


After the moon landing, skeptical scientists who questioned the alien origin of Flying Saucers won the scientific debate, relegating believers of the extraterrestrial hypothesis to fringe status.

This pretty much ended serious mainstream media coverage of UFOs.

THE SAGAN STANDARD
The mantra became that ‘extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence’, a phrase known as ‘The Sagan Standard’.

To find extraordinary evidence for the existence of technologically intelligent aliens, lacking suitable specimens for testing,  Sagan proposed instead to search for their signals in the sky with radio telescopes.


This concept he illustrated in his movie “Contact”, which had its premiere in 1997.

Two years after the premiere of “Contact” the University of Berkeley made it possible for anyone with a computer to join in the search for alien signals, when they launched the seti@home screensaver.

The seti@home screen saver

165000 people seized the opportunity to find ET on their computer, taking part in the largest participatory computing project in history. I was one of the first to sign up, on the 16th of May 1999. Sadly, seti@home stopped processing new data on March 31 2020. No announcement had been made whether or not it had been successful in its mission: to find radio evidence for extraterrestrial life.

PENTAGON ACKNOWLEDGES “UAPs”
The next month, on the 27th of April 2020, 73 years after the first widely documented flying saucer sighting, the Pentagon publicly acknowledged the existence of UFOs, supplying pilots testimony, audio- and video recordings.

The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense

By now the UFO phenomenon had been so thoroughly discredited that skeptics quickly began questioning the Pentagon’s UFO/UAP material. 

However, the material didn’t just consist of fuzzy camera footage, but also recorded radar tracks and simultaneous sightings by pilots and aircraft carrier personnel.

In any UFO/UAP sighting, camera images are corroborative evidence of the witness testimony. Very often the quality of the camera can not capture what the witnesses have perceived.

The Contact Initiative uses a wide variety of methods to verify UFO/UAP. First we have the human observer, who may be able to capture the UFO image in low-res with his smartphone camera.

Then the location of his sighting is forwarded to a number of search partners in his neighborhood. They will try to capture the UFO with HD telescopes, cameras and radar, as well as listening with RF scanners to incoming radio waves from the object.

Excerpt of “UFO Alert!” flowchart

The more data about a UFO/UAP sighting exists, in as wide a range of frequencies as possible, the easier it is to verify the sighting as genuine. And if that wasn’t enough, HAM radio amateurs will try to hail the sighting.

The Contact Initiative does not rely on images. Having the UFO Alert! app is like carrying the resources of an airplane carrier in your pocket.

Best, Eric, founder,
https://contactproject.org



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