NASA-UAP-D023, Interview Excerpt with Astronaut Gordon Cooper, 1962
▮ AI SYNOPSIS · Sonnet 4.6
This is an audio recording (transcript) of a November 1962 television interview conducted by journalist Walter Cronkite with NASA astronaut and Mercury program pilot Gordon Cooper. The interview covers Cooper's views on unidentified flying objects. Cooper states that a large number of highly qualified witnesses have reported objects lacking logical explanation, and he declines to rule out the possibility of human-like life on other planets, suggesting some reported objects could originate from such sources. The exchange also touches briefly on the "Glenn effect" — the luminous particles observed by John Glenn during his orbital flight — and Cooper's perspective on the limited range of early Mercury missions.
The record is notable as a contemporaneous on-record statement by an active NASA astronaut expressing openness to the extraterrestrial hypothesis for UAP, at a time when official U.S. policy was dismissive of such claims. Cooper later became one of the more publicly outspoken former astronauts on UAP topics. No substantive redactions are evident in this excerpt. The document adds biographical and institutional context to the broader pattern of credible-witness UAP reports catalogued in the PURSUE release.
▮ TOP WORDS IN THIS DOCUMENT
In November 1962, journalist Walter Cronkite interviewed astronaut Gordon Cooper. In this excerpt from that interview, Cronkite asks Cooper about his views regarding the nature of unidentified flying objects, having previously expressed an interest in the subject. Cooper opines that “a large number of exceptionally well-qualified people have seen objects” without a “logical explanation” and speculates on the existence of other planets with “a livable atmosphere” and that maybe there are “some type of human life” out there. Interview was conducted in November 1962.
⌥ TRANSCRIPT
Colonel, you expressed interest at one time in unidentified flying objects, the feeling
that there might be something to all these stories.
Do you still feel that way?
Well, I feel that there have been a large number of fairly well qualified, exceptionally
well qualified, I should say, people who have seen objects that have not had any really
logical explanation other than this, I think that maybe in fact, each and every one of
them does have an explanation, but I think that there are so many possibilities, so many
thousands of possibilities of other planets out somewhere in the universe that would have
a livable atmosphere that I would hate to rule out, the possibility that maybe there are
people or some type of human life on some of these.
And if this is the case, then it's not too unfeasible to think that perhaps some of these objects
might have been something of this type.
You don't think that the comparatively short step out into space that the Mercury flight
will take you on is far enough out to make any observations in this area?
No, I think we're still in a fairly low order of getting out into space when you regard,
when you speak of space and being millions of miles involved, and we're only getting
out a hundred miles or so.
What about the so-called Glen effect, Gordo the snowflakes, the fireflies, now both the
Charon carpenter seem to feel that it's frost or some nature off of the capsule, but apparently
Glen still sort of casts doubt on that theory.