In Provence, 25 years ago.
October 5, 2009
UFO-Science: The struggle continues
The Bremen conference on hypersonic aerodynamics, October 19–21, 2009
The Geipan, moving forward with inertia, incompetence in action
Xavier Lafont just informed me that someone had retrieved the investigation carried out for the Temps X television program on the Trans en Provence website, from 1984, three years after the event. It's amusing to see these images again.
http://www.dailymotion.com/user/videodocu/video/xam9ho_jeanypierre-petit-dans-temps-x-1984_tech
The author, with a few fewer years With the witness, Renato Nicolaï
Professor Michel Bounias, 1984 First experiments in ionization control using HF
We had obviously not been informed about the on-site investigation at the time of the events. The Gepan – Sepra – Geipan has always operated behind closed doors. It wasn’t until 1984 that I encouraged the Bogdanoff team, producers of the Temps X program, to make a report on the site. At the time, computer-generated imagery did not exist. I was teaching sculpture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Aix. So I proposed that a reconstruction of the object be attempted in the school workshops, then directed by my old friend Jacques Boullier, known artistically as Vasselin. This was done in a few days, in a rush, based on rather schematic information received by phone. Nevertheless, the night before the broadcast, around 10 p.m., the filming crew approached the school as closely as possible to load the object. But, as anyone familiar with the area knows, the entrance is inaccessible to a flatbed truck, hired for the occasion to transport the saucer made of plywood. We had to carry it through the streets of town, shoulder to shoulder.
I leave you to imagine the expressions of some Aixois we encountered along the way, seeing me, with students from the Beaux-Arts, carrying this "object from elsewhere," silver in color, through the city at night.
The next morning, having located the site and identified the witness, we arrived at his property with the crew, the truck, and the saucer, which was brought to the exact spot of the landing—the "restanque" where Nicolas had seen it.
In the last photo, a small 7 cm diameter model appears, during low-pressure tests conducted in the vacuum chamber located at 9 Rue Aude in Aix, in a small attic room, powered by high-frequency current from a simple Ruhmkorff coil. You can see these images again, along with many others, when Julien Geffray finishes assembling the test bench alone and without help in his 18-square-meter garage in Fontenay, just 15 minutes on foot from a metro station.
A laborious endeavor called UFO-Science
The "UFO-Science laboratory," in Fontenay, 15 minutes on foot from a metro station
This crazy project continues solely due to the insistence of Julien Geffray, a 30-year-old webmaster. If he hadn’t carried this story on his shoulders, working hard during weekends and free time, I would have put the 5,000 euros worth of MHD equipment acquired in 2007–2008 up for auction on eBay to fund the test bench. Those who have followed the trajectory of our association, UFO-Science, founded in 2007, know it went through a major crisis during the summer of 2008. At the time, we had reconstructed at my home in Pertuis the entire analytical technique used by Professor Michel Bounias during the 1981 Trans en Provence UFO landing. This technique was based on thin-layer chromatography.
For this purpose, we acquired 5,000 euros worth of equipment, including a precision balance accurate to one-tenth of a milligram (1,200 euros), a centrifuge (700 euros), and a laboratory freezer capable of storing samples at -50 degrees Celsius (2,500 euros), plus numerous accessories and reagents needed to carry out this work. To this, we added a 4,800-euro "UFO-Science grant" that was imprudently paid in full to its recipient in February 2008. In total, we spent 10,000 euros to discover that "it was simple and relatively inexpensive."
At the same time, we had prepared a print run of 1,000 copies of a book titled "UFOs and Science: The Adventurers of Research," written and illustrated by me, published at the association’s expense and sold exclusively for its benefit.
Also at that time, two videos we had produced together with my friend Denis Roussel in Brussels had already been viewed by tens of thousands of internet users and uploaded to Dailymotion. Here are the two videos, which, as I write these lines, have been viewed respectively by
65,800
and
49,000
people:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5eye6_ufoscience_tech
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6pu2t_ufoscience-livre-jpp_tech
Priced at 20 euros, the book brought in 15 euros per copy sold. Just as the project was about to come to fruition, a small group of association members—no more than half a dozen—who had connected through our forum, completely lost their heads, imagining that selling "the book" (in fact, my book) would bring a fortune. The biological hero of this adventure already saw himself, in his imagination, as a salaried employee of the association. We knew that book sales would have nothing to do with the number of video views. It’s easier to click a link than to take out a 20-euro bill from your pocket.
In just a few weeks, we found ourselves facing a revolt we never could have imagined. A small group of fools loudly demanded a general assembly to "democratically decide how the book’s proceeds would be distributed." A book that I had given freely to the association, since it had been agreed that all sales profits would go 100% to the association’s coffers.
We had to act quickly. A first print run had already been completed for 2,500 euros, including names of the rebels, some of whom were... lawyers, who could have later pursued legal claims. In August 2008, we had to send these thousand copies, barely dry, to the grinder, rewrite the book with modified content, and replace unflattering real names with pseudonyms (Messmaker means "troublemaker" in English). A new print run of a thousand copies was made for the same amount, and these books were sold, netting 15,000 euros. But I opposed any further print runs.
Many have experienced the turmoil of associations governed by the 1901 law, which are often breeding grounds for stupid power struggles, where a large part of the energy is wasted on "managing human problems." We had this bitter experience, led by people who had paid 20 euros in membership fees and were determined to assert their rights. The result was that they brought our entire organization to its knees in just a few weeks during the summer of 2008. Since early 2009, we have refused all membership fees and all monetary donations. With the money earned from selling the book...