Gary McKinnon

Titan III rockets were assigned.

Launches into polar orbit were planned from Vandenberg.

And then in June of 1969, exactly one month before the Apollo mission reached the moon for the first time, the manned orbiting laboratory was canceled.

Advances in automated spy satellites made human observers redundant.

Vietnam was draining resources.

The Apollo program was imminent.

So the classified space program was folded.

But in defense culture, cancellation does not necessarily mean disappearance.

Programs are restructured.

Personnel are reassigned.

Infrastructure is absorbed into deeper compartments.

So what happened to the military astronaut program?

Where did the classified orbital expertise go?

And what was really going on with the classified space program?

In 1993, former Lockheed Skunk Works director Ben Rich was speaking at a UCLA alumni event.

Rich had overseen programs like the U-2, the SR-71, and the F-117, stealth aircraft that had lived in total secrecy before becoming public knowledge.

At the end of his presentation, according to multiple attendees, Rich's final slide showed a black disc-shaped craft flying into space.

He closed with the famous words, we now have the technology to take E.T.

home.

Was he just messing with the audience?