Alien territory: the rise of UFO tourism

Far from being conspiracy theorists, many visitors to remote sites such as Area 51 and Roswell are simply adventurous travellers, keen to know the answer to the question: is the truth really out there?

The new (para)normal

 

It’s that ‘normal’ clientele on road trips, as opposed to the committed conspiracy theorists, that’s driving the current trend — causing a rise in bookings both here and at other UFO hotspots. Inevitably, that list also includes Roswell, New Mexico, the site of the most famous alleged UFO crash, in July 1947, and what many believe was the mother of all government cover-ups afterwards.

Like Rachel, Roswell has embraced its alien-friendly status in recent years, with notable sites ranging from the International UFO Museum and Research Center to a spaceship-shaped McDonald’s restaurant. Here too, UFO tourism has kicked into hyperdrive of late and the ‘grey dollar’ (as it’s been jokingly nicknamed by some in the industry, after the most frequent visualisation of alien skin tone) is being spent as never before. Dennis Balthaser, a local man who runs extraterrestrial-themed tours in Roswell, says demand is such that he’s now running them twice daily, five days a week.

“By the end of this year I’ll have cleared 300 tours,” he tells me. “Most visitors are curious about Roswell, but have very little information on what happened here. They’ve usually seen something on TV that’s sparked their interest and they make a stop here during a longer vacation — although there’s also a smaller group who’ve had a UFO experience of their own and want to find out more.”

That dichotomy, between the curious and the firm believers, echoes the experience at Area 51. In Roswell, there’s a decided international flavour to proceedings, too. 

“Several times a month I have people from the UK, China, Australia, South Africa and Japan on my tours, as well as most US states,” says Dennis. “People know that something happened here, but they’re not sure what. It’s that not knowing, that mystery, that continues to drive this. As long as we don’t know the truth, and people keep speculating about theories, they’ll keep coming to visit places like this.” 

It would obviously be bad for Dennis’s buoyant business, but does he think we’ll ever get to the bottom of what really happened during that summer storm of 1947, when the US Air Force admitted they’d recovered a ‘flying disc’, before backtracking the following day and claiming it was a downed weather balloon? “I don’t anticipate disclosure in my lifetime, but I do hope it will be revealed for young people eventually,” he says. “We deserve the truth — one way or the other.”

That quest for answers remains firmly focused on US territory, where, according to the Washington state-based National UFO Reporting Center, there were 3,381 sightings in 2018 — more than three times the annual average since records began. Either more aliens are showing up, or more humans are wanting to believe — and acting on that belief. 

As well as the ‘big two’ (Roswell and Area 51), other UFO hotspots in the US include Kecksburg, Pennsylvania — where a car-sized, acorn-shaped metal object covered in hieroglyphics reportedly fell to earth in a fiery blaze in 1965 — and Sedona, Arizona, which claims some of the most frequent alien sightings in the world, everything from colourful balls of light to flying saucers. Groups of tourists equipped with night-vision goggles, binoculars and telescopes gather here every evening to hunt for UFOs. 

Extraterrestrial income

 

The USA isn’t the only country experiencing a rise in UFO tourism; Chile, Sri Lanka and Japan are also cashing in on the grey dollar by inviting tourists to investigate their own otherworldly mysteries. In 2008, Chile opened a UFO Trail, centred on the northern town of San Clemente, an ET hub that’s generated hundreds of sightings. The signposted, 19-mile path runs through the Andes above the town, linking the sites of the area’s most famous close encounters. Arguably the best way to experience it is with one of the local horse-riding operators, which carry telescopes in their saddle bags and teach you about the stars while discussing the Earth-bound craft that supposedly came from them. These extra-terrestrial sightseeing expeditions typically end with an intergalactic debate over pisco sours around a campfire.

Among the talking points, El Enladrillado will invariably loom large; this amphitheatre-like arrangement of perfectly cut volcanic stone blocks was supposedly laid by the ancients as an alien landing ground. 

Sri Lanka also has its eye on extraterrestrial income, with UFO tourism focusing on ‘alien mystery tours’ around Anuradhapura, the capital city of the North Central Province, while Japan’s own UFO capital is Asuka, in Nara Prefecture. The tiny village is famed for its mysterious carved granite monoliths; the largest of which is the Rock Ship of Masuda, a 15ft-tall, 800-tonne block with a straight central ridge and two one-metre square holes cut from it.

So, where does UFO tourism go next? Operators like Nate Arizona continue to see bookings flood in — a trend which shows no sign of abating. One of Nate’s guests, Armando Martinez — a 51-year-old photographer from Denver who recently joined Nate’s Area 51 tour — tells me he absolutely loved the experience, and the images he captured on it. “The beauty of tours like this is that the places you visit are so exotic and extraordinary in their own way that they help build up the anticipation of possibly seeing the paranormal,” says Armando. “You can see that possibility right up to the security gates of Area 51, and it’s very special. 

“I think paranormal tourism is growing for one simple reason — more people are believing in it,” he adds. “Improvements in technology, particularly mobile phones, means there’s far more evidence of the paranormal being collected. There’s so much documentation out there now that you have to really step back and re-evaluate things, and tours like this are great for that kind of perspective.”

Airbnb seems to agree. According to its head of Adventures, Caroline Boone, the company has been “delighted” with demand for Nate’s ‘Paranormal Tour of the US Southwest’. “Nate’s paranormal tour offers travellers an out-of-this-world immersion in a far-off location and access to a community they might not otherwise encounter,” she says.

Back in the heart of that far-off community — namely the bar at the Little A’Le’Inn — Nate is feeling equally positive. His goal, he says, is to unite Roswell, Sedona and Area 51 into a super UFO tour, spanning three states. And with backers like Airbnb, who’s to doubt him? 

“There’s definitely something here; something big,” says Nate. “It sounds corny when we’re talking about flying saucers, but the sky really is the limit here.” 

Five UFO tourism hotspots

 

1. AREA 51, NEVADA 

 

Around 150 miles north of Las Vegas, Area 51 is part of a top-secret US military base covered by a permanent no-fly zone. Conspiracy theorists believe the area is a storage facility for crashed alien spacecraft and its occupants, something the US government has neither confirmed nor denied. Authorities actively discourage visitors from coming within a five-mile radius of the facility, but some tours will take you around the perimeter and to the two main gates.  

 2. ROSWELL, NEW MEXICO 

 

In July 1947, something crashed to earth north west of Roswell during a thunderstorm. Debris was recovered by a local rancher and quickly seized by the military. An army press release initially claimed a ‘flying disc’ had been recovered — a claim that was swiftly withdrawn, with the object now explained as a downed weather balloon.

3. KECKSBURG, PENNSYLVANIA

The town of Kecksurg is home to the ‘space acorn’. On 9 December 1965, a 15ft-long, copper-coloured object covered in what looked like Egyptian hieroglyphics fell to earth in a forest here. Plenty of locals saw it but the US military quickly arrived and spirited it away. Eyewitnesses were told to forget what they saw, which naturally caused many of them to tell everybody and anybody. In 1990, a replica of the UFO was erected, which has gone on to become a tourist attraction.

4. WYCLIFFE WELL, AUSTRALIA

Self-proclaimed UFO capital of Australia, Wycliffe Well is locate in the Northern Territory, approximately 200 miles from Alice Springs. It’s said to be one of the top five UFO hotspots in the world, and for good reason — there’s a recorded sighting every couple of days, on average. Visitors can stay in cabins at the Wycliffe Well Holiday Park, where the walls are covered in newspaper clippings of UFO sightings and you’re ‘guaranteed’ one of your own if you stay for more than 48 hours. 

5. M-TRIANGLE, RUSSIA 

Around 600 miles east of Moscow, the area around the remote village of Molyobka, in the Beryozovsky District, is said to be Russia’s answer to Area 51. Locals have reported seeing a range of phenomena here in the foothills of the Urals, including hovering lights, strange symbols written across the sky, and even translucent beings. There are also persistent rumours of people having visited the area and subsequently developing enhanced intelligence or superhuman powers.

Two years ago, an automated telescope in Hawaii detected ‘Oumuamua, the first known object from interstellar space observed passing through our solar system. Then in August, an amateur astronomer in Crimea found a second interstellar visitor, 2I/Borisov, suggesting that such objects come our way on a regular basis.

Now, scientists are eagerly developing plans to explore these messengers from afar and to learn their secrets.

“Imagine something that’s traveled for hundreds of thousands or even millions of years through space, now reaching us,” says Andreas Hein, an aerospace engineer at the Initiative for Interstellar Studies in Charfield, England. “What will it tell us about its origin? What composition do planets have that orbit this alien sun? Does life propagate between stars?”

For now, answers are trickling in slowly from observatories on the ground and in orbit around Earth, including an intriguing new image of Borisov just taken by the Hubble telescope. Come 2028, though, a European spacecraft called Comet Interceptor could be on its way to a brief encounter with another, as-yet-undetected interstellar object.

Hein and his colleagues have an even grander project in mind. They’ve drawn up plans for Project Lyra, a space probe that could travel fast enough to overtake either ‘Oumuamua or Borisov (or another interstellar object) as it speeds its way out of the solar system, reaching either one by the mid-2040s.

To Hein, launching Project Lyra would be akin to building humanity’s first starship — and doing it on the cheap. “We won't have the capability of reaching another star system within the next few decades at least, but having the opportunity to study a big chunk of material from another star is a bit like flying to another star,” he says. “It is a literal version of, ‘If you can't go to the mountain, let the mountain come to you’.”

Inching toward the interstellar visitors

The many mysteries surrounding ‘Oumuamua (“oh moo-uh moo-uh”) have further boosted the desire to get to see one of these interstellar visitors up close.

Researchers anticipated that the vast majority of interstellar objects would be comets, but ‘Oumuamua sure didn’t look like one. It was strangely elongated, like a half-mile-long cigar, tumbling as it went. It also displayed no comet-like tail, and it sped up slightly as it moved away from the sun. These oddities led Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb to float the controversial idea that ‘Oumuamua might not be a comet at all, but an alien spacecraft.

In contrast, Borisov seems to closely resemble the comets in our own solar system. “It appears to be of a very different nature than `Oumuamua,” Loeb says. “But when you walk down the street and notice a weird person, the fact that later on you encounter many normal people does not take away the weirdness of that first unusual person.”

Alas, the European Space Agency’s Comet Interceptor will be unable to reach either of these objects. In fact, it wasn't designed to go after an interstellar object at all. The original plan was that, after its launch in 2028, the 1-ton spacecraft would park itself in orbit around the sun, waiting for a comet to arrive from the outskirts of our own solar system. Then it would fire up its engines, making an encounter and deploying smaller probes that could come within a few hundred miles of its target.

We may be closing in on the discovery of alien life. Are we prepared?

The discovery of ‘Oumuamua and Borisov has the Comet Interceptor team reconsidering its plans. By one estimate, at any time there are about 100 interstellar objects within Jupiter’s orbit around the sun — and there’s a decent chance that at least one of them will come within range of the spacecraft.

“If an interstellar object happens to turn up with the right trajectory at the right time, it would be too good an opportunity to turn down,” says mission co-leader Colin Snodgrass, an astronomer at the University of Edinburgh.

Although Comet Interceptor’s flight past an interstellar visitor would be fast and brief, it could prove highly revealing. “It would be fascinating to see one up close,” Snodgrass says. “Either it would look like nothing we ever saw before, and would require new theories, or it would look surprisingly familiar, implying that there are some universal similarities in planetary systems.”

Hit the space accelerator

If you want to chase down ‘Oumuamua or Borisov to determine their true nature, you’ll need a spacecraft with a lot more oomph than Comet Interceptor. ‘Oumuamua is now more than 1 billion miles from Earth and speeding away from us at nearly 18 miles per second. Borisov will make its closest approach to the sun Dec. 7, and then it too will head back to interstellar space at high speed.

That’s where Project Lyra comes in. The engineers at the nonprofit Initiative for Interstellar Studies came up with this concept based on their research into technologies for advanced space travel. The team concluded that the most promising way to reach an interstellar object is with a so-called Oberth maneuver, in which a spacecraft swoops to within 2 million miles of the sun and then fires its rockets full-blast to slingshot toward its target. Using a giant rocket like NASA’s long-awaited Space Launch System, combined with solid-rocket boosters, Hein and his group calculate they could get a speed boost of about 12 miles per second, just enough to do the job.

With a 2033 launch, this scheme could deliver a small but capable probe weighing perhaps 100 pounds to ‘Oumuamua by 2048. Slowing down at the other end would be another challenge. “Maybe we can use electric or magnetic sails,” Hein suggests, referring to a giant metal web that would create drag against the magnetic field and charged particles found in deep space.

Surviving the sun’s intense heat may be an easier problem to solve. NASA’s current Parker Solar Probe, which will repeatedly swing within 4 million miles of the sun during the 2020s, is testing a carbon-composite heat shield that can effectively withstand temperatures of 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit.

Aliens closer to home

But there is another way to accelerate a mission to an interstellar object: Instead of going faster, aim closer. Loeb notes that not all of the incoming objects head back to the stars. He calculates that some might get deflected by Jupiter’s gravity and trapped into an orbit around the sun. If so, a conventional spacecraft could reach them in a matter of years.

“There are already a number of candidate objects known,” Loeb says. He cites in particular 2015 BZ509, a recently discovered asteroid that orbits near Jupiter but in the opposite direction of all the planets — a likely sign of an interstellar origin.

Loeb also proposes scouring the surface of the moon for debris left by other interstellar objects that might have crashed there over billions of years of lunar history. That’s a timely suggestion, since NASA’s Artemis program could send astronauts back to the moon as early as 2024.