Meet Enos the chimpanzee. Enos holds the distinction of being the first chimp to orbit the earth. He was launched aboard a Mercury Atlas rocket on November 29, 1961.
This accomplishment led the way for Americans to take their place among the stars with John Glenn’s historic flight on February 20, 1962.
So what does Enos have to do with Spirit? I’m so glad you asked.
On page xxv of the preface to Konstantin Raudive's 1971 book Breakthrough is a curious little paragraph with broad implications.
Here is what it says:
(Note: Fleet Street was home to the British Press)
Being retired, I have ample time to look for examples of what it was that NASA might have been so concerned about.
A large part of NASA recordings can be found at the super-massive Archive.Org website. Here is the NASA Link:
http://www.archive.org/details/nasaaudiocollection
While perusing these audio archives, I stumbled across the Mission Control recording of the Mercury Atlas 5 launch of Enos the chimp.
Within this recording there is an anomalous section that some may consider an EVP.
For your convenience, here is an untouched snippet of that particular section:
The anomaly runs from approx 6.1 to 9.6 seconds in this clip. You may have to increase the volume of your speakers.
If you want to hear it for yourself from Archive.org site, use this link:
http://www.archive.org/details/Mercury5
Advance the website’s audio player to 3 minutes – 35 seconds to begin the sequence. You can also download the entire audio file in various formats at the bottom of their page.
What I hear in this recording is a female-ish comment that seems to say: “If you dial 911 you are not going to go on this flight”
If you filter the recording slightly with noise reduction, the entire comment can be heard, but I will leave any enhancements up to you.
What I find most interesting about this segment of audio is the term “dial 911”
You see....the NASA launch recording you just heard was from 1961. The 911 emergency call system wasn’t even designated by AT&T until 1968.
So why dial 911? A malfunction during the flight.
Snipped from the Wikipedia article on the mission:
“The rise in suit temperature caused Enos’ body temperature to rise to 99 °F (37 °C), then to 100 °F (38 °C). The medical observers began to worry about the chimp's condition. At 100.5 °F (38.1 °C), his body temperature stabilized.”
This problem, along with other complications caused NASA to end the mission after only 2 orbits and return the craft safely back to earth.
One of the curious things about this possible EVP is that it may demonstrate Spirit's ability to move back and forth through time, as we know it; although in all fairness, such an EVP could have inserted itself during the conversion from reel to reel into digital.
So where do we go from here? I guess we’ll have go full circle back to Dr. Raudive’s book, Breakthrough.
Back in 2012, I made an effort to glean more information on the alleged meetings between Dr. Raudive and NASA engineers as described in the book.
I made a formal request through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to NASA to see if anything would turn up. Sadly…here was their reply:
Strike One.
The next step was to make a similar FOIA request to the FBI in the hopes that something about NASA would turn up. As you can see by the results, things were not looking too good.
Strike Two.
My next option was to approach Colin Smythe, the original publisher of Breakthrough.
In email correspondence, I learned the inclusion of that paragraph about NASA came about based on information supplied by Leslie Hayward, an assistant of Mr. Smythe.
As shown in the following email screen capture, my search came to an end because Mr. Hayward could not remember the name of his source; which is fine by me when you consider how old everyone is now…including myself 😉
Strike Three.
So while the document trail grows cold about a possible Raudive – NASA connection, the upside is that there are more than enough examples of anomalous recordings contained within the NASA audio archives to give a measure of credence to the assertion that NASA had serious concerns about “something else” they were hearing in their audio.
If you have any info about Raudive and NASA, drop us a line.
Take Care,
Ron
Ron Ruiz, iDigitalMedium Co-Creator