PURSUE Release 01: 59_214434_SP 16 [7.18.1963]

  A 1963 Space Policy Memo

PURSUE Release 01 identifies this PDF as Department of State material dated July 18, 1963, with no incident location assigned in the release metadata.¹ The official asset is a six-page scan of a memorandum from the Executive Office of the President's National Aeronautics and Space Council to Robert F. Packard in the Department of State's Office of International Scientific Affairs.²

The memorandum's subject is "Thoughts on the Space Alien Race Question." It frames the issue as a policy question that had occasionally arisen in recent space-policy discussions: how the United States should think about discovery of alien intelligence in space.²

  Alien Intelligence, Mars, and the Moon

The opening pages separate the memo from an ordinary UFO incident file. The author says prevailing scientific opinion considered an intelligent alien race inside the solar system highly unlikely, while also distancing the discussion from flying-saucer advocates. From there, the memo sketches why 1960s scientific thought made life elsewhere in the galaxy more plausible than earlier theories had allowed: planetary systems were no longer treated as rare accidents, and biological science had begun to describe natural pathways from nonliving matter toward elementary life.²

The sampled pages then turn to Mars and the Moon. They discuss historical fascination with Martian "canali," claims by flying-saucer advocates about Martians using the Moon, and speculative calculations about how spaceflight from Mars to the Moon would compare with launch from Earth. The release metadata summarizes the full document as also covering plans if alien intelligence were discovered and possible diplomatic policy questions.¹²

  Contact as a Diplomacy Problem

This record matters because its origin is a civil space-policy memo, not a sighting report. In July 1963, a White House space council office was treating extraterrestrial intelligence as a possible science and diplomacy contingency, while explicitly placing flying-saucer claims at the edge of the discussion. The memo captures an early official policy imagination around contact: cautious, speculative, and rooted in both contemporary science and public UFO culture.¹²

  References

  References

1. war.gov ↩ ↩² ↩³

2. war.gov ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵