Guest Post: Oumuamua Intercepted 0.22 AU from Earth

This article was developed by Allen W. McDonnell, Steve Payne, Eric Oppen and John Braungart, first appearing on Today in Alternate History. 

19 Oct 2017: The experimental probe USS Arthur Trudeau intercepted an interstellar object 33 million km from Earth (about 85 times as far away as the Moon) as it was already heading away from the Sun. First identified by astronomers at the Haleakala Observatory, this mysterious object had been assigned the descriptive name "Oumuamua", the Hawaiian term for "Scout".

A consortium of space-faring nations had worked around the clock to develop the unmanned probe in record time. The result, the USS Arthur Trudeau, was powered by gravitic propulsion technologies that had been reversed engineered from the Roswell UFO seventy years earlier. The architect of that ground-breaking project was in charge of Army Research and Development, Lt. General Arthur Trudeau. As the functional head of the Foreign Technology Desk, he had been put in charge of working with private industry to reverse-engineer equipment of foreign origin that had been captured by the American forces.

A thorough investigation of the 1947 Roswell UFO determined that the "flying disc" was an unmanned probe of extraterrestrial hardware. Although the individual components were vastly superior to human technology, the fundamental sub-system design was recognizable. The two notable exceptions were the "intelligent" exterior metal which looked like aluminum foil but had the startling ability to return to its original shape. After years of not understanding heads nor tails of the engines other than that they should be ones, researchers unraveled the anti-gravity sub-system. The recognizability of similarities in designs with primitive human technology overcame the No Copying Allowed theory proposed by science fiction author John W. Campbell, Jr. He had argued that it would be simply impossible to understand futuristic technology, even of human origins, writing, "The proposition involving the science-fiction hero who captures an enemy device, brings it home, copies it and puts it into production is being abandoned in modern stories. But the actual difficulty of such a problem is always interesting and worthy of consideration. Only recently has Earth's own technology reached the point where such copying is not possible; today it is definitely impossible in a large field of devices."

Campbell was only partly wrong, because the two decades between Roswell and Apollo 11 were insufficient to fully take advantage of the technologies present in the craft. However, the emergence of microchips and understanding of subatomic particles gradually brought anti-gravity technology into human understanding, which continued to develop under the auspices of the United Nations. By the third decade of the twenty-first century, there were increasingly loud calls for a truly international deep space program that could exploit the Roswell Technologies and take mankind forward more quickly. Cynics had long suggested that a second alien crash was the breakthrough needed to force such a change.

Without the enhanced acceleration of gravitic engines, it would never have been possible to have intercepted an object moving at such velocity before it left the Solar System forever. Capturing Oumuamua was a lucky break because even more secrets were revealed than from the New Mexico Crash. Alternate history would repeat itself--once again, the technology of extraterrestrial origin was recognizable to human development and yet sufficiently advanced to permit reverse engineering.

Oumuamua was an alien lightsail, an ultra-thin object deflecting charged particles radiated by the Sun as a plasma wind to achieve excess acceleration. Over the next few decades, the application of Oumuamua mass-density technologies would enable an even bigger leap-frog in deep space. In a second application, Oumuamua technology acted as a braking mechanism to decelerate starships from relativistic speed.

Unfortunately, external markings on Oumuamua were obscured by years of damage from space debris; however, linguistic experts surmised that Oumuamua did not originate from the Roswell aliens. More disappointingly, Earth scientists were unable to determine whether the lightsail was detached from a larger vessel as many surmised. Certainly there was no evidence of communication technology, and therefore it was maddeningly unclear whether this was a reconnaissance mission being undertaken.

The two events, seventy years apart, gave the space program a tremendous impetus. Even more than that, the calculation that alien contact was inevitable drove scientists to further develop space technology to ensure that humanity was prepared for such a historic first meeting.

Author's Note:

In reality, astronomers concluded that Oumuamua is most likely a natural object. A small number of astronomers suggested that Oumuamua could be a product of alien technology, but evidence in support of this hypothesis is weak. Roswell has been described as "the world's most famous, most exhaustively investigated, and most thoroughly debunked UFO claim".

Provine's Addendum:

While many humans looked toward the stars for the next great moves of civilization, others were more focused on setting our own house in order before reaching out. Applications of the Roswell Technologies had transformed the Earth with green-energy reactors and no-emission vehicles lifted by anti-gravity fitted with memory-metals that had reduced crash fatalities to nearly zero. Weather satellites broke up hurricanes and shifted rain to drought-stricken areas. Hunger and natural disasters (other than geological ones) looked soon to be things of the past.

Calls for extending humanity's reach continued and were increasingly heard as AI automation took over most traditional jobs in industry and agriculture. Skeptics pointed out that colonies on the moon and Mars were largely research stations and political stunts rather than being grand metropolises of the future, though these would likely serve as the first signs of big things to come as many compared them with Jamestown in North America.