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Baker report, 1968 congressional hearings

NICAP · 1968 · 68 pages · text from the file's own layer

This NICAP extract reproduces the statement of Dr. Robert M. L. Baker, Jr., a Computer Sciences Corporation scientist and UCLA engineering faculty member, to the House Committee on Science and Astronautics symposium on unidentified flying objects on July 29, 1968. Baker reviews his analyses of the Utah, Montana, Venezuela and Vandenberg films. He argues that current radar and optical sensors are poorly suited to detecting anomalistic phenomena and urges a well-funded, long-term interdisciplinary research program. The extract ends with panel discussion including Hynek and Hall.

  • p. 2 …Baker's professional society memberships include the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Phi Beta…
  • p. 8 …space) are the results of an advanced extraterrestrial civilization, then the study of the phenomena would…
  • p. 9 …There have been many debates on the technical capabilities or limits on the capabilities of advanced…
  • p. 10 …in the environs of the earth, or to make dubious speculations either concerning "their" advanced scientific…
  • p. 11 …the gross characteristics of an advanced civilization. These studies (probably not Government funded) should include the…
  • p. 19 Microphotograph of One of the Frames of the Argentina Film that Exhibits the Luminosity of the…
  • p. 21 …and Journal of the American Astronautical Society, 6, No. 1, 1959. 146 00015 "Recent Advances in…
  • p. 22 …the Seventh Annual ARDC Science and Engineering Symposium, Boston, Massachusetts, November 30, 1960. 00042 "1960 Advances…
  • p. 23 …Makemson) 00071 Aerodynamics - Applications and Advanced Topics, Academic Press, New York, 1967. 00072 "Recent Advances in…
  • p. 37 …In the past five years, he has advanced from assistant bookkeeper to teller to head teller…
  • p. 39 …He has no desire to advance any further up the bank totem pole, says he never…
  • p. 55 …sure, advanced radar systems are being developed for our missile defense systems, such as the ALTAR…
  • p. 56 …of the Earth or to make very dubious speculations 9, 10 either concerning "their" advanced scientific…
  • p. 57 …Coroniti (Elsevier Publishing Company, New York, 1963), page 463. 184 The Journal of the Astronautical Sciences…
and was well borne out by the consistence [sic] of his perspective). These initial measurements were made by the author at
Douglas Aircraft Company in 1955-1956.
Analysis
The "Montana" film contains six independent data (as functions of time) on about 225 frames (frames 65 to 290), which
describe the UFO images, i.e., the two degrees of freedom of each dot (as depicted on two-dimensional film after the
foreground appears on frame 65) and the apparent diameter of the developed image of each on all 290 frames (no ellipticity
could be seen in the images except for occasional image smear due to uneven panning). In the analysis it was convenient to
treat the UFO's as a system. The four degrees of freedom chosen for this system were the azimuth and altitude of the
midpoint on the line of centers between the images, their angular separation and their inclination to the horizon. The
inclination to the horizon was found to be very small, the objects appearing to move almost in a plane parallel to the
ground. There is a slight decrease in the angle of inclination as the objects regress, but its small value is almost masked by
random errors inherent in the measurements. Figure 3a presents a plot of the angular altitude, h, and the azimuth, A, of the
midpoint of the line of centers after frame 65 (i.e., after a measurable foreground appears), and Fig. 3b presents the
separation distance ratio thetae/theta as a function of time, where thetae is the initial angular separation (frame 1) and theta
is the angular separation at any given time. In both of these plots some frames were not measured, e.g., due to obscuration
of the images during water-tower passage, or were missing (there were frames missing between frame numbers 177 to 180
on the 35 mm print that was measured for separation distance, but these were accounted for in the time scale using the 16
mm original as a basis). About 225 frames after the foreground (ventilator duct) appears on the film (i.e., after the 290th
frame), the objects can no longer be clearly identified and measurements become very uncertain.
1 Manuscript submitted November, 1967. Paper was presented at an AAS Seminar at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena. A manuscript on the same subject matter was originally submitted in 1962. The complete review of this earlier
manuscript, after receiving three favorable reviews, was accepted.
2 The Senior Scientist of System Sciences Corporation, a subdivision of Computer Sciences Corporation, 690 N. Sepulveda
Blvd., El Segundo, Calif. 90245, and the Department of Engineering, UCLA.
[[177]]

Cases discussed

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Hearing transcript, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 68 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.