Documents / FOIA release
The Roswell Report: Fact versus Fiction in the New Mexico Desert was published in 1995 by Headquarters United States Air Force. It was written in response to Representative Steven H. Schiff's request and a General Accounting Office audit, and it contains Col. Richard L. Weaver's report and 1st Lt. James McAndrew's synopsis, along with attachments, appendices and photographs. The report says researchers found no evidence of an extraterrestrial craft or crew. It concludes that the 1947 debris came from a Project MOGUL balloon train.
“Cooper”6 pages
132 BALLAST INI.IT TUBE FIG. 2.. \utomatic ballast valve. a diaphragm-operated needle valve which jettisons liquid ballast whenever the balloon is below the alti- tude at which the control is actuated. This is shown in fig. 2. The ballast reservoir (fig. 3), in general, can hold 15 kilograms of the liquid ballast-usually com- pass fluid, a highly refined kerosene-type petroleum product. When the atmospheric pressure outside the diaphragm is 5 millibars above the internal pressure, 160 grams of ballast per minute flow under a one-foot head. When the automatic ballast valve is wide open, which is after 6.5 millibars increase over the internal pressure, 300 grams per minute flow. These values may be compared with a diffusion loss of lift of the order of magnitude of 10 grams per hour from the thicker 15-ft balloon described below. Quite positive altitude control can be obtained. Efforts are made to cause the static rate of leakage, i.e., the leakage which proceeds when the automatic ballast valve is closed, to exceed slightly the rate of loss of lift due to the diffusion of the lifting gas from the balloon. To facilitate setting the fixed leak, a manually operated ballast valve, consisting of a leak adjustable by means of a fine needle valve, is added to the ballast-release assembly. 4 C. lJ;finimum pressure switch.-0bvious1y, the auto- matic ballast valve must not be in operation while the balloon is rising, as this would be a waste of ballast. Therefore the automatically operated needle valve is closed until the balloon reaches altitude. This is ac- complished by having the loaded diaphragm of the altitude control open to the atmosphere until the balloon descends from a minimum pressure ..-\t this time, an electrical contact is made and a squib6 cuts a ' Since this manuscript was written, the procedure has been simplified. Only a simple fixed leak is used for daytime flights. The automati~ ballast valve is used alone for Rights through sunset or sunnse. 1 A small electrically detonated charge. VoLUME 5 restraining cord and allows a needle valve to seal off the diaphragm from any further access to the air (fig. 2). The capsule then contains a volume of air which has been trapped at the existing pressure an'd temperature, at the time of operation of the sealing switch. Thereafter the aneroid will withdraw the ballast-control needle valve when the ambient pressure increases to the point where the entrapped air is com- pressed below this volume. Fig. 4 shows the minimum pressure switch which makes the electrical contact at the time of seal-off. It consists of a trapped volume of air that is allowed to escape through a mercury pool as long as the outside pressure is decreasing. As soon as the exterior pressure increases once more, however, mercury is drawn into the tube, making the seal-off contact between two electrodes. 4. Height determination Up to the present time, the standard radiosonde has been used in order to determine the altitude at which the balloon is flying. This permits a regular radiosonde ascent to be obtained during the period that the bal- loon is rising. Thereafter, as the balloon remains at approximately the same altitude, it becomes somewhat difficult to identify the radiosonde contact, but utiliz- ing both the temperature and pressure indication, this is possible. A special radiosonde modulator of the Olland type has been designed (fig. 5). The pressure BATTERY BOX VENT TUBE DISCHARGE TUBE FIG. 3. Ballast-release assembly.
FOIA release, from the osd collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 993 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.