Symposium on unidentified flying objects: hearings before the Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives, Ninetieth Congress, second session, July 29, 1968.

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Mr. Rousx. Thank you, Dr. Baker.
I anticipated we would have difficulty keeping the members of the
committee here at a time when important legislation is considered on
the floor. We thought we would reserve the final few minutes for
those of you who have made presentations to discuss among yourselves
questions which may have been aroused by one of your colleagues'
presentation today.
With that in mind, we are going to permit you to have a real free
for all. Dr. Sagan.
Dr. SAGAN. I just wanted to underline one point that Dr. Baker
made, Congressman Roush, in his detailed presentation of the various
Air Force systems. I am afraid that the main point won't come across
to a lay audience, and that is that with relatively little expenditure
of funds, it would be possible to significantly improve the available
information.
Apparently what is now happening is that the Air Force surveillance
radar is throwing away the data that is of relevance for this inquiry.
In other words,if it sees something that is not on a ballistic trajectory,
or not in orbit, it ignores it, it throws it in the garbage.
Well,that garbage is just the area of our interest. So if some method
could be devised by the Air Force to save the output that they are
throwing away from these space surveillance radars, it might be the
least expensive way to significantly improve our information about
these phenomena.
Mr. Rousx. Thank you.
Dr. BAKER. Let me just make a comment: That is quite true. At
the present time our space surveillance sensors are about 200 percent
overtasked. That means they could make about 50 percent of their
time available to us. They task too many space objects, their capacity
is much greater than the space objects that they are tasked to watch.
The space population may grow to fill this void, but currently what
Dr. Sagan says is true, we could as I indicated in conclusion (4)
modify our current space surveillance system.
It is not an expensive thing to modify existing radars. The FPS-85
itself costs something like $100 million. The software modification
called for here I am sure would be much less.
Mr. Rousx. Dr. Hynek.
Dr. HYNEK. I would just like to concur in what Dr. Sagan has said.
I understand there are several hundred UCT's a month, uncorrelated
targets, that because they don't—I understand—which since they do
not follow ballistic trajectory, they are tossed out. It would not be
expensive to introduce a subroutine into the computer to take care of
these things for a short while. I strongly second Dr. Sagan's and Dr.
Baker's suggestions.
Mr. BOONE. Mr. Chairman.
Mr. RousH. Mr. Boone.
Mr. BOONE. I think the gentleman should advise you too, though,
when you do that, you must make a trajectory determination on each
target including aircraft which may put a terrific burden on the radar
you are insisting on upgrading.
Dr. HYNEK. I will certainly grant that.
Dr. HARDER. I would only respond to Mr. Boone by suggesting you
could reject all objects that were found,for instance, under 90,000 feet.