Documents / Report
The Roswell Report: Fact versus Fiction in the New Mexico Desert was published by Headquarters United States Air Force in 1995. The Black Vault distributes this copy. It reproduces the report by Col. Richard L. Weaver and the synopsis by 1st Lt. James McAndrew, both written after a General Accounting Office inquiry requested by Representative Steven Schiff. The Air Force search found no evidence of an extraterrestrial craft or crew. It concluded that the Roswell debris most likely came from NYU Flight No. 4, a Project MOGUL balloon train.
“Sea”23 pages
$ \Delta p= $ bursting pressure (psi)
$ S_{f}= $ maximum allowable tensile stress of fabric or film (psi) (for safety $ S_{f}=1/2 S_{\mathrm{max}} $ where $ S_{\mathrm{max}} $ maximum stress in tension)
$ \dagger = $ thickness of fabric or film (in.)
D = balloon diameter (in.)
or:
(2)
$$
\Delta p = \frac {4 S _ {s}}{D}
$$
for failure of seams
where:
$ S_{s} = $ maximum allowable tensile strength of seams (lb./in.)
$$
D = \mathrm {b a l l o o n d i a m e t e r} (\mathrm {i n .})
$$
In general, a balloon should be manufactured so that any failure should occur first in the fabric or film and thus the tensile stress of this fabric or film will be the factor in determining bursting pressure.
Since the non-extensible balloons used in constant-level work by the N.Y.U. group have been of the open-appendix type, bursting due to excessive super-pressure has not been a problem. Strength of the balloon must be considered, however, from the standpoints of back pressure induced during rise of a full balloon and pressure distribution of the lifting gas itself inside of the balloon.
(1) Pressure Distribution of Lifting Gas
It was shown in the previous section that the pressure differ erence across any portion of the balloon surface may be equated:
$$
\Delta p _ {z} = \Delta z \frac {d p}{d z} (1 - B)
$$
A plot of $ \Delta p $ against $ \Delta z $ would then be a straight line at any given altitude. Maximum allowable balloon pressure equation (1) may be plotted as a function of $ \Delta z $ , rather than diameter for any given horizontal plane of the balloon surface, Z . Using this relationship, cutting any horizontal plane Z-Z across the balloon (Figure 25), the diameter of the Report, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 882 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.