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The Roswell Report: Fact vs. Fiction in the New Mexico Desert

USAF / The Black Vault · 1995 · 882 pages · text by OCR

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.

  • p. 193 …overhead and followed the balloons out to sea. I have no idea about the results that…
  • p. 200 …the regular 334 that we had at sea level. From that they could deduce the temperature…
  • p. 243 …actually located on the jurisdictional lines between Sea Girt and Springlake, New Jersey. It was an…
  • p. 244 …The Sea Girt Inn? A: Exactly. That's where John had his office, and I was…
  • p. 320 …alone is about 24,000 miles at sea level, and about 4500 miles at 45,000…
  • p. 325 …twenty-five (25) feet at their largest sea-level diameter. The sonic unit was a combination…
  • p. 378 …per hour when one-fifth inflated at sea level). One other type of balloon which has…
  • p. 402 …Let us, then, compare the rate of leakage at any given altitude with leakage at sea…
  • p. 404 …The leakage at any altitude may be expressed as a function of leakage at sea level…
  • p. 405 Comparing rate of leakage at 40,000 feet with leakage at sea level: $$ \frac {L _ {4…
  • p. 407 …If a 20-foot diameter balloon $ \frac{1}{1 0} $ full were tested at sea level…
  • p. 408 …At sea level this is equivalent to 5.32 gm/hr. for a 20-foot diameter…
  • p. 414 …Using the rules of subsonic aerodynamics, Picard suggests that air at sea level escaping at 1333…
  • p. 415 …air at sea level (lb./ft. $ ^{3} $ ) 14.7 = pressure of air at sea level (psi…
  • p. 432 …to about 20 millibars and increased to sea-level pressure at different temperatures. The most comprehensive…
  • p. 563 …The height above mean sea level as determined from pressure measurements used in this work with…
  • p. 644 …point at which the radiosonde reaches the sea surface. ## 2. Earlier attempts There have been numerous…
  • p. 645 …The balloons floated between the surface and 30,000 ft above sea level; those which reached…
  • p. 704 …Met Gifford who has 90' sea rescue boat this project is planning to use. Stayed at…
  • p. 719 …Worzel working on gravity at sea. Saw Geo Woollard and the Ryders. Woollard after Guggenheim fellowship…
  • p. 779 …the launching site is markedly different from sea level, a shift in this curve is needed…
  • p. 817 …balloon at all times with respect to sea level. On this curve also it is customary…
  • p. 825 …The height above mean sea level as determined from pressure measurements used in this work with…
the balloon can rise slowly until the balloon is again full and the equilibrium is again reached between the buoyancy and the load. In the General Mills 20-foot balloon, for example, diffusion losses equal about 300 grams per hour; the balloon at its ceiling of 50,000 feet, with a 30-pound payload, risea about 900 feet with each kilogram of ballast dropped. This means that a balloon, using the simple ballast-dropping technique, will float at a ceiling which rises at the rate of about 360 feet per hour. An idealized flight of this type is shown in the solid curve of Fig. 7., neglecting the oscillation shown at sunset.

The "manual ballast valve" which was developed for this simple control system is shown in Fig. 8. This valve can be adjusted prior to balloon release to allow any predetermined flow of compass fluid up to 2000 grams per hour. The filter housing and ballast reservoir used with this valve are shown in Figures 9 and 10. This method is good where 1) a slowly rising ceiling can be tolerated, and 2) the flight does not have to go through a sunset while at its ceiling.

For economy of ballast, hence longer flight duration, it is desirable to keep the constant flow as close as possible to the total loss of buoyancy resulting from diffusion and leakage. This means that whenever rapid loss of buoyancy occurs, due to changes in solar radiation, the manual ballast valve alone will not sustain the balloon. When the balloon is suddenly cooled, due to sunset or clouds cutting off insoilation (loss of superheat), the heavy loss will start the balloon downward and only a rapid expenditure of ballast will check its fall and restore its stability.

The second type of ballast dropping control has been devised to operate on a demand basis, when such a descent occurs. This control is called the automatic ballast valve. Figures 11, 12 and 13 show the appearance and design of this pressure-actuated needle valve.

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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.