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

USAF / The Black Vault · 1995 · 882 pages · text by GLM-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. 39 …An advance ground team, led by Albert P. Cray, preceded the NYU group to Alamogordo Army…
  • p. 96 …OSI also developed an advanced Narcotics Investigations Course designed to teach the latest technics in combatting…
  • p. 174 …Dr Crary and Dr Peoples were the advance people and scientific monitors for our project. Dr…
  • p. 247 …Spilly was a consultant, and even in his advancing age he was still an enormous source…
  • p. 273 …the advance party of the balloon group arrived by B-17. $ ^{21} $ On May 29, the…
  • p. 617 …in advance of balloon release and a second notice will be filed at the time of…
  • p. 618 …Upon attaining the desired altitude, the auxiliary lifting balloons will be released from the main balloon…
  • p. 694 …in advance of balloon release and a second notice will be filed at the time of…
  • p. 695 (1) The type balloon to be used in this phase of the project will be a…

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## d. Methods of Attack

(1) After a survey of available literature in aerostatics and after conferences with various balloon manufacturers and authorities it is believed that the basic problem of maintaining the 15 lbs. of payload at constant altitude can best be solved by using a non-extensible balloon and a device operated by pressure which drops ballast whenever the balloon descends below a preset altitude.

The specifications for the equipment are as follows:

The balloon should be of large known volume, light in weight, non-extensible, either transparent or highly reflective to solar radiation. Rigging should be used to distribute the load evenly about the balloon.

A safety valve should be used to hold the inflation appendix of the balloon normally closed (as any hydrogen lost decreases the time possible at nominal constant altitude). The valve would act as a safety vent if the balloon should rise appreciably above the altitude where it is fully inflated, as there is danger of rupturing the envelope unless the excess pressure is relieved. The safety valve should be set to release pressure before the limit of the working stress of the balloon fabric is reached.

If the exact volume of the balloon is known and the air density vs. altitude relationship is determined on the day of flight, it is possible to compute the total lift of the gas in the balloon at any altitude. By adjusting the gross load to be supported by the gas to equal the total lift at the desired altitude of flight, the balloon will level off at the desired

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Report, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 882 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.