Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World
Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World
THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD were built by extraterrestrials, we might copy the technology (if we could get our hands on just one saucer) and secure a huge advantage in the Cold War. And even if the military believed that UFOs were manufactured neither by Soviets nor by extraterrestrials, there was a good reason to follow the reports closely. In the 1950s balloons were being extensively used by the Air Force - not just as weather measurement platforms, as prominently advertised, and radar reflectors, as acknowledged, but also, secretly, as robotic espionage craft, with high-resolution cameras and signal intelligence devices. While the balloons themselves were not very secret, the reconnaissance packages they carried were. High-altitude balloons can seem saucer-shaped when seen from the ground. If you misestimate how far away they are, you can easily imagine them going absurdly fast. Occasionally, propelled by a gust of wind, they make abrupt changes in direction, uncharacteristic of aircraft and in seeming defiance of the conservation of momentum - if you don't realize they're hollow and weigh almost nothing. The most famous of these military balloon systems, widely tested over the United States in the early 1950s, was called 'Skyhook'. Other balloon systems and projects were designated 'Mogul', 'Moby Dick', 'Grandson' and 'Genetrix'. Urner Lidell, who had some responsibility for these missions at the Naval Research Laboratory, and who was later a NASA official, once told me he thought all UFO reports were due to military balloons. While 'all' is going too far, their role has, I think, been insufficiently appreciated. So far as I know there has never been a systematic and intentional control experiment, in which highaltitude balloons were secretly released and tracked, and UFO reports from visual and radar observers noted. In 1956, overflights of the Soviet Union by US reconnaissance balloons began. At their peak there were dozens of balloon launches a day. Balloon overflights were then replaced by highaltitude aircraft, such as the U-2, which in turn were largely replaced by reconnaissance satellites. Many UFOs dating from this period were clearly scientific balloons, as are some since. High-altitude balloons are still being launched, including platforms carrying cosmic ray sensors, optical and infrared telescopes, 80
Spoofing and Secrecy radio receivers probing the cosmic background radiation, and other instruments above most of the Earth's atmosphere. A great to-do has been made of one or more alleged crashed flying saucers near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. Some initial reports and newspaper photographs of the incident are entirely consistent with the idea that the debris was a crashed high-altitude balloon. But other residents of the region - especially decades later - remember more exotic materials, enigmatic hieroglyphics, threats by military personnel to witnesses if they didn't keep what they knew to themselves, and the canonical story that alien machinery and body parts were packed into an airplane and flown to the Air Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Some, but not all, of the recovered alien body stories are associated with this incident. Philip Klass, a long-time and dedicated UFO sceptic, has uncovered a subsequently declassified letter dated 27 July 1948, a year after the Roswell 'incident', from Major General C.B. Cabell, then Director of Intelligence for the US Air Force (and later, as a CIA official, a major figure in the abortive US invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs). Cabell was inquiring of those who reported to him on what UFOs might be. He hadn't a clue. In an 11 October 1948 summary response, explicitly including information in the possession of the Air Materiel Command, we find the Director of Intelligence being told that nobody else in the Air Force had a clue either. This makes it unlikely that UFO fragments and occupants had made their way to Wright-Patterson the year before. What the Air Force was mostly worried about was that UFOs were Russian. Why Russians would be testing flying saucers over the United States was a puzzle to which the following four answers were proposed: '(1) To negate US confidence in the atom bomb as the most advanced and decisive weapon in warfare. (2) To perform photographic reconnaissance missions. (3) To test US air defenses. (4) To conduct familiarization flights [for strategic bombers] over US territory.' We now know that UFOs neither were nor are Russian, and however dedicated the Soviet interest may have been to objectives (1) through (4), flying saucers weren't how they pursued these objectives. 81
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THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD<br />
were built by extraterrestrials, we might copy the technology (if<br />
we could get our hands on just one saucer) and secure a huge<br />
advantage in the Cold War. And even if the military believed that<br />
UFOs were manufactured neither by Soviets nor by extraterrestrials,<br />
there was a good reason to follow the reports closely.<br />
In the 1950s balloons were being extensively used by the Air<br />
Force - not just as weather measurement platforms, as prominently<br />
advertised, and radar reflectors, as acknowledged, but<br />
also, secretly, as robotic espionage craft, with high-resolution<br />
cameras and signal intelligence devices. While the balloons themselves<br />
were not very secret, the reconnaissance packages they<br />
carried were. High-altitude balloons can seem saucer-shaped<br />
when seen from the ground. If you misestimate how far away they<br />
are, you can easily imagine them going absurdly fast. Occasionally,<br />
propelled by a gust of wind, they make abrupt changes in<br />
direction, uncharacteristic of aircraft and in seeming defiance of<br />
the conservation of momentum - if you don't realize they're<br />
hollow and weigh almost nothing.<br />
The most famous of these military balloon systems, widely<br />
tested over the United States in the early 1950s, was called<br />
'Skyhook'. Other balloon systems and projects were designated<br />
'Mogul', 'Moby Dick', 'Grandson' and 'Genetrix'. Urner Lidell,<br />
who had some responsibility for these missions at the Naval<br />
Research Laboratory, and who was later a NASA official, once<br />
told me he thought all UFO reports were due to military balloons.<br />
While 'all' is going too far, their role has, I think, been insufficiently<br />
appreciated. So far as I know there has never been a<br />
systematic and intentional control experiment, in which highaltitude<br />
balloons were secretly released and tracked, and UFO<br />
reports from visual and radar observers noted.<br />
In 1956, overflights of the Soviet Union by US reconnaissance<br />
balloons began. At their peak there were dozens of balloon<br />
launches a day. Balloon overflights were then replaced by highaltitude<br />
aircraft, such as the U-2, which in turn were largely<br />
replaced by reconnaissance satellites. Many UFOs dating from<br />
this period were clearly scientific balloons, as are some since.<br />
High-altitude balloons are still being launched, including platforms<br />
carrying cosmic ray sensors, optical and infrared telescopes,<br />
80
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