Monday, August 12, 2013

A Few Facts about Project Mogul


There are some facts about Project Mogul that seem to get lost in the minutia of the debate so that the same errors are frequently repeated. These are facts that should not be in dispute but somehow they keep getting missed, or misused, so I thought, in an effort to annoy everyone, I would publish these truths and see how far that went.

1. Mogul Flight No. 4 was cancelled. It did not fly, there is no record of it anywhere and that number is skipped in the accounting. Contrary to what Charles Moore claimed, it did not perform as well or better than Flight No. 5 because, had it flown and done so, there would be records of it and it would be listed as the first successful flight in New Mexico.

2. All the launches made in June happened after 5:00 a.m. (0500 hours) which was after dawn. These flights were made in daylight and that was one of the requirements levied on the project by the CAA (think FAA). The purpose was for safety of aerial navigation because a train or array of balloons six or seven hundred feet long could cause a catastrophic accident.

(For those keeping score at home, I again print, from Special Report #1, Covering the Period from January 1, 1947 to April 30, 1947, the restrictions placed on flights by the CAA:

Restriction on the project is the Civil Aeronautics Authority (forerunner to the FAA) requirement that balloon flights be made only on days that are cloudless up to 20,000 feet.

3. Although it seems that Moore was suggesting that there had been flight of balloons launched around 2:30 a.m. (0230 hours) early in the morning of June 4, there is no documentation for this. CAA restrictions would not have allowed for a full array launch and Crary had already noted that the flight had been cancelled.*

4. Crary was out on the range firing test shots, which does not suggest a balloon flight. Crary had been testing ground equipment on other occasions when it was clear that there was no balloon flight. Suggesting that these notations prove the flight is to ignore the documentation available.

5. Although McAndrew, in his Roswell: Case Closed published an “illustration of a Project Mogul balloon train similar to the one found on a ranch 75 miles northwest of Roswell,” that is a misleading statement. There is no evidence that the Mogul Flight No. 4 flew and the composition of Mogul Flight No. 5 is different than the one McAndrew used as his illustration. There were no rawin radar targets on it. (I’m going to note here that this was extremely disingenuous of McAndrew. He had to know that the composition of the flights varied radically but included the illustration of Flight No. 2, which was also cancelled, as if it were typical. Rawin radar targets were not included in many of the flights until later because they were having poor luck with the radars.)

6. Project Mogul was not so highly classified that the members of the NYU team in New Mexico didn’t know the name. Repeated references to Mogul are made in Crary’s diary, so that it is clear that the name was known to those in New Mexico. This has been used as the reason that those officers in Roswell failed to recognize the balloon remains for what they were.

7. The first recorded flight in New Mexico is Flight No. 5, which is noted as the first successful flight there. No mention is made of Flight No. 4, even though Moore said that it was as successful or more so that Flight No. 5. Even Flight No. 6, which was labeled as “unsuccessful” is carried in the records.

The point where we begin to see some real controversy and the possibility of a balloon array is a note in Crary’s diary for June 4 that said, “Flew regular sonobuoy mike up in cluster of balloons…”

8. A cluster of balloons was launched later in the day on June 4. Crary noted only that it was a cluster that carried a sonobuoy. Given the restrictions on the balloon flights by the CAA, and given Crary’s descriptions of other, similar flights, it can be suggested that this was only a cluster of balloons with a limited number of balloons and a sonobuoy but no rawin radar targets.

8a. A cluster of balloons was launched later in the day on June 4. This was the delayed Flight No. 4 that carried a full array including the rawin radar targets that scattered the metallic debris found by Mack Brazel.

Another area of controversy is the interview published in the July 9, 1947 issue of the Roswell Daily Record. Both sides quote from it, as if it proved that Brazel found balloon debris or proved that he didn’t.

9. According to the story, “Harassed Rancher Who Located ‘Saucer’ Sorry He Told About It.” The article said:

Brazel said that he did not see it fall from the sky and did not see it before it was torn up, so he did not know the size or shape it might have been, but he thought it might have been about as large as a table top. The balloon that held it up, if that was how it worked, must have been 12 feet long, he felt measuring the distance by the size of the room in which he sat. The rubber was smoky gray in color and scattered over an area of about 200 yards.

When the debris was gathered up the tinfoil, paper, tape, and sticks made a bundle about three feet long and 7 or 8 inches thick, while the rubber made a bundle about 18 or 20 inches long and about 8 inches thick. In all, he estimated the entire lot would have weight maybe five pounds. There was no sign of any metal in the area which might have been used for an engine and no sign of any propellers of any kind, although at least one paper fin had been glued onto some of the tinfoil.

There were no words to be found anywhere on the instrument, although there were letters on some of the parts. Considerable scotch tape and some tape with flowers printed upon it had been used in the construction.

No strings or wire were to be found but there were some eyelets in the paper to indicated that some sort of attachment may have been used.

9a. On the flip side of all that was a last couple of paragraphs that calls some of that into question. According to the interview:

Brazel said that he had previously found two weather observation balloons on the ranch, but that what he found this time did not resemble either of these.

“I am sure what I found was not any weather observation balloon,” he said. “But if I find anything else besides a bomb they are going to have a hard time getting me to say anything about it.”

In this article there are all sorts of things for both sides of the controversy. Brazel describing the material as about the size of a table top, though a full Mogul array would have held much more material and no mention of the yards and yards of cord that held the thing together. There were also more than a few words such as “might have been,” and “must have been.” Still, the description gave certainly doesn’t reflect the type of debris you’d expect from an alien spacecraft.

Brazel, where he was quoted as opposed to paraphrased, said that he had found other weather balloons but this wasn’t like those. Mogul, of course, was made up of weather balloons. He should have recognized it for what it was.

The last two points, that is 8 and 9, have been debated at length, and this is where the controversy can be found. It is the interpretation of the documentation that is confusing, though if we remove the speculation, the picture is somewhat clearer.

 

*Here’s the thing with this issue. While it is very easy to give the nod to Charles Moore on the issue of atmospheric physics, that his calculations would be based on decades of experience and training that the rest of us don’t have, there is a problem with the timing of the events. It is clear from the documentation that the launches of the full arrays were not made until after dawn and every launch in June was made during daylight hours. The CAA restrictions made it clear that clouds (and not necessarily overcast) would cause cancellation. It is equally clear that they were not to launch the arrays in darkness.

We see, however, an evolution in the timing of the launch of Flight No. 4. When the only winds aloft data available came from the National Weather Service and it was clear those data were incomplete the launch time was around five in the morning. Moore estimated the time of the launch based on those data, and the times that seemed most consistent with other New Mexico launches. But then more complete data, to a much higher altitude, were discovered coming from a site near Orogrande, which is south of Alamogordo. This site was undoubtedly created for the missile launches which required wind data to a much higher altitude. Moore incorporated those data into his postulated Flight No. 4 flight path.

What these data showed was that a weather system had moved through the area and changed the dynamics of the upper atmosphere, or, in other words, the postulated flight track, given this new information, would not have moved the balloon array toward the Foster ranch. These new data showed that the flight, if launched after 5:00 a.m., would have gone somewhere else.

But, if the array was launched prior to the weather system moving through, why then the original, speculative track, could hold true. To accomplish this, the flight had to be launched very early in the morning, sometime around 3:00 a.m. This would have been the only flight launched at that time and Moore covered this by suggesting that Crary and part of the team were firing shots from midnight to six, and suggesting that the only reason to do that was if a balloon array had been launched. This, of course, is untrue and there are multiple examples in Crary’s diary where they were testing the detection equipment on the ground. In some cases, these were done before the whole team and its equipment had arrived in New Mexico.

Or, in other words, the only way for the balloons to arrive at the Foster ranch was to change the launch time, after having used a later (after dawn) time for the original calculations. Moore’s mission wasn’t to learn where this flight might have gone but to prove that it had drifted to the northeast, passing over the exotically named places which is why he remembered them, regardless of what the atmospheric data showed.

(And yes, I understand that this is not a completely unbiased representation of the data, but I believe it to be accurate. It is the accuracy of the information that is important here… the interpretation of it is another matter.)

And now let those who wish to offer the same arguments they have offered in the past, and please, don’t read the information carefully because that might just alter an opinion or two.

40 comments:

David Rudiak said...

Kevin wrote:
Although it seems that Moore was suggesting that there had been flight of balloons launched around 2:30 a.m. (0230 hours) early in the morning of June 4, there is no documentation for this.

Moore justified this using the Crary diary entry of June 3: "Up at 2:30 AM ready to fly balloons..."

But you don't wake up at 2:30, put on your pants and immediately send up a balloon flight minutes later. The flight would not have been fully assembled before they went to bed and put in storage. The rubber weather balloons would have to be filled and tied together just before launch, then attached to the rest of the balloon array (the instruments/payload), which may have been pre-assembled (no need to worry about deterioration and leaking helium as for the rubber balloons). Point is, probably a 2 to 3 hour process (hence getting up at 2:30), then you would release the full array at first light when everything was finally assembled.

Moore's expertise in atmospheric physics had nothing to do with it. He knew better. What he was really doing was dishonestly trying to extend the upper atmospheric phase of his model Flight #4 because he needed a very long westward drift phase, the result of the real winds from the Orogrande wind set blowing too hard to the east. His imaginary flight #4 he made have about 5 hours of such drift vs. only 2 hours for the real and "successful" flight #5. To accomplish this magic, he had to get rid of about 3 hours of balloon ultraviolet deterioration at high altitudes. Easy--just get rid of 3 hours of sunlight by launching at night about 3 hours before daybreak.

This was not only preposterous because of CAA safety rules, it also meant they would have thrown out their very important and standard optical tracking from the ground and air during the first part of the flight and relied solely on alleged radar tracking, which Moore said hadn't been very reliable.

Moore obviously knew it took several hours to put the whole balloon array together because he played a lot of word games. Crary's "up at 2:30" for the June 3 cancelled attempt he changed into "soon after midnight" for the June 4 attempted launch, so that he could get a 3:00 a.m. night launch time. He also made this into "about the same time" as the real flight #5 the next day, which actually went up at 5:17 a.m.

Thus in MooreSpeak, Crary's "up at 2:30" simultaneously meant around midnight, to properly prepare for a 3:00 launch, and post-dawn, to make it seem like it wasn't any different than the real launch the next day.

My website traces in detail how Moore kept changing his story and playing games with the alleged launch time:

http://www.roswellproof.com/flight4_trajectory.html#anchor_3596

Lance said...

Just a quick question on your point 6:

How do you make the leap to allow that writing in Crary's private diary=Folks at Roswell knew all about Mogul?

This kind of leap of logic shows not just bias but a pure conspiracy mentality.


Lance

Nitram said...

Lance in desperation wrote

"How do you make the leap to allow that writing in Crary's private diary=Folks at Roswell knew all about Mogul?

This kind of leap of logic shows not just bias but a pure conspiracy mentality."

Lance, you might like to forget everything you think you know about Mogul and start again.
The article "A Few Facts about Project Mogul" contains a number of very well thought out points, which together, essentially, "disprove" Mogul. You seem to thing that one possible "slightly debatable, technical hitch" and Mogul is back in business!

I'm still waiting for an answer Lance - have you watched that movie "Roswell" or not - we all know what a balloon looks like now really...

cda said...

"Brazel said that he had previously found two weather observation balloons on the ranch, but that what he found this time did not resemble either of these."

To me this indicates merely that Brazel had indeed come across something resembling balloon material, but it was a bit different from the two weather observation balloons he had discovered previously.

In other words, although Brazel decided it was different from what he had seen before on his ranch, it was similar to it. Otherwise why mention balloons at all?

And yes Kevin, you are quite right. The material he and Marcel came across did NOT resemble any vehicle that had traversed a zillion miles of interplanetary or interstellar space, did it?

KRandle said...

Lance -

You misundeerstand... the point was that those flying the balloons in New Mexico knew the name... those in New Mexico refers not to the soldiers at Roswell but to the New York University team. The point was that the name "Mogul" was known to them and nothing more.

Larry said...

Lance wrote:

“How do you make the leap to allow that writing in Crary's private diary=Folks at Roswell knew all about Mogul?”

It’s not Crary’s act of writing that made the folks at Roswell know about MOGUL, it’s what his writing implies.

Some excerpts from Crary’s diary (as written in “The Roswell Report Fact vs Fiction”):

May 20 Tues. "Edmonson and I left about 0845 in weapon carrier for Roswell. …. Dug holes and strung wires. Went over to Roswell Army Air Field, filled up with gas.”

May 21 Wed. “…Bill Edmonson picked up GR8 and left for Roswell in weapon carrier SC about noon. Got all equipment together for shooting tomorrow……”

May 22 Thurs. “….Called up Silver City and Roswell tonight. Changed schedule of tomorrow from 1100 last one to 1115. Checked AAF clocks over telephone.”

May 23 Fri. “…Bill E in from Roswell about 5….”

June 5 Thurs. “…B-17 and most personnel out to Roswell—recovered equipment some 25 mi east of Roswell……”

June 6 Fri. “NYU personnel getting ready for flight tomorrow. ……Olsen and Godbee with receiver to Roswell—also smith on theodolite.”

June 10 Tues. “…Worked on balloon tests from Roswell—no signal….”

In order for civilians (like NYU) to set up shop on a military base like Roswell and begin work on an extended project, the proposed project activities have to be reviewed and approved by the command chain of the base involved. You don’t just show up unannounced and start driving military vehicles, pumping gas, moving electronic equipment around and landing B-17s. The Roswell AAF chain of command would have to have been made aware of the general nature of what Crary’s crew was up to, including the fact that there was a classified component to it. My guess is that Blanchard would have been the approving official. When I say “general nature”, I mean the basic facts that they were flying large balloon trains out of Alamogordo which might end up in Roswell’s air space, that it was an extended program and not just a single launch, that they were trying to coordinate detection of acoustic signals received in the air with those taken on the ground, that it involved the detonation of high explosives, and so on.

So the folks at Roswell would certainly have been aware that the activities of the NYU crew could result in balloon remains being found in the Roswell area, even if they might not have been told the code name MOGUL.

David Rudiak said...

Larry wrote:

June 5 Thurs. “…B-17 and most personnel out to Roswell—recovered equipment some 25 mi east of Roswell……”

This was the recovery of Flight #5, the REAL first Mogul constant-altitude flight in N.M. Here's another thing Roswell base would have been aware about it. Flight #5's ground trajectory shows it passing only 4 miles south of the base (while descending towards its eventually crash site) and also lingering within a dozen miles of base air space for 2-3 hours while in its slow backward stratospheric constant altitude phase and during descent.

While this was all happening, a B-17 chase plane was circling underneath and followed it all the way to to its crash point (16 miles due east of the base according to the Mogul plot).

The point here is that Roswell base flight control, plane spotters, weather observers, guards, etc. probably would have seen the 600' balloon train hanging in the sky for a prolonged time with a plane following it in the area. The B-17 probably would have been in contact with flight control and had to explain their presence and that of the balloon train in Roswell air space.

So at least SOME personnel at the base would have been well aware of this flight (or everybody was totally asleep at the switch, more Roswell "drooling idiot" disease at work).

Here is my rendition of #5's trajectory during my discussion of how Charles Moore monkeyed with the original #5 plot to apparently distance #5 from the base so it was so obvious how close it really came:

http://www.roswellproof.com/Flight4_Addendums.html#anchor_3600

And here is the original #5 plot plus Moore's regraphing of it in two different sources showing exactly how Moore monkeyed with the #5 graphic:

http://www.roswellproof.com/Flight4and5_changes.html

This was originally spotted by Brad Sparks, who engaged Moore in an email debate mediated by Karl Pflock. Moore claimed that #5 came no closer than 15 to 20 miles from the base, which the original Mogul plot proves was a lie. Moore also tried to claim that maybe personnel didn't see #5 because of local cloud cover, which would be very unlikely since it was tracked visually from the ground clear from Roswell for 90% until view was blocked from Alamogordo by local mountains during the descent phase, not by cloud conditions.

Moore never did explain why the graphic was clearly altered by him from the original, even though he wrote it was "taken without change" from the original Mogul report figure.

Sparks did get Moore to concede that the B-17 chase plane probably WAS in contact with Roswell, again another indication that the base almost certainly knew about the flights.

My second link above also has Moore's 1995 and 1997 plots of "Flight #4", the second being the hoax trajectory in the Saler/Ziegler/Moore 50th anniversary debunking "Roswell: Making of a Modern Myth". You'll notice the 1997 plot based on the much more detailed Orogrande wind data, shows much more eastward blowing winds, with Moore therefore creating a very, very long westward back drift to take it back into the vicinity of the Foster Ranch. (Note how much longer this is than the real #5.)

This was the reason Moore created the absurd 3:00 a.m. night launch, to delay sunlight exposure and keep the fictional balloons aloft at high altitude for 3 hours longer than #5. This was Moore making his own "modern myth"--the nonexistent flight #4 explaining Roswell.

David Rudiak said...

As usual, cda cluelessly comments:
Brazel said that he had previously found two weather observation balloons on the ranch, but that what he found this time did not resemble either of these."

To me this indicates merely that Brazel had indeed come across something resembling balloon material, but it was a bit different from the two weather observation balloons he had discovered previously.


How so Christopher? In Fort Worth what was shown in the photos was a seemingly intact WEATHER BALLOON (which I measure as fitting in a shoe box). So how would THAT be "a bit different" from those other two weather balloons he had found previously? (Answer: it wouldn't. A rubber weather balloon is a rubber weather balloon.)

And since you insist what is in the Fort Worth photos is indeed what Brazel found, how do you explain it being a "bit different" from other weather balloons he found?

Of course, Brazel's interview had him claiming he found only "rubber strips", not an intact balloon. He then supposedly infers that the strips came from a much larger balloon maybe 15 feet in size.

And we must also accept what Brazel said as being what was really found, even though the description is TOTALLY INCONSISTENT with what was displayed in Fort Worth.

But in brain-dead DebunkerLand, Brazel's story is nonetheless "consistent" with the photos, even though it isn't. And Ramey's single weather balloon/radar target is also "consistent" with a multi-balloon, multi-target Mogul (which never existed).

To get around the lack of adequate debris in FW, the latest twist in the always evolving debunker "explanation" is that most of the Mogul debris must have been hidden from sight. No doubt they figured this out through remote viewing.

As for the seeming foil, paper, and sticks radar target of Brazel's description, that mostly would seem to match up with the photos, except nobody, even the AF debunkers, could ever find Brazel's "flower tape", the supposed clear-cut link to Mogul. Oops! And what happened to the hundreds of yards of Mogul rigging which Brazel specifically denied finding a shred of and also missing from the photos?

Never mind. The phantom giant Mogul Flight #4, Brazel's description, Ramey's descriptions (singular balloon/target, the target being "25 feet across if reconstructed"), Marcel's description (debris "scattered over a square mile), and the photos are all "consistent" with one another.

In other words, although Brazel decided it was different from what he had seen before on his ranch, it was similar to it. Otherwise why mention balloons at all?

Maybe because he was in military custody at the time and instructed to tell a balloon story. (Multiple witness to the custody and intimidation thing, including three newsmen, his adult son, his neighbors, and provost marshal Easley, who you think would know.)

What Brazel is describing is NOT consistent with what the photos show, and certainly not a Mogul balloon flight, of which there was none.

cda said...

DR:

"Maybe because he was in military custody at the time and instructed to tell a balloon story. (Multiple witness to the custody and intimidation thing, including three newsmen, his adult son, his neighbors, and provost marshal Easley, who you think would know.)"

Indeed. More conspiracy hogwash. We 'clueless' skeptics have to compete with the paranoid conspiracy-mongers.

DR will not accept that the WHOLE ET idea depends solely on testimony gathered between 30 and 50 years afterwards, from assorted people, most of whom were never there in the first place.

Yes Brazel & Marcel almost certainly did realise they had recovered balloon debris, but still had some doubts. And why not? I assume that Brazel, in saying that what he found differed from the two previous balloons was referring to the radar reflector not the balloon. Hence the 'difference', but DR probably won't accept this common sense answer, preferring instead to believe that Gen Ramey told lies to the FBI, co-ordinated the newspaper reports both at Ft Worth and Roswell (!) and lied on the local radio. (And of course kept his mouth firmly shut about it all five years later at that Washington press conference.)

Clever guy was Ramey; maybe he even once trisected an angle but took the great secret to his grave, just like the ETs he saw first hand but could never reveal to the world!

What is shown in those photos is perfectly consistent with the press descriptions. No, it is not an exact match, neither should it be, but it is good enough.

Ramey may or may not have known about Mogul, but there is absolutely NO WAY he could have, in such a short timeframe, organised this huge disinformation exercise, including lying to the FBI and on local radio, when you consider that Ramey, like anyone else, would have been so overwhelmed and astonished out of his wits by the discovery of an ET craft and bodies to have the faintest idea of how to cover it all up at short notice, even to the extent of substituting an old balloon for a visiting ET craft!

A preposterous notion.

As for Provost Marshal Easley and his testimony. DR MUST be kidding - see Easley's incoherent and completely useless tale as printed in "Roswell UFO Crash Update" (phone interview Jan 11, 1990). Kevin had to more or less dictate the course of the interview - Easley was the 'clueless' one, if
you want to use that word.

KRandle said...

Gentlemen -

You have forced this off the rails, as usual... I was talking about some facts about Mogul and yet the only challenge to that was Lance's misinterpretation of what I wrote. I was not saying that those in Roswell knew the name Mogul or that Mogul was so secret that the NYU people didn't know the name...

And now we're off on other tangents.

CDA - You assume that they only had three hours to prepare, but DuBose suggested that they had material on Sunday... You don't like the Easley interview but, of course, the only reason you know what it encompassed was because I published it.

I'll tell you something else, Easley's response to one of the first questions... "I can't talk about it..." surprised me. In all the other interviews I had conducted to that point, I had very good luck with the witness (since then I've run into others who wouldn't talk, who said they knew nothing... or my favorite, "I don't know who you are. I don't know what is still classified and what is not. I have nothing to say."

The point is, you try to keep the witness talking and if he or she believes you know more than you do, it leads to other things. Believe what you want, but my purpose has always been to find the truth and not feed the witness with information.

BTW - The reason some of you believe there were rawin targets involved is because of the debris in Ramey's office but there is no evidence that Marcel saw the remains of a rawin on the ranch... and had he, he would have recognised it, just as Sheridan Cavitt claimed that he recognised it.

And gee, can we find other examples of members of one government agency lying to members of another to protect a secret?

Again, this posting was about some facts about Mogul.

David Rudiak said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
David Rudiak said...

I wrote:
Here is my rendition of #5's trajectory during my discussion of how Charles Moore monkeyed with the original #5 plot to apparently distance #5 from the base so it was so obvious how close it really came:

http://www.roswellproof.com/Flight4_Addendums.html#anchor_3600


This should have read: "...so it was NOT so obvious how close it really came".

This is just one of two examples of Moore deliberately cheating with actual data in order to sell his "flight #4" story:

1) He altered the original Flight #5 Mogul trajectory map to distance #5 from Roswell base and hide that it drifted very close (because he also claimed that the people at Roswell would not have known about the Mogul flights and thus somehow became confused when they found one). This is among the Mogul facts: there is the real flight #5 map and there is the Moore altered one (twice) while claiming he was copying it exactly from the original.

2) He cheated in numerous ways with his Flight #4 trajectory calculation from Orogrande wind data in order to direct it "exactly" to the Foster Ranch. Remove any one of these cheats and you generally get a big miss. This is unambiguous evidence of premeditation by Moore, not just some random collection of innocent "mistakes" by an aging man.

Moore's big mistake was putting it all down in black and white instead of making vague hand-waving claims, thus unambiguously proving he was lying with premeditation. That's like leaving fingerprints all over the murder weapon plus a signed confession.

The biggest blow against the Moore/AF "Flight #4" is that Mogul and other official records proved it never existed because it was cancelled, thus never made it into the Mogul records like other cancelled flights. That's when even more lying took place to resurrect these cancelled, nonexistent flights from the grave to make a case for "flight #4". Moore contributed to that deliberate deception as well.

CDA just made the usual skeptical argument that the entire ET case is based on 30 to 50 year old memories. Of course, it doesn't bother him a whit that the case for Mogul is based almost entirely on the 50 year old memory of one man (Moore), caught lying red-handed while making his case.

This includes Moore's suddenly recovered 50-year-old "clear memory" of "flight #4" because it passed over exotically named small N.M. towns which no other flight did. Except that wasn't true either. That was the real flight #17 three months later. I can't call Moore a flagrant liar on that (one of those vague old memories), though maybe he was. In this case it could have indeed been a case of simple memory confusion after 50 years.

Gilles Fernandez said...


This includes Moore's suddenly recovered 50-year-old "clear memory" of "flight #4" because it passed over exotically named small N.M. towns which no other flight did. Except that wasn't true either. That was the real flight #17 three months later.


Realy? And how you have decided it? Because :

1) Flight 17 was not followed/chased by a plane: so no "verbal reports" by the crew of the names of the city. But you claim or feel Moore heard about those unusual places during the balloons flight? Hey man, ground NYU team were looking/monitoring their instruments, not google map ;)

2) The plots of Flight #17 including cities and names in the Journal of Meteorology co-redacted by Moore in 1948 (drafted december 1947) does NOT name/quote "Arabella" or "Bluewater" in my old reading.
In his book, it is "Arabela, Capitan Peak, Blue Water" which sounded "exotic" names for him in the Ziegler/Saler/Him book... Do you see such names in the Scientific Paper's plots ???

But Moore confused flight 17 and 4... Elemntar, my dear Rudiak. Tsss...

Gilles

KRandle said...

Gilles -

There was no Flight No. 4... It was cancelled. Moore changed the times of the launch of the cluster of balloons on June 4 to take advantage of the winds aloft, which shows his mindset. Flight No. 17 is not relevant to this particular discussion because the composition of the arrays was different and the regulations and rules under which it was launched were different.

Such is the world that the debunkers cling to any explanation no matter how far off that explanation might be. Bend the facts, change the facts, all so that a mythical full array can fall on the Foster ranch. The proof is the alteration in the time of the alleged launch.

cda said...

Kevin:

"The reason some of you believe there were rawin targets involved is because of the debris in Ramey's office but there is no evidence that Marcel saw the remains of a rawin on the ranch... "

There is indeed evidence that Marcel saw the remains of a rawin on the ranch. Look again at the story in the Roswell Daily Record where it says Marcel & Brazel TRIED TO MAKE A KITE OUT OF IT.

Don't you think, Kevin, that a shattered rawin target might resemble a kite, with sticks and fabric? Any idea as to why they tried (and failed) to make such a kite? Have you any reason to suppose kites are used to traverse interplanetary space?

Gilles Fernandez said...

Kevin,

When Rudiak attacks Moore memory with strange and non-sens arguments, it is relevant to the discussion and not off-topic. When I reply as I can, it is not relevant and off-topic... Janis effect?

As, I dont share your different "debunkery" points concerning your attempt one NYU flight of end of may/june cant be the candidat for the Roswell debris. A cluster of balloons was launched june the 4th, as May the 29th... Will not point again and again the same things already discussed, that's sterile.

You are too much engaged now, and cant go back...

Marcel tried to construct a kite with your Alien spacecraft debris, but it cant be corner-reflectors... A contrario, I think that if he did it, it is because the remains/debris were enough "indicating/pointing/suggesting" to such a structure as a kite... Corner-reflector have this "kite" structure, but a coincidence of course, with a alien spacecraft debris, or part of the cover-up by the USAF in the newspapers...

you wrote too "Rawin radar targets were not included in many of the flights until later because they were having poor luck with the radars."

So there was none test in New Mexico with corner-reflector to experiment they have poor luck with the radar(s) ? They decided it without tests/experiments...
And the launch(es?) having conduced to this experience and "conclusion" of bad luck with radar and corner-reflectors cant have been launched in N.M. in May/June 1947... Hum...

Recently, your acharnement in your blog to "debunk" NYU hypothesis as responsible of the debris is not convincing for me.

You have none "agnostic" behavior despite to have claimed to "re-investigate" the case, creating the so-called dreamteam. It is exactly as before, with the same persons/methodology who have construct the myth in the 90's (You, Carey, Schmitt adding Rudiak - hoo well what an agnostic concerning the case !).

Sorry to be franck. OK, I stop with my off-topics which are not when coming from your friend. Will continue to read, and discute it in another places.

Gilles.

Nitram said...

cda without a thought in the world wrote:

"DR will not accept that the WHOLE ET idea depends solely on testimony gathered between 30 and 50 years afterwards, from assorted people, most of whom were never there in the first place."

Ok cda - can you name, say, 12 people who were NEVER there in the first place, but testified differently? I will name 12 just quickly who I believe were there in Roswell (or had something to do with the events) at the time:

Blanchard
Marcel (Senior)
Marcel (Junior)
Cavett
Walter Haut
Roger Ramey
Glenn Dennis
Frankie Rowe
Melvin Brown
Edwin Easley
Mac Brazel
Sheriff Wilcox

This is off topic with "Mogul", but cda always jumps from topic to topic usually reverting back to his time honored "how could the Government have kept this quiet for 60 plus years" and his other classic "the testimony has only been offered 30-50 years after the event..."

I think cda your quite lucky that DR & KR even bother replying to most of your posts...which are off topic and nonsensical.

Larry said...

Part 1
Kevin:

I will address points 8a and 8b that you raised in your post.

Crary’s diary for June 4 explicitly says “no balloon launch again on account of clouds” and “flew regular sono bouy up in cluster of balloons”. I don’t see how anyone can seriously dispute the veracity or interpretation of those statements, as far as they go. He is saying that there was one balloon flight—call it flight “A”—that was planned but did not take place and another flight—call it “B”—that did take place. In order for flight B to make it to the Foster ranch, it would have to have had constant level equipment on it AND it would have to have been allowed to proceed in that direction.

In addition to what Crary’s diary explicitly stated, I think we can make some reasonable assumptions. (I’m sure these assumptions will be questioned, but I’m going to go ahead and state them.) You have already made one assumption, and that is that the NYU group were law-abiding and operated within the constraints that had been negotiated with the CAA. You stated that:

“Restriction on the project is the Civil Aeronautics Authority (forerunner to the FAA) requirement that balloon flights be made only on days that are cloudless up to 20,000 feet.”

Actually, the requirement was more stringent than that. In the (undated) memo from the CAA subsequent to the one on April 17 that you refer to, C.J. Stork conveyed to C.S. Schindler of NYU, that the ceiling restriction of 20,000 ft was inadequate and that the CAA required “cloudless” skies for daytime flight in CAA controlled airspace. From what I can tell, the CAA did not exercise control in the military airspace that was enclosed by the boundaries of the White Sands Proving Ground. That was referred to as a Danger area. As long as a balloon flight was conducted entirely within the Danger area, the matter was between the NYU team and the WSPG base commander.

Larry said...

Part 2
Another assumption of minor consequence that I make is that Crary’s practice of entering information into his diary on June 4 was exactly the same practice he followed for the 6 months prior and the 6 months after that day. In other words, to Crary, June 4 was not a special day in any manner and he did not change his usual practices. If you look at a year’s worth of his diary entries, you will see that his standard practice was to summarize a day’s events in chronological order. A typical entry is: “I got up at time X. In the morning I did Y. At mid-day I did Z. In the afternoon (often abbreviated pm) I met with P. In the evening I travelled to Q” and so on.

So it is with June 4. He was out to Tularosa between midnight and (approximately) dawn (6:00 am). The balloon flight “A” which was scheduled for approximately dawn was cancelled. Next, balloon flight “B” was sent up. Next, he was out with Thompson in the PM, or after noon. This implies that balloon flight “B” went up sometime between dawn and noon, on June 4.

So why was it OK to launch a balloon at, say, 9:00 am but it was not OK to launch a balloon at 6:00 am, from the very same launch site? Crary says the reason it was not OK at 6:00 am is because of “clouds”. Does that mean that there were clouds at 6:00 am but not at 9:00 am? Where is the location of the clouds he’s referring to? He can only have meant clouds out in civilian airspace in the direction of Roswell, where the balloon was expected to drift, because that’s the only place the CAA had authority.

But the cloud cover over in the direction of Roswell did NOT change between dawn and noon on June 4. Check out the following url, which gives the surface observations from Roswell, and you will see that there was cloud cover up until 5:00 pm.:

http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KROW/1947/6/4/DailyHistory.html?req_city=Roswell&req_state=NM&req_statename=New+Mexico

By contrast, if you go look at the weather the next day, you will see that Roswell was clear at 6:00 am. That’s when they launched Flight #5.

So if there was no change in the cloud cover between dawn and noon on June 4, why was it OK to launch a balloon? It can only be because they had no intention of letting the balloon out of the Danger area. Following this line of argument, it actually does not even matter if balloon “B” had a constant level device on it or not. Whether it did or did not, the NYU team would have terminated its flight before letting it into CAA airspace.

Of course, given that it would necessarily have been a short flight, there would have been no good reason to waste a constant level device on such a flight.

Lance said...

What time was Flight 8 launched? Just wondering?

Lance

David Rudiak said...

I wrote:
"This includes Moore's suddenly recovered 50-year-old "clear memory" of "flight #4" because it passed over exotically named small N.M. towns which no other flight did. Except that wasn't true either. That was the real flight #17 three months later."

Gilles inanely responded:
Realy? And how you have decided it? Because :

1) Flight 17 was not followed/chased by a plane: so no "verbal reports" by the crew of the names of the city. But you claim or feel Moore heard about those unusual places during the balloons flight? Hey man, ground NYU team were looking/monitoring their instruments, not google map ;)


Here's what Gilles left out. (Now why is that do you imagine? Hmmmm.) Four "exotic" small NM towns were indeed marked on the #17 plot: La Luz, White Tail, Hondo, and Escondido (the last of which I can't even find on a current map).

So apparently the Mogul team DIDN'T need a chase plane to call out "exotic" small towns to them as the balloon drifted by. Instead, they obviously DID come equipped with detailed N.M. maps which they might remotely have considered useful for tracking purposes, like topo maps. What a surprise! The only drooling idiots left were at Roswell and present-day DebunkerLand.

2) The plots of Flight #17 including cities and names in the Journal of Meteorology co-redacted by Moore in 1948 (drafted december 1947) does NOT name/quote "Arabella" or "Bluewater" in my old reading.
In his book, it is "Arabela, Capitan Peak, Blue Water" which sounded "exotic" names for him in the Ziegler/Saler/Him book... Do you see such names in the Scientific Paper's plots ???


Do you see such names in the plots for Flight #4? Oh, I forget; there are no such plots because the flight was cancelled. It's all Moore's 50-year-old memory, from a witness pushing a clear agenda and caught flagrantly lying in his handling of historical data to advance that agenda. (Gilles won't go into that, preferring to nitpick this stupid "exotic" name thing.)

The only such plot for "flight #4" taking it near Bluewater, Arabella, and Capitan Peak was made up by Moore in his trajectory hoax. And the only reason his trajectory passed near these "exotic" towns is because he deliberately made it do so by cheating with his own model.

If you remove Moore's cheats (1. his too fast rise time eliminating lifter balloon cutoff, and 2. calculating his table wrong to force an early turn towards Arabella, et al), the closest his model flight #4 came to these "exotic" locations would have been 15 miles as it flew rapidly past to the east while still ascending, not drifting slowly backward to the west over these locations.

But if you overlay the REAL flight #17 trajectory on a N.M. map, amazingly it flew directly over Bluewater and within about 2 miles of Arabella and Capitan Pk. Map:

http://www.roswellproof.com/files/flight17.gif

I don't need a 50 year-old-memory to prove this or cheat with the data like Moore did. It's part of the old Mogul documentation. Flight #17 flew directly over these same landmarks that Moore said were exclusive to the nonexistent flight #4. We can document exactly what happened with #17, but what has Gilles got to document Moore's alleged memory of what happened to "#4"?

But Moore confused flight 17 and 4... Elemntar, my dear Rudiak. Tsss...

Isn't this the same Gilles F. who never met a psycho-social argument he didn't like to debunk Roswell? Self-serving psycho-babble like 50-year-old memories are ALWAYS unreliable and witnesses were allegedly time-compressing crash test dummy tests from the next decade when reporting bodies.

But with Moore we have a 50-year-old "memory" that sounds remarkably similar to a real event only 3 months later and Gilles' can only say "Tssss". Well argued Gilles!

But that's DEBOONKERY!

KRandle said...

Lance -

Flight No. 8 was launched at 303 MST on July 3. It was made of a cluster of balloons, a transmitter, and a plastic ballast reservoir and dribbler. It was under two hundred feet in length. It flew for 195 minutes and reached an altitude of 18,500 feet.

More to follow...

Anthony Mugan said...

Hi Kevin
Just one question... My reading of the CAA regs is similar to Larry's in that the cloud cover restriction was changed to require a totally clear sky. There was also a requirement for 3 miles visibility.
I'm no expert on visibility at night but had the impression that this didn't prevent a night launch ( such as for Flight 8). I could be wrong on that of course and note the different configuration and specific purpose of Flight 8... What do you think...?
Either way they wouldn't have been able to proceed with the actual launch until the clouds cleared, so just a detail really.

Anthony Mugan said...

Larry
Can I just ask a question around the requirements for clear sky down range? I had always read the relevant regulations as requiring a completely clear sky at launch
Would it be normal practice to requires teams launching such research balloon clusters to assess down range conditions? This must presumably involve some element of judgement as to the likely maximum range of the balloon flight and, in 1947, may have been a bit tricky in terms of accessing sufficient information in time.
I'm no expert on this question... Wonder if you had access to any references or sources which might clarify that question? Conscious this again may be a bit academic in terms of the main question, as either way they couldn't launch in the relevant time period, but an interesting point...

cda said...

Nitram (Martin?):

In response, 9 out your list of 12 were 'never there in the first place'. So as I said "most of whom..." You have, in effect, named most of these people. By 'never there' I meant were not present at the recovery site. Even Cavitt is a doubtful.

Do you really think Easley is credible? Do you really think he qualifies as a reliable witness? It is laughable.

And yes, I stand by my remarks about secrets, especially those of interest to the whole of the scientific community. Such a secret has NOT been kept for 65 years by a few top military personnel.

You can judge for yourself why science has ignored the whole Roswell fantasy tale for this length of time. (And will continue to do so whatever the Dream Team comes up with).

But wait; this was supposed to be about Mogul, wasn't it?

cda said...

Nitram:

You cite Melvin Brown. What did I say about Easley? Multiply them by ten and you can apply my remarks to Brown also.

299 said...

Sorry to be off-topic, but can anyone give me a link to any document with original radar-data?

Larry said...

Part 1
Anthony Mugan asked...
“I'm no expert on visibility at night but had the impression that this didn't prevent a night launch (such as for Flight 8). ..”

I don’t think visibility by itself, would either prevent or allow night flight. When the FAA (and presumably the CAA) states the conditions that allow flight, the conditions are normally interpreted as being independent of each other. In the letter of April 17, 1947, Schneider, of the NYU team, requests permission “to fly balloons on days when there are no more than scattered clouds in thin layers up to 20,000 feet and visibility greater than 3 miles.” So, the conditions “day”, “scattered clouds” and “visibility greater than 3 miles” are all independent conditions. They all have to be met in order for the flight to be in compliance. In aviation parlance, “day” is not a 24 hour period; it is the period between sunrise and sunset (plus or minus a little bit). So, when the CAA came back and said that their request was approved EXCEPT that it would be restricted to “cloudless” days, the additional conditions of daytime operation with visibility at least 3 miles was understood. By the way, there is probably room to argue about exactly what a “cloudless” sky is. Obviously, a literal interpretation would be that an individual, standing on the ground, would not be able to see any clouds whatsoever, in any direction at any distance. However, if the term “cloudless” is considered to be synonymous with “clear”, it should be noted that the definition of “clear” skies allows up to 10% of the sky to be obscured by clouds.

Also:
“I had always read the relevant regulations as requiring a completely clear sky at launch. Would it be normal practice to require teams launching such research balloon clusters to assess down range conditions? This must presumably involve some element of judgment as to the likely maximum range of the balloon flight and, in 1947, may have been a bit tricky in terms of accessing sufficient information in time.”

Anthony: I don’t know what the CAA regs were in 1947—I’ve been trying all day (with no luck so far) to find an online searchable data base containing the Civil Aeronautics Administration regulations as they would have existed in 1947. If we can find them, we can answer all these questions authoritatively and conclusively. All the high altitude unmanned balloon flights I’ve been involved with were under FAA regs, since about 1995.

However, I suspect the principles have stayed the same. As with any object flying through civil airspace, the prime directive is to see (other traffic) and avoid (a collision). The individual launching a balloon is the one responsible for operating it according to regulations and is the equivalent to the “pilot in command”. Since, in the case of an unmanned free balloon, the pilot in command is on the ground, the best that can be done as far as the see and avoid principle is concerned is to visually or otherwise track the balloon at all times and make its position known to other potential users of the airspace. For all the MOGUL flights conducted on the East Coast, the NYU team had a requirement to issue a NOTAM and keep the CAA informed of the position of the balloon at all times, for each flight. I assume that was because on the East Coast, ALL the airspace the balloons would be operating over was heavily trafficked. There also was a requirement for a flight termination device and a parachute or parachutes to keep all of the heavy equipment from simply plummeting to the ground after flight termination.

Larry said...

Part 2

When the FAA issues weather and visibility minimums for a particular type of flight (in this case, unmanned free balloon) those minimums are assumed to apply through all phases of the flight, from takeoff to termination. This is certainly the case, for example, in exercising the priveleges of Pilot-In-Command of an airplane. For flights outside the immediate vicinity of the launching airport, one is required to acquaint oneself will all of the available data relevant to that flight, including current and forecast weather along the expected route of flight. I can’t imagine the requirement would be any less for an unmanned free flying balloon. At the very least, they would have called up the Roswell control tower and asked, “How’s the weather over there?”

When flying out of White Sands, they were launching from inside the military Danger Area. My conjecture is that as long as their balloons stayed inside the Danger Area there was no requirement to issue a NOTAM since any pilot wanting to transit the Danger Area was already forewarned that there could be hazards to flight there and was also required to contact the responsible agency (White Sands Test Range) before entering. As the letter dated Aug 27 makes clear, the original expectation was that the balloon trains would not make it out of the Danger Area, but this was shown not to be the case, probably with the June 5 flight, which landed East of Roswell. This point is not entirely clear, because there appears to me to be a small discontinuity in the documentation between the CAA and the NYU team. In March-April, when the team was still on the East Coast, they negotiated with the CAA and received approval to execute Phases I and II of their plan, both of which were to take place on the East Coast. The correspondence at that time also indicates that they had requested the CAA to consider their request to conduct balloon flights “along the lines of Phase II” out of White Sands. There is no written response to that request in the record and yet, in May the NYU team showed up at White Sands and promptly started flying balloons. Clearly, they had received permission to begin flights. My assumption would be that they had been approved to fly balloons during May, June, and July at White Sands, operating under a direct extension of the rules they had been using on the East Coast.

In any case, WHATEVER the CAA-imposed sky coverage conditions that the NYU team was operating under on June 4, they met those conditions at the mid-morning balloon release and would not have not meet those conditions at the dawn release. Since cloud conditions at White Sands were almost certainly non-existent it has to have been the cloud conditions downrange that prevented the dawn release.

It looks to me like the NYU team had to re-propose in August, to begin another campaign in September. At that point the CAA found it necessary to reconsider the groundrules. I think the main reasons for this is that the constant-level device was shown to work and yielded flight durations of up to 12 hours, and that the wind pattern had changed so that some of the flights were heading Southwest instead of East. The main airline traffic (El Paso) was off to the Southwest, so that represented a greater safety risk. In their letter of Sept 2, the CAA explicitly noted a few items of interest to this debate: “releases are usually made at dawn”, the flight terminates in an average of 8 hours time”, “balloons are tracked by VHF (Very High Frequency) DF (direction finding) stations at Alamogordo and Roswell”. Finally, in September, the NYU team got the CAA to relax the sky coverage condition for balloon flights from “cloudless” to not more than 4/10 coverage within a 60 mile radius.

Anthony Mugan said...

Thanks Larry

As an absolute minimum, ultra-conservative position then I think we can say that:
a) the documentation establishes that no constant level balloon flight occurred on the 4th June (project reports, Crary's diary and the weather conditions at the launch site, with the significance of downrange conditions TBC but very possibly of significant).
b) A cluster of balloons with a sono-buoy was released later in the day - exact timing unclear
c) Discussions of the possible trajectory of Flight 4 are therefore a bit academic (shame as I'd spent a lot of time on that!) but provide a 'belt and braces' position as this establishes that Moore's trajectory is invalid in terms of the laws of physics (e.g the ascent phase could not have had that shape with a design using lifter balloons)

Many thanks, again, Larry, always appreciate your extremely objective comments, well grounded in the real world.

Larry said...

Anthony Mugan wrote:


"I think we can say that:

a) the documentation establishes that no constant level balloon flight occurred on the 4th June....

b) A cluster of balloons with a sono-buoy was released later in the day - exact timing unclear....

c) Discussions of the possible trajectory of Flight 4 are therefore a bit academic (shame as I'd spent a lot of time on that!) but provide a 'belt and braces' position..."

That about sums it up.

Larry said...

Anthony:

The only thing to add is that it's too bad Moore led everyone on a wild goose chase for all these years.

Anthony Mugan said...

Hi Larry

Yes, I agree. To be fair if you take it as just the information he had originally then in a qualitative sense you can see how he could have come up with the idea...low level winds taking it NE, then stratospheric back to the west etc...
I can sympathise with him as by 1997 he may have been quite personally invested in the model. I can remember my old research supervisor rather disparagingly referring to 'curve fitting' as us (then) young post-grads attempted to save whatever model we'd come up with when it didn't fit the data, so I can sympathise!
Moore is someone I respect a lot, so the whole thing gives me no pleasure at all in that regard, but there we are.

Larry said...

Anthony wrote:

"...To be fair if you take it as just the information he had originally then in a qualitative sense you can see how he could have come up with the idea..."

I agree. His original hunch was not unreasonable. It was even falsifiable. It simply happens to actually be false.

I don't cut the US Air Force as much slack. They put in extraordinary effort to go back and dig up all the MOGUL records (for which I suppose we should thank them) and then they proceed to systematically and actively misinterpret them in such a way as to confirm Moore's hypothesis, instead of treating it with scientific skepticisim. They were clearly not searching for the truth as much as they were trying to explain away the "Roswell Incident". Ultimately, the exact same records that the Air Force appealed to to substantiate Moore's hunch turn out to falsify it.

By nature, I am not particularly suspicious of others' motives, but in the case of the Air Force, I am finding it harder and harder to interpret their actions as anything other than deliberate disinformation.

David Rudiak said...

Anthony,

I think you are being much too kind to Moore. I used to respect him, but no longer, not after his long string of clear deceit on the topic of how his Mogul caused the Roswell incident. What he did went well beyond innocent confirmation bias or "curve fitting."

What I see is very calculated lie and after lie, pretending to do one thing with the data but doing something else entirely, whether it was altering the Flight #5 trajectory map after claiming to copy it "without change" in order to distance #5 from Roswell base (caught by Brad Sparks, with Moore continuing to lie in a debate about how close #5 really came to the base), or using multiple hidden cheats in his "Flight #4" trajectory model, then claiming the winds were exactly right to carry it exactly to the Foster Ranch.

Brad Sparks came up with other instances from Moore's past where he was screwing with people. According to Sparks, Moore also claimed to know all about the Thomas Mantell incident being caused by one of their Skyhook balloons because he was there at the launch. Lt. McAndrew, of USAF Roswell report infamy, actually checked out the story and discovered Moore hadn't arrived at the Skyhook team for several more weeks. So he wasn't there like he said. When confronted with this, Moore plead ancient memory problems, which maybe it was.

Likewise Moore claimed that when he heard about Roswell in July 1947, he thought at the time that they had discovered one of his Mogul balloons.

The point is Moore seemed to like inserting himself into historical events, whether it was the false Mantell "memory" or his nonexistent Mogul balloon explaining Roswell. Maybe he wanted to feel important in his old age. Or maybe some agency added a little bit to his government pension to debunk Roswell. (Moore used to have a top secret clearance with the CIA, e.g., in the 1950s. CDA will now immediately accuse me of "conspiracist" thinking.)

I honestly don't know, other than he was deliberately deceiving the public in concert with AFOSI counterintelligence to try to sell the Mogul explanation, with his background giving it a scientific patina. AFOSI lied even worse than Moore in their report, such as resurrecting two other non-existent balloon flights (#2 and #3) in order to make a case for #4.

Smithsonian Press published Moore's trajectory hoax in 1997 as part of the 50th anniversary debunkery book coauthored by Saler and Ziegler, again trying to give the debunkery a "scientific" aura. There was obviously no real peer review, which would have stopped the hoax in its tracks. Smithsonian has never printed a retraction even though the hoax was exposed over a decade ago and they are well aware of it.

cda said...

DR writes:

"Or maybe some agency added a little bit to his [Moore's] government pension to debunk Roswell."

How right DR is! Why not go further and tell us that General Ramey had a bit added to his pension for coordinating the whole magnificent cover-up act on July 8? (Not that it did him much good as he died before normal pension age.)

What about Blanchard? Didn't he also cooperate in the 'big lie' and get a 'sweetener' for it?

McAndrew and Weaver (both intelligence guys) likewise. In fact anyone and everyone involved in the grand deception was given a 'back hander' or a 'sweetener' to keep this absolutely ghastly otherworldly event a secret forever.

Come to think of it, there was mention of a 'slush fund' in one of the Randle/Schmitt books, I believe.

If any of the above persons were citizens of the UK or Commonwealth they would certainly get knighthoods and maybe even peerages for their contributions to scientific knowledge.

As Gilles says, such is ufology.

But we should stick to the topic - Mogul.

Anthony Mugan said...

Given that the debate on Mogul is effectively over (bar the shouting, which may well continue, but is easily refuted) the challenge now, as far as I see it, is to develop an actual test, or set of tests, for the ETH.

In terms of Roswell much of the evidence is witness based, which, whilst useful background, will not be sufficient.

Not sure where the 'state of the art' is at in terms of reading fuzzy documents but my proposal for a test would be that, once the technology can be applied to read sections of the Ramey memo with high confidence, it will confirm the recovery of 'victims of the wreck' and discuss the 'disc'.

Perhaps more realistically in the short term - as progressively more sophisticated techniques are applied my prediction is that the level of confidence in the reading of those specific phrases will increase.

It may also be possible to develop quantitative tests in other areas of this phenomena. For example if CE4 events are sometimes genuine you would expect to find a statistically significantly higher incidence of UFO reports near the time and location of CE4 events. This appears to be the case (Mugan, 2011, Journal of Frontier Science) but this could also be consistent with Persinger's TSL hypothesis.

It would also be interesting if we could develop a test based on the current best estimate of how some of these things may be operating, if they exist, (i.e. some of the thinking of Paul Hill). it may be possible to detect modifications to various physical parameters around such events...

Anyway - going off topic I know, but we do seem to be at that point now.

starman said...

"...the challenge now, as far as I see it, is to develop an actual test, or set of tests, for the ETH."

What the military collected in 1947 may not have been mogul debris but SOMETHING was taken. And conceivably, something was left behind. You didn't mention claims of unusual metal found in recent years at the sites. You think they're bogus? (You didn't mention trying to get disclosure of material from '47 either; IMO its practically hopeless).

Gilles Fernandez said...

Rudiak: "There was obviously no real peer review, which would have stopped the hoax in its tracks"

Because all what Doctor Rudiak (and the DreamTeam) provides is peer-reviewed or you are part of some peer-review?
I ignored it... ;)
Gilles.

Lance said...

Tim Printy offers the skeptical side of much of the above in the new issue of SUNlite:

http://home.comcast.net/~tprinty/UFO/SUNlite5_5.pdf

Lance