UFO Crash at Roswell: The Genesis of a Modern Myth

by Benson Saler, Charles B. Moore, Charles A. Ziegler

Book Overview

In the summer of 1947 something mysterious crashed in the New Mexican desert near the town of Roswell. Whether it was an alien spacecraft manned by tiny humanlike beings or--the US government's... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1560987510
• ISBN13: 9781560987512
• Release Date: July 1997
• Publisher: Smithsonian Books (DC)
• Length: 198 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Two books in one!

This unique book deserves all the attention it can get. Title-browsers might be put off by the large-typed UFO CRASH and miss the small print underneath: The Genesis of a Modern Myth. This is, in fact, an anthropological study of the origins of the Roswell UFO myth, and an analysis of UFO cultism and mythogenesis in general. There's another, quite different book embedded, though: Charles Moore's detailed account of the Alamogordo balloon experiments in 1947. Moore really, REALLY knows what he is talking about and his chapter should make old radiosonde techs' little commutator bars switch excitedly upon reading all the information divulged here for the first time. Project Mogul was one of the almost desperate, worldwide technological attempts to obtain data of expected Soviet nuclear tests in the late 1940s. It was envisaged that constant-pressure balloons drifting for long periods in the stratosphere could telemeter acoustic data from special microphones to ground stations. The scientists tried (but failed) to get an acoustic signal from the British attempt to blow Heligoland off the map in 1947, but they did get a signal from some of the Pacific nuclear tests. A weather balloon is made of neoprene; it expands until it pops, at as much as 100,000 feet. To get a constant-volume balloon, special materials (e.g. polyethylene) have to be used, but due to the unavailability of such balloons at the time, the first experiments were run using giant trains of 24 weather balloons arranged in a ring. They lifted standard radar reflectors (the three-surface orthogonal flimsy things) as well as radiosondes since radar tracking was sometimes used in lieu of radiotheodolite. Moore demonstrates convincingly that one of these rigs landed on the famous Foster's ranch, and in time, turned into a crashed UFO with four (sometimes five) dead (sometimes alive) spacemen. Moore even includes the winds-aloft tables, and a detailed description of the reflectors, which fits perfectly with the original accounts from Roswell. Obviously this account could not have been written until Project Mogul was declassified. Indeed, Moore didn't even know what he was working on. He thought it was meteorological research. Lots of scientists over the years have been in that boat. Moore says balloon-borne acoustic detection was abandoned, but that's not the whole story. Constant-volume balloons were used for surveillance in the early Cold War. The Russians found some of them. They didn't think they were of extraterrestrial origin. The second and totally different part of the book, the anthropological study, is also interesting. It recounts how the myth developed and expanded over the years in a punctuated equilibrium. It often happens that after the first flurry of nonsense is laid to rest, a few decades later some dude rediscovers it and spins an even longer yarn from it. Pretty soon you have a completely self-referential body of mythology unfalsifiable my human means. The authors

Can't tell the players with out a scorecard...

...This book takes the story only to the mid-'90's, but that's enough to get a glimpse of what Imre Lakatos would call a "degenerating research programme." Mercifully, Philip Corso and the whole MJ-12 mess came later and we are spared a pointless examination in this book. Everyone interested in Roswell owes it to themselves to read this book, it details the evolution of the myth while providing info. on Project MOGUL. My personal gripe is that the author's maintain a pose of agnosticism while I'm sure they are all skeptical of the "myth."

Food for thought....

Fascinating expose of the facts re:Roswell, and an interesting look into the genesis of what may have become an "urban legend"....I was a firm believer in all the media hype concerning UFOs - (as searchers, we fervently WISH to believe) - but after delving into this book without preconceived ideas (as much as that is possible), I now have a very different way of collating the "evidence", and a fresh set of questions! Extremely interesting - starts a whole new dialogue with one's self as to what is real versus what we WISH to be real....and the conclusion is left up to us in the long run...