My understanding is that Roswell has been pretty much discredited.
Too many people are unaware of the extensive scientific research which makes use of helium-filled balloons to carry scientific payloads to high altitudes.
Personally, I was involved in high-altitude ballon-born gamma-ray astronomy in the mid-1970s. After observing for most of a day at altitudes above 100,000 ft, the telescope was cut loose to parachute to the ground. Once when we went to recover it, we found that someone had beat us to it and had “filled it with buckshot”. (Fortunately nothing was damaged.) We could only imagine what tales the shooter might have told his friends.
The launch site is located near the town of Palestine, in eastern Texas. At the time, the balloon launching station was run by NCAR. Currently it’s administered by NASA. Our telescope, which flew about a half-dozen times, usually landed somewhere in west Texas. It had to be cut down before it got too near the mountains, where it would have been unrecoverable.
If you’re interested, I created a model of the telescope for viewing in Celestia. It can be downloaded from https://www.classe.cornell.edu/%7Eseb/ce...index.html
Too many people are unaware of the extensive scientific research which makes use of helium-filled balloons to carry scientific payloads to high altitudes.
Personally, I was involved in high-altitude ballon-born gamma-ray astronomy in the mid-1970s. After observing for most of a day at altitudes above 100,000 ft, the telescope was cut loose to parachute to the ground. Once when we went to recover it, we found that someone had beat us to it and had “filled it with buckshot”. (Fortunately nothing was damaged.) We could only imagine what tales the shooter might have told his friends.
The launch site is located near the town of Palestine, in eastern Texas. At the time, the balloon launching station was run by NCAR. Currently it’s administered by NASA. Our telescope, which flew about a half-dozen times, usually landed somewhere in west Texas. It had to be cut down before it got too near the mountains, where it would have been unrecoverable.
If you’re interested, I created a model of the telescope for viewing in Celestia. It can be downloaded from https://www.classe.cornell.edu/%7Eseb/ce...index.html
Selden